Vatican mobilises anti-surveillance op

[emad]

By Lester Haines
Published Wednesday 13th April 2005 12:36 GMT

If press reports are to be believed, then next Monday's gathering of cardinals in the Sistine Chapel will represent the biggest counter-surveillance operation since the Posh/Becks royal wedding. Indeed, so busy will the Vatican be blocking laser microphone assault, checking vases of flowers for nanobugs and setting the Swiss Guard on suspicious men using 3G mobes to communicate with circling black helicopters that we very much doubt whether there will be enough time to elect a new Pope between the stripsearches and electromagnetic sweeps.

Of course, there is a certain amount of legitimacy to the idea that some will stop at nothing to eavesdrop on the cardinals' deliberations. The Pope-vote conclave is legendarily secretive. Pope John Paul II tackled the burgeoning technological threat when he introduced rules protecting cardinals from "threats to their independence of judgment", viz; mobile phones, electronic organizers, radios, newspapers and TVs.

However, according to Wired, the Vatican now faces a mutli-pronged techno-assault on the Sistine Chapel. New menaces include - according to Massachusetts security operative James Atkinson - the aforementioned vibration-detecting laser mics and, chillingly, the possibility that a mole might alert the outside world by "using colored smoke or by flushing dye down a toilet with a discharge pipe that could be monitored elsewhere".

The coloured smoke idea has legs, in our opinion. The Vatican has been using it for yonks to let people know the current state of the papal vote - black smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney means no two-thirds majority has been reached during a round of balloting; white smoke means a majority has determined the next Pope. It would be a small matter indeed for an infiltration team to prepare a further series of fumigatory signals - blue for "they're going to vote for an abortion/contraception hardliner"; red for "brace yourselves, they're lining up a Latin American liberation theologist"; and orange for "step down for an hour, they've just ordered in a Chinese takeaway".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/13/vatican_counter_surveillance/

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Like anyone gives a f*&k.... or are they making book in Vegas?

[emad]

2. Or a movie in Hollywood?

"JP2 - the latterday saint of the TheoCons"???

[Retrograde]

7. Or the MSM wanting exclusives

After all, this could be the next media circus. I bet the MSM was frothing at the mouth when they found out they couldn't get media passes for the Conclave.

BTW, the penalty for any cardinal who leaks information or talks about the details of the voting is excommunication.

[ima_sinnic]

3. took the words right out of mouth

... whatever

[emad]

4. Small, medium and large: the pic

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20709-1566758,00.html

[BlueEyedSon]

5. "NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

[gandalf]

6. Is there something new on the pope's personal papers?

emad, I remember you once wrote something about these papers being partially in a museum of the marian sisters. In his will, I believe, JP2 wrote that all his personal papers should be destroyed. Would probably a pity, especially if it's true that he was married...