Who is Hobbs Baranov from Pattern Recognition and what is their importance?

Hobbs Baranov serves as a mathematician / cryptographer for American Intelligence after being recruited directly from Harvard. His resources include access to an American intelligence system called Echelon, which allows for the monitoring of all Net traffic. Hobbs is referred to as the grandfather of its creation. He drinks heavily and lives in a Caravan rented from Gypsies, which is located on a former training facility for either MI5 or MI6. The facility is now used for training police dogs.