NSA San Antonio Cryptological Center: Birdseye

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/nsa-sanantonio/nsa-sanantonio.htm

 

I thought this was a forum, not a website for your daily newsdump.

Without any commentary, this is just an ordinary newsdump.
Sjeez, Snowdrift.

 

What? You don't like me dumping on you?

 

He has a lot to offer here. Sometimes a news story or picture speaks a lot louder than commentary. The link to the story was to spark discussion and/or inform. I found it fascinating as I've been keeping up with the San Antonio facility.

Keep on dumpin', snowdrift.

 

I've looked at the pictures. Are they supposed to tell a story, and if so, which one

 

I like Snowdrift's updates of the dark side.

 

Been a busy bee today, I see. lol

 

Backstory: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index...s-to-store-americans-private-data-permanently

From a local San Antonio website (dated 12-3-09): http://www.sacurrent.com/news/story.asp?id=69607

 

snowdrift gets an A+ for effort but a D- C- for googling the forums first.

Edit: After reviewing your previous work, I see you have improved lately.
The C- is tentative. Will have to see how you progress in the future.


Second pic, near top, shows the HAARP array.

Even the entrance has a giant dish parabola.

These guys sure love their antennae.

Building has Tyvec and Yellow Board, looks ready for Brick; I have my tools.
Panels=

By the number of pads at the back and their own sub station, they're going to draw a lot of juice. Maybe a million gigawatts.

I wonder if any wet concrete batteries were installed?

2 security stations, 1 with booth and 1 redundant, at the rear to protect the substation and HAARP array no doubt.

Drainage ditch and parking lot, another strategic security structure.

Not a lot of activity for a job site, skeleton crew working. Pics must have been taken at the end of the day, after quitting time. Sun angle is better than 45 degrees. Excavators ain't working sunday. That's Football and Beer time.
You know how Texans love their Football and Beer.

A decent sized job site. 100-150 construction workers per week.

@fly
You're right! Not much to see there.

 

I see.

 

I ussually dont see any kind of comments at all about this but, apparently it does get read by people here.
In that light I stand corrected.

 

Let's assume that the NSA can and does store all American communications indefinitely/forever. Here are some of my questions.

1. Do they store the communications/internet activity of the entire world?

2. What would it take for the NSA to access the internet communications of other friendly or unfriendly countries? I'm looking for technical details about what they would have to do to access that information, presuming the host country isn't cooperating with them.

3. Is there anything similar in Europe, where all internet traffic is being captured and stored indefinitely (i.e. not by ISPs but by intelligence communities)?

 

Undersea Cables Cut: 14 Countries Lose Web

 

I wonder if this place will have to have its own power plant dedicated to it? The average nuclear plant only puts out 1 gigawatt, so I doubt a public plant could be used for this. I am pretty sure White Sands in New Mexico has its own solar power farm.

Also, where are the environmentalists? This place will surely help destroy the earth with its massive power consumption. Why isn't Obama and his enviro friends all over this?

Well, the NSA has been data mining for decades. Echelon was the old version of what they're doing now. It was a satellite system that gave the NSA access to almost all phone calls in the world during the 70's and 80's. They had supercomputers that filtered the calls based on keywords. Relay stations for Echelon were placed in allied countries like Britain, Canada and Australia. It is believed Echelon is how Princess Diana's phone calls were tapped. Again, they didn't need physical taps, as they could intercept all international phone calls as they traveled into space to the routing satellite. The NSA simply had their own satellites intercept the signal, and I don't believe they needed phone company complicity.

At any rate, they are simply doing the same thing with the Internet now that they did with phone calls back in the day. Since there is much more data now, they need more facilities, computers, and an ungodly amount of electricity. After 911, they felt they needed phone company complicity for Internet data, and this is obviously where the controversy with AT&T and Verizon originated as various whistleblowers came out and gave various stories about NSA snooping. The guy at AT&T said that the NSA had set-up secret data centers within the telco company facilities. A security analyst at Verizon said that he noticed all company data (all phone records, billing info, everything) was being piped by a 45mbps DS-3 line directly to a location in Quantico, Virginia. When he asked his bosses about it, he was told to ignore it. It wasn't until later he figured out it was NSA. After 911, I would imagine the NSA had deals like this with all tier 1 Internet providers and probably most wireless carriers.

As for how the NSA could tap Internet lines in other countries: it's easy, they tap the lines here in America which automatically taps most of the world, since 90% of the world's internet traffic travels through American backbones. Again, they probably are using the tier 1 providers themselves for help, but even if they didn't have their cooperation, they could easily tap the lines themselves. Cnet ran a great article that covers all of this and has interviews with various electrical engineers and communications experts who surmise how the NSA is probably doing it. Basically they all agree it would be easy for the NSA to tap lines even without telco help. The article also says that they have the ability to tap underwater fiber lines with submarines (some middle east traffic does not travel through U.S. backbones, so the NSA taps them in the ocean). This is probably why there was a string of stories about middle east fiber lines being "accidentally" cut by "dragging ship anchors." Remember that?

Basically, they tap the lines at the backbone and connect it to their own black fiber lines that pipe it to NSA data centers located at various places (new ones being built in Utah and Texas). No doubt they have supercomputers that filter the data based on keywords, which is why these data centers practically need their own power plant to operate.

 

The NSA reeks of desperation. This reminds me of their desperate ploys in the 90's to control strong encryption. They lost that battle and they'll lose this too. They're the ultimate control freaks. They remind me of a controlling spouse that just has to know every mindless detail. Those situations always fail, and so will the NSA.

Even if 90% of the world's traffic is now going through the US, I doubt it will stay that way for long. The rest of the world is rapidly developing, and the NSA will soon find itself unable to control every irrelevant bit of electronic minutia. My guess is they'll find themselves locked out sooner rather than later.

These guys just want to seem relevant, but I think the party will soon come to an end, like it did with cryptographic controls.

And, now that you mention tapping underwater cables, it seems to me other countries could do the same thing. So, they probably do.