Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
•
Dozens of listening and position-finding posts eavesdrop the short- and long-
range radio traffic (mobile radio, marine radio, microwave radio, diplomatic
communications).
•
Lines are said to be tapped directly, but little is known (see below).
There are five stations to eavesdrop
Intelsat communications
:
•
Near Morwenstow in Cornwall (Great Britain) for the Atlantic, Europe, and
the Indian Ocean.
•
An NSA station near Sugar Grove, about 250 km south of Washington, DC,
for communications of Atlantic satellites to North and South America.
•
An NSA station in Yakima in the state of Washington, 200 km south of
Seattle, for the Pacific and the Far East.
•
Waihopai in New Zealand (was important in the Falkland and Vietnam wars).
•
Geraldton in Western Australia for the rest of the Pacific region.
A station of the British GCHQ in Hong Kong disappeared in time before the city
came to China.
Local satellites
are eavesdropped, among others, in:
•
Menwith Hill in northern England (the largest station with 22 satellite termi-
nals; played an important role in the Gulf War).
•
Shoal Bay near Darwin in northern Australia (for Indonesia communications).
•
Leitrim south of Ottawa in Canada (for Latin America).
•
Misawa in northern Japan.
The known NSA station in Bad Aibling near Rosenheim in southern Germany pre-
sumably served to receive signals from (and control) ground-level flying espionage
satellites which, in turn, scan the radio and relay traffic in western Europe (?). The
white balloons are intended to hide the direction of the antennas, by the way.
It is estimated that there is a total of about 120 active ground stations. An analysis of
the antennas suggested that about 40 stations wiretap the message communications
Figure 8.1:
(
continued
)
