Vivace: What’s This Government-Funded Tech Consortium Got To Hide?
A mysterious consortium of tech companies isn’t keen to talk about its work with the UK government
Vivace describes itself as “a consortium of the best and brightest in the security industry”. Odd, then, that this publicly-funded brains squad seems remarkably reluctant to tell us who’s in it.
Vivace first came to my attention last week, when it was named as one of the expert technologists consulted as part of the NSPCC’s hugely unbalanced report into end-to-end encryption.
I’d never heard of Vivace before, and so did a little digging to find out what this organisation actually does.
Its sparse one-page website offers few clues, beyond the “best and brightest” claim made above. There’s no list of members, no named executives, no physical address, nothing but a bland set of mission statements.
A few days later, someone claiming to be Vivace’s media representative replied to the email I sent them asking for further information.
It turns out Vivace is a consortium of private tech companies that is behind ACE — the Accelerated Capability Environment — which is described in press releases as “a Home Office capability within the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism that rapidly delivers solutions to…
