Signal To Noise (by Douglas Koke)
Time-lapse footage from on of the largest Radio Astronomy Observatories in the world, the Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico.
(Source: ohhelloghost)
(Source: contusion)
“The US National Security Agency (NSA) built one of its largest listening stations on top of the hill, rumored to be part of the global ECHELON intelligence gathering network. “The Hill”, as it was known colloquially by the many American soldiers who worked there around the clock and who commuted there from their quarters in the American Sector, was located in the British Sector. Prior to establishing the first permanent buildings there in the very late 1950s, Mobile Allied listening units had driven to various other locales throughout West Berlin hoping to gain the best vantage point for listening to Soviet, East German, and other Warsaw Pact nations military traffic. One such unit drove to the top of Teufelsberg and discovered a marked improvement in listening ability. This discovery eventually led to a large structure being built atop the hill, which would come to be run by the NSA (National Security Agency). At the request of US government, the ski lifts were removed because they allegedly disturbed the signals. The station continued to operate until the fall of East Germany and the Berlin Wall, but after that the station was closed and the equipment removed. The buildings and radar domes still remain in place.” (via THE ARCHITECTURE OF VILLAINS » Blog Archive » Teufelsberg via bldgblog)
Funken ist Landesverrat.
Erich Fellgiebel, General der Nachrichtentruppe.
(«Broadcasting is high treason.»)
rthr:
“From a lonely rusted tower in a forest north of Moscow, a mysterious shortwave radio station transmitted day and night. For at least the decade leading up to 1992, it broadcast almost nothing but beeps; after that, it switched to buzzes, generally between 21 and 34 per minute, each lasting roughly a second—a nasally foghorn blaring through a crackly ether. The signal was said to emanate from the grounds of a voyenni gorodok (mini military city) near the village of Povarovo, and very rarely, perhaps once every few weeks, the monotony was broken by a male voice reciting brief sequences of numbers and words, often strings of Russian names: Anna, Nikolai, Ivan, Tatyana, Roman. ”
“Warning! The enemy’s listening.”
(via)
Gray Fox was a strange animal. Formed in 1981, it specialized in gathering human and signals intelligence for the Pentaton under the most challenging circumstances, often working with Delta’s aviation squadron to get behind enemy lines. It had about 200-250 operators, divided into squadrons. Many, but by no means all, of the operators were drawn from Special Forces, because of SF soldiers’ reputation for self-sufficiency and independence. During the war in Afghanistan, Gray Fox worked directly for CENTCOM, which attached Gray Fox personnel to AFO from the start of the conflict. Four of the six AFO teams in Afghanistan included a Gray Fox operator, which was how Jason now found himself sitting in a Toyota pickup truck with his secret equipment, concentrating intently as he scanned frequencies for any suspicious broadcasts from the mountains. Jason was a linguist, but his ability to track the frequencies of Al Qaida broacasts was arguably more critical than his ability to translate them. Once he identified a frequency on which the enemy was broadcasting, it could be passed up the military intelligence chain of command so that spy planes and satellites with more sophisticated listening equipment could monitor it twenty-four hours a day, or help him triangulate the source of the broadcast. When a Gray Fox element joined a black special ops task force, it was known as Task Force Orange.
good, quick peek into the field activities of Gray Fox members, a secret unit within the US Army tasked with collection of actionable intelligence in preparation of special forces missions. created, like many secret/SF units within the US military, in the wake of the Tehran hostage crisis.
The complete text of Gordon Brown's apology to Alan Turing
In 2009 I ran the campaign to get a government apology for the treatment of Alan Turing. That resulted in an official apology from then Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Bletchley Park is preparing a new exhibit on Alan Turing and part of it is the apology itself. They have been kind enough to share with me a scan of Brown’s apology
(Source: lidel)
(Source: godandguns)
