A Clogwog in Oz

Xeni Jardin:

Snip from NYT story by James Bamford:

Deep in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country’s largest eavesdropping bug.

Located in a “radio quiet” zone, the station’s large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.

Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country.

A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the N.S.A. has suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the N.S.A. to bypass a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens has even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment.

Link.

Above, a photo snipped from this related item on John Young’s Cryptome today: Eyeballing Sugar Grove Echelon Station, with satellite photos and maps of the site profiled in the NYT piece.

[Boing Boing]

time to put on your tin foil hat… [more]

about a year and a half ago a few friends and i had a bit of an ‘email war’ about the price of petrol. this was all started by one of those ‘boycot [insert scumbag oil company name here] and they will have to drop the price’ emails..i put forward the opinion that i think the petrol price should go up much much more.. because that would make people think twice about uneconomical cars and start considering public transport.. (plus it would free up the freeway so i can get to work on time

one of my friends.. let’s call him ‘craig’ then did some handy work with photoshop and came up with this image that he send to about 6 of us –>

we all had a laugh and that was that.

to my surprise i since have received the same image in one of those emails with ‘funny’ pictures twice. first about half a year ago where i could trace the original coming from new zealand.. and just two days ago i got another one with even more images attached to it…

be carefull with what you send out there.. it may come back..

tom