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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."
If there ever was anything at Groom Lake, it won't be there now. The SECOND anyone knew that UFO nuts had got wind of it, anything interesting would have been moved somewhere else.
At a tangent - whatever happened to Bob Lazar?
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. That would make a lot of the UFO sighting claims make sense.
-Meeper
Lot's of military bases have perimeter security and sensors. Try getting into Camp Peary in Virginia. Or any one of a number of other places.
oooo....But it's Area51! Obviously they are hiding something behind those sensors.
Ha. If there ever was anything alien there (highly doubtful), it's long since been moved. Hangar 18, maybe?
Now, granted he did rebury the devices, and granted, they were in the public park, not Area 51 itself, but it's not hard for the average person to see why this is a bad idea. There's a lot of stuff in "public" areas you're not allowed to monkey with. If a public park provided restrooms with those annoying motion-sensor faucets, does anyone think they would be within their rights to repeatedly take them apart?
Sure, there is a worry in this case about the government monitoring private citizens in a public place, but "approach" sensors invade privacy a lot less than swarms of armed guards peering through binoculars from the fenceline 24x7.
In short, this guy crossed the line. I understand being intrigued, and even outraged by these devices, but making a map is one thing, and once he figured out what the devices were he never should have touched them.
(Just had a scary thought on preview: what if the odd buried device he found had turned out to be a errant landmine? Of course it's massively criminal for it to be there, but there is a reason you don't got poking unknown military hardware...)
Innocent until proven guilty disappeared a few years ago. Due process is up next.
Seriously. We're talking about people who can't even keep their happy snaps from Iraq secret. The American government hasn't been able to keep a single secret longer than about 15 minutes. They's no aliens at Roswell, or you'd have already seen 500 pictures of them on CNN...
Ever heard of this concept? The simplest explanation is probably the best one. Let's start out with Area 51 being a "secret military base" that "doesn't officially exist". Area 51 exists, is acknowledged to exist, and is generally known as an Air Force base. So what could their motivation here be?
Probably that they're tired of a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists trying to get a photo of the "aliens" on the base. The idea that Area 51 is a government hoax is ridiculous. Anyone who works or has worked for the US Federal Gov't knows the insane levels of bureacracy that you have to deal with on a daily basis, and you don't get thinking anywhere near that creative from the federal government.
Let's stop making such a hugely asinine deal about this. Get out of your basement and stop wearing your x-files t-shirts around.
-- K
Amtrak's total subsidies have run about 10% of the subsidies provided for the airlines, and yet the public outcry over railroad subsidies has been greater. If you took away all the federal subsidies for air travel, the industry would have made a net profit of almost exactly zero dollars overall, since its inception. Either Amtrak isn't really all that inept, or the airline industry situation is severe enough to justify open rebellion against government by the three stooges.
Granted, the USPS seems to have become a much better service since it was privatized. It also faced some fair free market competition, e.g. from UPS and Fedex, to help that process along. The rail system's competitors are the heavily susidized airlines, commercial buses (which are also a struggling, some would even say floundering industry) and the interstate trucking system, and these impact different areas (passengers and cargo are effectively very different matters, finacially, and Amtrak's performance in one area is best judged seperately fron the other).
Who is John Cabal?
OK, I don't mean to imply that the US gov't didn't develop the Internet, but I resent the notion that if the US hadn't, nobody else would've thought of it. I'm quite confident that one way or another, we'd still be using the Internet today, even if DARPA hadn't gotten the ball rolling. Someone else would have.
Yeah, we'd be on *some* network at some point, like Compuserve or Genie or something. The beauty of what happened with the internet was that it was not controlled by a single entity, otherwise we'd all be reading slashdot (or some Compuserve created likeness) through a Compuserve branded viewer. Furthermore, things like personal servers, static ip's, p2p, wouldn't be options. As it happened, Darpa created a huge development platform for all of us to experiment on. I doubt without Darpa it would have turned out quite like this.
Seriously. We're talking about people who can't even keep their happy snaps from Iraq secret.
Those are apples and oranges my friend. Keeping pictures secret that were sent out to private citizens over the internet is different than keeping a secret among government employees
The American government hasn't been able to keep a single secret longer than about 15 minutes.
How do you know? If they did have a well kept secret, it's well kept so you might not have found out. I'm not trying to be rude, just trying to point out that just because you know some things, doesn't mean you know everything
They's no aliens at Roswell, or you'd have already seen 500 pictures of them on CNN...
Why doesn't CNN march into Area 51 and refuse to leave then because the "public wants to know the truth". I have no doubts at it's highest levels, the US government has ways to control the media both subtle and not so subtly.
It is easy to argue that the govnt employs common people, who cannot handle some info. The truth is, that the secret stuff gives the feds an advantage over spooks in other countries. If you can keep the fact that you have a fleet of F-117s on hand, you get the advantage of Saddam Hussein not buying the latest anti-stealth shoulder launched rockets from Serbia at $zillion a pop for a few more years. Simple. Military advantage. I can handle knowing that the USAF has rocket powered toilets just as well as the next guy, but may be in USAF's advantage not to let ANYONE know about it.
It's logical that if they publish this in the USA, then Osama is going to read all bout it the same day. It's not that regular people like us can't know about it, it's that us not knowing about it is the only way to guarantee that Osama won't know either.
They have full right to do this in the name of security, and it is also their duty to judge what information may be released. Remember, if they release something which allows Osama to level New York tomorrow (i.e. "suitcase thermonuclear bomb for $100 HOWTO"), it's THEIR ass on the line.
And just to drive the argument home: Foreign spies would be out of work if stuff like that was public. What's the harm? Why do you think other countries spend so much money on intelligence, if this info isn't crucial to security?
Yes,
Stealth airplanes.
Drones.
Robots.
Scientists in white suits
Mean and gruff airport personnel with pistols
Must be some Air Force research base of some sort.
Besides, if they had real aliens, they would show them to the world and say: See, they're trying to kill us all, protect your country from Space Invaders, enlist Today!
"Piter, too, is dead."
Of course there are an unlimited number of things that are true that we don't know. But no one complains about the Zargnoids who continually steal electricity from my power lines and result in me being overcharged for electricity every month.
More plainly, there's such an abundance of things we don't know that a mere strongly-worded assertion about any one of them can set off the kooks, and the increasingly kook-friendly media. (Mumble mumble Fox mumble.)
I don't believe government employees are not any more fanatical about keeping secrets than ordinary employees, though on some levels they are much more indoctrinated. But still, the thing about Area 51 rumors that have always bugged me is the number of people who would have to be "in" on it, and not talk. And in these days of near-instant communication, it gets a lot harder to prevent leaks.
But the thing that bugs me about Area 51 the most is that the culture of secrecy that some sectors of the government enjoy makes possible a rich environment for spurious stories to flourish. Much worse, to me, than the stories is the secrecy itself, especially since it's alegedly *our* government that's so tightlipped about so much, and Bush and company have made it a lot worse.
So I almost want to wish the conspiracy mongers well on their propaganda efforts -- anything that causes the public to distrust that air of secrecy, and the actions of spooky secret people supposedly in their interest, for there is no force on Earth so horrifying as that of people willing to do wrong things for what they think are right reasons, things like that that work towards increasing that distrust are somewhat positive in my book.