Spy News

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

NYT reports today on a new book, "Blind Man's Bluff,"
which reports on the US's success at placing surveillance 
devices on Soviet subsea communications cables around 
the world. With much technical detail about how it was 
done, beginning with the simple but overlooked idea of 
locating shoreline warning signs about undersea cables 
then tracking from there.

The devices, some up to 20 feet long for housing elaborate 
processing equipment, captured electronic emanations, thereby 
eluding detection measures aimed at physical taps. One was 
found by the Soviets but  most were not and much information 
on the program is still classified.

AT&T and Bell labs built many of them. The US Navy will not 
comment on the book, citing national security restrictions.

The Times also has an obituary for Tommy Flowers, the gent who 
guided construction of Colossus machines at Bletchley Park to 
break top-level German codes during WW II.

There's still interesting debate about the Paul Dore story of
picking up signals from space, which he first thought were from
aliens, but which seems more likely to be from a surveillance
satellite, and possibly from a type not publicly known. Not enough
data yet to show that the story is not a hoax, or disinformation by
US/UK spy agencies, but it has led to informative discussion of 
what such signals could indicate. Notes on this at:

   http://jya.com/project415.htm

More commentary welcome, here or privately.

Some will recall a vigorous discussion here a few years back
about listening in on US undersea cables, commencing at the
landfall points (dense packs of them here in the NYC area), 
many handily marked on coastal seafaring maps.

Or, for more up-to-date technology, setting a receiver to point in
the direction of those on TLA bases (needing an x-ray of the
concealing radome).