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Area 51 Hackers Map Buried Surveillance Network
advair writes "There's a story on SecurityFocus about a pair of Area 51 'hackers' who discovered a buried network of wireless motion sensors on the public land surrounding the "operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada." Using a frequency counter and a GPS receiver, they tracked down and logged 30 - 40 of the sensors, before the FBI and Air Force raided one of them, and questioned the other. Now one of the guys has been charged with a federal crime for allegedly removing one of the devices that was protecting a base that doesn't officially exist."
Hasn't that base been officially declared as real, and that it has been unused for some time?
The base exists. Clinton signed it into existance when the workers sued for being exposed to pollutants which the goverment didnt want to disclose. As of 2002 all of the John Doe's are now dead and the foverment still didnt explain what materials they were exposed too.
Area 51 is quite real. In fact, it's been declassified that many of our advanced fighter (e.g. SR-71 Blackbird, F-117 Stealth Figher, U-2 Spy Plane, etc.) planes were developed there. More info on Wikipedia. Sorry, the government hasn't admitted to keeping little green men there.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
In case you didn't know, there is an excellent search engine called Google which gives you the answer. Just search for groom lake satellite pictures and you'll get this as your first hit.
The enola gay (the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima during WW2) was stationed out of Area 51. True story.
what did the commercial observation satellites detect
A bunch of buildings and runways.
Terraserver, FAS, even a simple image search on Google all show recent, relatively hi-res pics.
The Federation of American Scientists has a nice description of what is on Area 51, as well as many links to provide more info.
There is no denying that there is much about the place kept under wraps, but the crazy UFO stories need to come to an end.
Sunny Dubey
I believe the military installation commonly known as Area 51 is actually an advanced aircraft development center, where they developed craft ranging from the old U2 spy plane to the F-117 stealth fighter.
Actually, both the U2 and the F-117 were developed at Lockheed's Skunk Works plant in Palmdale CA. A lot of information can be found in Skunk Works, a memoir by the guy who ran the place during the F-117 development. He also discusses where some of the testing took place in the book, and if I recall correctly most of it was (for the obvious reasons) well-known radar testing ranges.
Now, for all we know, Area 51 still could be an advanced aircraft development center. If they retired the SR-71 (also a Skunk Works Project) and allowed the F-117 to become public before it was absolutely neccessary, then what do they have that they aren't talking about?
Here is the link from the article to the photos of the sensors. Sensor Photos
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." -Albert Einstein
Karma? There's a serial modder out there.
Actually, when Area 51 was quietly confirmed by Bill Clinton (as he signed an executive order preventing loved ones of workers who died due to chemical exposure from being able to sue the government for wrongful death), this sort of information was pretty much confirmed. However, it seems Area 51 was also used to tinker with chemical, nuclear, and possibly some biological agents.
President Bush gave the area an exemption from EPA regulations on waste disposal in 2002:0 020918-9.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/2
Read any good sonnets lately?
I couldn't agree more...most of the problems with the USPS can be tracked down to individual depots. Specifically, I've noticed that anything which goes through Memphis, TN basically gets an extra 2-3 DAYS added to its journey. This is obviously anecdotal, but it has happened consistantly numerous times. Mail to my location goes through one of three nearby cities before reaching me, stuff through the other two is much faster even if it is a longer distance. Typically once I track something to Memphis with their online tracking, it doesn't even move for at least two days, sometimes three.
I imagine all other shipping companies have the same problems, the Dallas-Fort Worth depot of FedEx for instance. Most other depots are VERY fast, turnaround times of several HOURS...things almost invariably sit overnight at DFW, sometimes not leaving for nearly 48 hours.
Area 51 is real and is used everyday. There are planes that take off everyday from McCarran Airport in Las Vegas bringing employees to Groom Lake.
"Another area of interest is the EG&G terminal on the Northwest corner of McCarran International Airport. Every weekday morning, about 500 people arrive at the guarded terminal with one destination, Groom Lake. When I was in Las Vegas observing the activity of the EG&G terminal, I counted six EG&G owned 737-200s. The aircraft are easily identifiable; they are white with a red strip running the total length of the plane. They fly out to Groom Lake about every half hour in the morning but things slow down in the afternoon with about two to three aircraft always sitting outside. Starting in the late afternoon (I noticed one coming in at 2:30 PM), the 737s start coming back to Las Vegas. At about 6:00, all of the aircraft (6 of which I counted, there could be more) were back to the EG&G facility for the night. Below are the photos that I took when I was out to Groom Lake and observing the EG&G terminal." From sr-71.org, and a picture here.
Also for the "new" Area 51, Popular Mechanics had an article a long time ago that is located here.
The system they are using is most likely the IRembass [sec.army.mil] system which is used in detecting movement.
http://www.dreamlandresort.com/area51/new_sensors. html
Site slow, freecache doesn't work on files less than 5mb (and I am not letting my webserver feel the wrath of slashdot), so here's article text:
Area 51 hackers dig up trouble
By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus May 25 2004 1:03PM
To the Area 51 buffs who travel to the Nevada desert in the hopes of catching a glimpse of unexplained lights in the sky or to bask in the mythic allure of the region, 58-year-old Chuck Clark is almost as much a part of the local color as the Black Mailbox.
A resident of tiny Rachel, Nevada -- 100 miles north of Las Vegas along the Extraterrestrial Highway -- the amateur astronomer and author has spent years keeping an eye on the spot the government calls the "operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada." He's said to be a frequent presence at the Little A'Le'Inn, where you can purchase post cards and tee shirts, enjoy an "Alien Burger," and walk out with a copy of Clark's "Area 51 & S-4 Handbook" to guide you on your journey into the desert.
But this self-appointed military watchdog is harder to find these days: messages left for him at the Inn go unreturned, and his media appearances have dried up like Groom Lake itself. "I think he's really not as motivated to talk to the media anymore as he used to be," says friend and fellow base-watcher Joerg Arnu. The reason: it turns out the truth really was out there, and the government didn't appreciate Clark digging it up.
Clark didn't find the Roswell craft or an alien autopsy room -- in fact, while officially shrouded in secrecy, the 50-year-old base is generally believed to be dedicated to the terrestrial mission of testing classified aircraft. "The U2 spy plane, the SR-71, the F-117A stealth fighter, all were flight-tested out of the Groom Lake facility," says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. The myth of Area 51 memorialized in films, T.V. shows and novels is a function of the secrecy that surrounds it. "It is a concrete manifestation of official secrecy at its most intense, and that invites a mixture of paranoia and speculative fantasy that has become ingrained in popular culture," says Aftergood.
Even without aliens, the facility has its secrets, and last year while roaming the desert outside the Groom Lake base Clark stumbled upon one of them: an electronic device packed in a rugged case and buried in the dirt. Marked "U.S. Government Property," the device turned out to be a wireless transmitter, connected by an underground cable to a sensor buried nearby next to one of the unpaved roads that vein the public land surrounding the base. Together, the units act as a surveillance system, warning someone -- somewhere -- whenever a vehicle drives down that stretch of road.
Similar devices had been spotted in the area in the early 90s, but they were crude and bulky, stashed in the bushes and easily spotted. They were later withdrawn. The new road sensors are more clandestine, given away only by a slender antenna poking up through the dirt. "They're very, very hard to find, because there's just this little wire, like a blade of grass," says Arnu.
Sniffing Out Surveillance
Arnu, a Las Vegas software engineer, has shared Clark's preoccupation with the Groom Lake base since 1999, when he made a trip to the area to see what all the fuss was about. "I thought, okay, I'll give it a try, see what's out there... A couple of days turned into a couple of weeks and before I knew it I started developing a website about Area 51," says Arnu.
So when Clark found the new generation of road sensor, Arnu drove out to help investigate further. The pair found that, at close range, they could use a handheld frequency counter to pick up the wireless signals given off by the devices as a car passes. Over the following month and half, Clark and Arnu engaged in a kind of geocaching game with the Men in Black, systematically sniffing out the road sensors with the frequency counter, exhuming them, and opening them up. They discov
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
An article in Aviation Week back in (I think) the late 80's had and interesting article. Apparently the seismologists in California had tracked a "shock wave" comming in off the coast heading out to the desert at 4000mph. Due to it's shape and speed, they concluded it was not a geologic event and probably a really fast aircraft heading out to 51. Don't underestimate those guys just because they work for the government. Remember, the SR-71 was designed in the 1960's. Of course, I think most cool things we have today were invented before I was born. Now it's all an effort to patent things so there's no need to innovate...
Article about where the new base is.
Supposedly... it's in Utah at the White Sands Missile Launch complex.
Thank you Mario but our princess is in another castle.
I also remember some former workers at the base suing the government for getting sick from working there. Ok - found the article
I was down there in mid-April, while on vacation in Las Vegas. The white trucks and the soldiers they rode in, were in fact there. They wathed us through their bonics, and as we left, drove out to the place we had been. No doubt, looking for DNA samples to id us. Dipshits, they could have just looked at the license plates on our rented vehicle. :D
No, they didn't develop the Internet. They paid private contractors to develop the Internet. There's quite a difference.
-Turkey
At least according to the story submission (we all know what THAT is worth around here, roughly jack, but I can't load TFA) they were not trying to get onto the base. They were on public lands surrounding the base.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
the reason the government was forced to disclose that there was a base at area 51 because of a lawsuit from employees that worked there. they had become sick with some sort of chemical poisoning but the government would not tell them what them had been exposed to. the doctors couldn't figure out what it was either and these people had started dying. skin was peeling off their bodies. the government denied the existance of these people. they were refered to as john doe 1 through 7. their lawyer argued that these people must exist because they were sitting in the courtroom and in the hospital. the judge agreed. then the goverment said these people may exist but the location where they claimed to work doesn't exist. their lawyer argued back that it does exist because he drive him out to the desert and point at the damn base. the judge agreed. the government then said yes there is a base but nothing is going on there that would cause these people to get sick. this is wrong too. area 51 is exempt from all EPA hazardous materials disposal laws. there are numerous reports of large football field sized holes being dug and filled with barrels of unknown chemicals then being covered in jet fuel and set on fire. that doesn't sound safe. they never did tell those people what they were exposed to.
Wikipedia is very cool, but why do people keep linking to it as if it were athoritative proof of a point?
Because it usually condenses information that people already know. There are multiple sources out there that say the same thing, but why should I track down all of those when I can just point you to Wikipedia and let you use it as a starting point for your own research.
I could change the whole page to say "mostly harmless", "/\/\$ suxors" or "dude you're wrong!" because it's a publicly editable Wiki.
And it would get changed back a few moments after you hit the submit button. The editors are very careful to keep an eye on things and usually double check people's sources. If anything is questionable, they remove it or insert warnings about it.
although admittedly there are some external links at the bottom that may or may not lead to more athoritative sources.
These are often the sources that the editors pulled from.
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http://www.telonics.com/eagle/pt-310.html looks a lot like these sensors. They even have user manuals online.
If there is an area 51... where is area 1 thru area 50... and how high do the numbers go?
The truism that the USPS is an awful service is baloney. Whenever I hear about faster services it turns out to be in a much smaller country like England or Switzerland. Who, by the way, charge more to post a letter. Most mail I send in a few hundred mile radius gets delivered the next day. And I can send a letter several thousand miles away for 37 cents. And the USPS has to deliver to everyone (everyone!) in the US for the same price. Tell Fedex you want to deliver to Hawaii for 37 cents and see what they tell you. The USPS technology borders on the surreal. Forget Mr. Chaney sorting mail in the back of the general store. Try a half mile conveyor with mail moving so fast you literally only see a solid blur of white, with unbelievable high speed character recognition and Aunt Mabel's handwritten scrawl put into a 10 second holding pattern while the next available human sorter anywhere in the US gets a snapshot beamed by satelite to their monitor.
My friend once got a letter sent from Belize. It was addressed "Tom and Debbie. The Yellow House Next to the Meat Store on Atlantic Ave. Rochester, NY" It took a grand total of 6 days to get there.
Flame off.
Come on guys, do you have no understanding of due process? All they did was accuse him of being guilty. They didn't detain him without charges, and they didn't detain him for longer than is allowed. They had a warrent to search his house. There is nothing about innocent until proven guilty that says you can't accuse someone of a crime - it is punishment for the crime that has to wait for proof.
Lastly they never even charged him with stealing a device. They charged him with interfering with the devices, and if that would have gone to court he would have most definately been found guilty because he documented the whole process. However, the government promised to let those charges go if he promised to return or pay for the one that they thought he stole. It was his choice to agree to that plea bargain, or face charges in court, and he made it out of his own free will.
There is an argument to be made as to whether the government should be allowed to have these devices on public land, and whether interfering with these devices should be federal offense of this magnitude, but to say that due process was violated is just plain ignorant.
Bob Lazar has been trying to get an movie made about his life. He mentioned it in 1993 at the "Ultimate UFO Conference". New Line Cinema was supposed to be doing it in '96, but it's apparently been seriously back-burnered. Mr. Lazar's motives are pretty suspect, if you ask me.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The private companies could not run passenger/commuter rail at a profit(!) so they were going to kill it. If there was no Amtrak / US government subsidy, there would be no passenger rail service.
A brief history
It is a choice of government subsidy or no rail service.
-R (random illuminated sig.)
Fallon, NV (master)
George, WA (yes, that's a real town)
Middletown, CA
Searchlight, NV
Ask any pilot or oceangoing navigator, it's really cool tech for its time.
Here's some info on how it works
But instead the money paid in tolls and fuel taxes is siphoned off into the state's General Account spending fund and spent on things entirely unrelated to road maintenance and repair (at least in California).
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
...you have a real base some where else.
wow, you couldn't be further from the truth.
that's why they have Tonopah Test Range
sure, the government doesn't try to say this one doesn't exist, but where do you think all of our top secret aircraft is flight tested?
my ex-roommate provided flightline security for the F-117A stealth fighter there in the mid 80's. that's right, in a time when the fighter didn't exist.
most of the UFO's people see flying around the area are only never before seen test aircraft.
Coconuts are OK. Bricks make the post office think you're mailing drugs. Dead fish, old seaweed, and rancid cheese will make it through, but won't earn you any friends.
Animats says:
"If you want to see an SR-71 up close, the Boeing Museum of Flight has one."
As does the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center. In fact, you can check it out right now via their webcam.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
Maybe you are right we should keep to ourselfs we should stop giving out the trillons that we do to other countrys.
We give out $15 billion in various types of foreign aid with the bulk of it being "foreign military aid" to countries that serve our strategic interests(Israel, Pakistan, Uzbekistan) rather than humanitarian ones.
But don't feel bad. Many Americans think we devote almost a quarter(24%) of our budget to foreign assistance when it's really about 1%.
Given the types of governments in the countries we send "aid" to, I think their citizens might prefer it if we turned off the spigots and stopped propping up bloodthirsty dictatorships.
Actually, I have nearly a dozen options a day from New York to Boston or Washington DC - the only profitable amtrak line. The rest are kept alive because various esnators want to have amtrak lines in their state - regardless of how much money they suck from the public's pocket.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Just to further show what an embarassing idea that is, it's worth pointing out that flying wing-type designs have been around for over 60 years.
I assume you mean "GDP", as I have no idea what "GPD" might mean. In any case, no, that's not what it indicates - you're completely wrong. Even if the total Swedish GDP is lower than the US, which it surely is, the Swedes pay out a higher percentage of that smaller pie in taxes. If you compare per capita GDP, the disparity becomes even more apparent - the Swedes have a per capita GDP of about $26,000 per year (PPP adjusted), of which they lose more than 50% to taxes, or more than $13,000 per year per person. The United States has a per capita GDP of about $36,000 per year, of which they lose about 28% to taxes, or about $10,000 per year per person.
How you got modded insightful, I'll never know.
In the US, around 50% of my income goes to taxes.
I doubt it. In the state with the highest total tax burden, Connecticut, the average tax burden when combining federal, local, and state taxes is about 33% of income. Either your income is much higher than average to hit 50% taxation, or, more likely, you're just plain wrong. Of course, if you want to lower taxes, I'm listening, but the plain and simple fact is that total taxation in the US is already among the lowest in the developed world.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
With all the nuclear testing (even if it isn't bomb testing these days), it wouldn't be too bright to get out of your car, live fire or not....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Poulsen used to run with Kevin Mitnick. You may have seen him on Unsolved Mysteries or on a post office wall... (he's the one who won a Porsche from a radio station by taking over their phonelines)
Now he's "reformed" and reporting for Security Focus (however his reporting tactics are tantamount to social engineering).
Actually, regarding USPS and costs... There is a federal law which prevents UPS and FEDEX from lowering prices for their services below a certain threshold... the reason? It'd put the USPS out of business. Yet another government entity propped up through federal law. Gotta love it.
We still have trouble in the UP getting packages delivered on time, because we still have the 'pallet problem'. But, more packages are going through, I suppose, because there's so much more business up here now and because of internet/mailorder purchases.
I agree the guy did not have any right to take or disassemble the things just because they were on public land, but that does not nessesarily mean that the DOD was right in putting them there.
There was a different case (mentioned in the article) in the 90's when they found some sensors near the base. In that case, some of the sensors were on land belonging to the Buerau of Land Management, and when BLM was told about this, they got really pissed and the DOD got rid of them. The issue was that they had not asked BLM for permission to do this, and had put the sensors in secretly.
We might talk about 'public' land, or 'government-owned' property but in the U.S., there is no generic government ownership, it all must belong to one agency or another. The DOD is not allowed to do whatever it wants with other agency's land or property.
The article unfortunately does not give much information on who owned the property the sensors were on, or whether the military asked for permission beforehand. I would assume it was all legit, but remember that they're made screw-ups before in placing sensors on other people's land.
Call them (1-800-ASK-USPS) and complain.
No, I'm serious. The branch near my work was consistenly undermanning the front desk. Three windows, one open, line a mile long. So I finally called and complained. Next time I went in, lo and behold, all three windows open.
So remember, kids, squeaky wheel and all that.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt