7 ms·

I want to know how many more of these rooms exist, and where exactly they are. I'm surprised we haven't had many more leaks about them given what I would consi

I want to know how many more of these rooms exist, and where exactly they are. I'm surprised we haven't had many more leaks about them given what I would consider the ease of identifying them. (ie, how many doors out there don't have door handles and sit next to a huge fiber optic networking infrastructure.)

blablabla123 10y ago
... and belong to AT&T with many cables going there :D
- freehunter 10y ago
  I live in a town of about 5,000 that is 15 minutes from a city of 200,000 and we have an AT&T building in our small downtown. It's about the same size as the frozen yogurt place next door, but it has two 1000+ gallon gas tanks sitting outside. I've lived here for years and never seen anyone go in or out, and the sign on the door says that packages should be delivered to the tavern next door. The door itself has blacked out windows. It's super weird. I'm not saying it's a spy room, I guess it could be a tiny datacenter or switching building, but it's still super weird.
  - proactivesvcs 10y ago
    I live in a village of similar population in the UK and our telephone exchange looks just like a bungalow, situated on the end of a road dotted with similar houses. It's set back further from the road with tall hedging but I managed to cycle past it for eight years without even realising what it was. Weird, but in an opposing way :-)
    - B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
      In the days of Strowger switches, their clacking racket would have blasted you from the bike ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch
      - Angostura 10y ago
        I doubt it. I walked past a large strowger exchange building as a school kid every day in the UK heard nothing from outside.
      - jxramos 10y ago
        Wild stuff, never knew about these old mechanisms. Doesn't seem too loud however. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNKLuM8yY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNKLuM8yY8
        B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
        A room full of those, piled up in columns/towers seven or eight feet tall, gets pretty loud. But yeah, as mentioned, a building with decent insulation can contain the noise. A flimsy cottage, probably not.
        anexprogrammer 10y ago
        Try https://archive.org/details/EastLangtonUax13TelephoneExchange https://archive.org/details/EastLangtonUax13TelephoneExchang... That's a standard UK rural exchange. Capacity 100 lines! The last few decomissioned went, in full working condition, to museums. Background noise is the motors for the tone generator, probably the cable compressor too. The louder noises are the call routing and reset. Background noise would normally be a fair bit louder - I'm guessing he had mic right up against the rack for this. Or a town exchange: https://youtu.be/xUOh9fCSgqw https://youtu.be/xUOh9fCSgqw Towns had much larger exchanges, and they were loud. Probably enough to have hearing loss if you worked there. Only visited one once, decades ago. Also had a distinctive smell - machine oil, burnt electrics (50v), solvents. Lovely.
      - PavlovsCat 10y ago
        What an irony that this was invented to prevent fiddling about with things, considering how fouled up it all got.
    - 33W 10y ago
      Another example: here is a water pumping station disguised as a home in Raleigh, NC: http://wunc.org/post/video-whats-inside-house-wade-avenue http://wunc.org/post/video-whats-inside-house-wade-avenue
    - DanBC 10y ago
      People used to enter those and document what was inside. That was stopping at the end of the 1990s, but 9/11 really made it trickier to do. I think somewhere on textfiles.com there's a file by possibly kelticphr0st about those buildings.
      - Faaak 10y ago
        If you've got time, I would be really interested in this ;-)
  - wrigby 10y ago
    Having worked in the telco world for a bit, I wouldn't say that your description is unusual for a remote site. Generator backup is typical, and a switching office usually isn't manned, so it makes sense that they would arrange for packages to be delivered next door. Window tinting sounds nefarious, but truly could be done just to reduce HVAC load from solar heat. It's also nice to not advertise the pair of $100k+ Cisco or Juniper big iron routers that could be in there. The amount of equipment that makes up most telco networks is actually pretty incredible. There are tons of small, unmanned sites that house switches, routers, and fiber amplifiers. That said, I don't doubt that there are tons of sites that look just like this and actually do have something to hide.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      That's what I figure, I just thought I'd bring it up in context of the description of the room in the linked article. It sounds just the same, so it's really difficult to determine what is a bad place and what is a normal place. Again, that's likely by design.
    - PavlovsCat 10y ago
      > That said, I don't doubt that there are tons of sites that look just like this and actually do have something to hide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
    - 13of40 10y ago
      Quick question for you: I've noticed that in most cities there's at least one nondescript, windowless brick building with 70's era architecture and some connection to a telephone company. Examples: [1] [2] [3] Now, those were probably made back in the days when everything was built from mechanical switches, or at best, transistors. What do they do with all that space when modern, miniaturized tech comes to town? Are they just filled with cobwebs and bits of ancient mainframe computers nowadays? [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6767102,-122.2095201,3a,75y,53.23h,113.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sYoM61j9nl4UFg1934bQ3KQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6767102,-122.2095201,3a,75y,... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Museum+of+Communications/@47.5404977,-122.3236823,3a,35y,46.42h,97.68t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJzTstNSGSDRqlouyO_4iWQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DJzTstNSGSDRqlouyO_4iWQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D221.78267%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xe19f6d8a9a44ce6e!8m2!3d47.540853!4d-122.323181 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Museum+of+Communications/@... [3] https://www.google.com/maps/place/AT%26T+Long+Lines+Building/@40.716477,-74.0065541,3a,75y,71.49h,137.99t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1spiJ-0vdqWdyAGSaPXW0ezA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DpiJ-0vdqWdyAGSaPXW0ezA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D259.5%26pitch%3D-3!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xc3a7ddcb8a1c1559!8m2!3d40.7165287!4d-74.0059204 https://www.google.com/maps/place/AT%26T+Long+Lines+Building...
  - dmooney1 10y ago
    Sounds like a telephone company central office where all the local copper wires land.
    - mrbill 10y ago
      Here's what the local CO looks like in my hometown (~6K people). It was still a SxS switch when I was in high school (early 90s) but has since been upgraded; I presume most of the building is empty at this point and it's just used as staging for repair parts (see the pic of the back fenced-in area). http://imgur.com/a/MMSK4 http://imgur.com/a/MMSK4
    - profmonocle 10y ago
      And it's not surprising you'd never see anyone come or go. These offices typically don't have permanent staff; technicians stop by for maintenance as needed.
    - dalke 10y ago
      Agreed. Here's what one looks like where I used to live: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.685061,-105.9393468,3a,75y,53.36h,90.5t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sXAuS8MS1Qanj2xiAAK9OWA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.685061,-105.9393468,3a,75y,5... . Centrally located, no public entrances, and no windows. I imagine the lack of windows also helps make it more secure, and less vulnerable to vandalism.
  - satysin 10y ago
    > I'm not saying it's a spy room Oh it is totally a data collection point.
GuiA 10y ago
> how many more of these rooms exist, and where exactly they are Dozens, if not hundreds, in every major US city at the very least. Have we really not learned anything in the recent years, that we're still unsure about such basic questions? Imagine the KGB at its peak activity, bump it up by a few orders of magnitude, and you have the NSA. Man, despite everything, the US is still really good at brainwashing even its most tech savvy citizens. > I'm surprised we haven't had many more leaks about them given what I would consider the ease of identifying them I think you're greatly overestimating "the easy of identifying them", and how much the average AT&T employee knows/cares. Things are also probably much better hidden now compared to 2006.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > Dozens, if not hundreds, in every major US city at the very least. That's the most paranoid thing I've read in ages. NSA's job isn't domestic surveillance.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    So weird then, because thats exactly what they do....
  - alanwatts 10y ago
    The terms "foreign" and "domestic" are meaningless in the context of the world wide web.
  - Alupis 10y ago
    > NSA's job isn't domestic surveillance We've known since 2013 that is certainly is.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      GP hasn't gotten the memo. Instead of "paranoid fantasy" now they're supposed to say "nothing new here; intelligent people have known about this for decades".
    - 10y ago
ci5er 10y ago
There was a big T-splitter in NYC back in the 90s that would route copies of eastern seaboard and transatlantic telecom (voice) traffic. I don't know which TLA was attached. And then there was the DNS/Internet stuff in Crystal city about the same time. There was all the KDC back-door administrivia out of Maryland too, but that was less interception of traffic and more making sure they had the keys to decrypt it all...
dccoolgai 10y ago
There was a room at work that ATnT "owned" that we weren't allowed in...hmmm...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
trhway 10y ago
> I'm surprised we haven't had many more leaks about them given what I would consider the ease of identifying them. the last guy who blew whistle on the beam splitters attached to Google's and the others' fibers is happy, given the alternative, to live in Putin's country...

blablabla123 10y ago

... and belong to AT&T with many cables going there :D

freehunter 10y ago
I live in a town of about 5,000 that is 15 minutes from a city of 200,000 and we have an AT&T building in our small downtown. It's about the same size as the frozen yogurt place next door, but it has two 1000+ gallon gas tanks sitting outside. I've lived here for years and never seen anyone go in or out, and the sign on the door says that packages should be delivered to the tavern next door. The door itself has blacked out windows. It's super weird. I'm not saying it's a spy room, I guess it could be a tiny datacenter or switching building, but it's still super weird.
- proactivesvcs 10y ago
  I live in a village of similar population in the UK and our telephone exchange looks just like a bungalow, situated on the end of a road dotted with similar houses. It's set back further from the road with tall hedging but I managed to cycle past it for eight years without even realising what it was. Weird, but in an opposing way :-)
  - B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
    In the days of Strowger switches, their clacking racket would have blasted you from the bike ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch
    - Angostura 10y ago
      I doubt it. I walked past a large strowger exchange building as a school kid every day in the UK heard nothing from outside.
    - jxramos 10y ago
      Wild stuff, never knew about these old mechanisms. Doesn't seem too loud however. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNKLuM8yY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNKLuM8yY8
      - B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
        A room full of those, piled up in columns/towers seven or eight feet tall, gets pretty loud. But yeah, as mentioned, a building with decent insulation can contain the noise. A flimsy cottage, probably not.
      - anexprogrammer 10y ago
        Try https://archive.org/details/EastLangtonUax13TelephoneExchange https://archive.org/details/EastLangtonUax13TelephoneExchang... That's a standard UK rural exchange. Capacity 100 lines! The last few decomissioned went, in full working condition, to museums. Background noise is the motors for the tone generator, probably the cable compressor too. The louder noises are the call routing and reset. Background noise would normally be a fair bit louder - I'm guessing he had mic right up against the rack for this. Or a town exchange: https://youtu.be/xUOh9fCSgqw https://youtu.be/xUOh9fCSgqw Towns had much larger exchanges, and they were loud. Probably enough to have hearing loss if you worked there. Only visited one once, decades ago. Also had a distinctive smell - machine oil, burnt electrics (50v), solvents. Lovely.
    - PavlovsCat 10y ago
      What an irony that this was invented to prevent fiddling about with things, considering how fouled up it all got.
  - 33W 10y ago
    Another example: here is a water pumping station disguised as a home in Raleigh, NC: http://wunc.org/post/video-whats-inside-house-wade-avenue http://wunc.org/post/video-whats-inside-house-wade-avenue
  - DanBC 10y ago
    People used to enter those and document what was inside. That was stopping at the end of the 1990s, but 9/11 really made it trickier to do. I think somewhere on textfiles.com there's a file by possibly kelticphr0st about those buildings.
    - Faaak 10y ago
      If you've got time, I would be really interested in this ;-)
- wrigby 10y ago
  Having worked in the telco world for a bit, I wouldn't say that your description is unusual for a remote site. Generator backup is typical, and a switching office usually isn't manned, so it makes sense that they would arrange for packages to be delivered next door. Window tinting sounds nefarious, but truly could be done just to reduce HVAC load from solar heat. It's also nice to not advertise the pair of $100k+ Cisco or Juniper big iron routers that could be in there. The amount of equipment that makes up most telco networks is actually pretty incredible. There are tons of small, unmanned sites that house switches, routers, and fiber amplifiers. That said, I don't doubt that there are tons of sites that look just like this and actually do have something to hide.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    That's what I figure, I just thought I'd bring it up in context of the description of the room in the linked article. It sounds just the same, so it's really difficult to determine what is a bad place and what is a normal place. Again, that's likely by design.
  - PavlovsCat 10y ago
    > That said, I don't doubt that there are tons of sites that look just like this and actually do have something to hide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
  - 13of40 10y ago
    Quick question for you: I've noticed that in most cities there's at least one nondescript, windowless brick building with 70's era architecture and some connection to a telephone company. Examples: [1] [2] [3] Now, those were probably made back in the days when everything was built from mechanical switches, or at best, transistors. What do they do with all that space when modern, miniaturized tech comes to town? Are they just filled with cobwebs and bits of ancient mainframe computers nowadays? [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6767102,-122.2095201,3a,75y,53.23h,113.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sYoM61j9nl4UFg1934bQ3KQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6767102,-122.2095201,3a,75y,... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Museum+of+Communications/@47.5404977,-122.3236823,3a,35y,46.42h,97.68t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJzTstNSGSDRqlouyO_4iWQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DJzTstNSGSDRqlouyO_4iWQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D221.78267%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xe19f6d8a9a44ce6e!8m2!3d47.540853!4d-122.323181 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Museum+of+Communications/@... [3] https://www.google.com/maps/place/AT%26T+Long+Lines+Building/@40.716477,-74.0065541,3a,75y,71.49h,137.99t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1spiJ-0vdqWdyAGSaPXW0ezA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DpiJ-0vdqWdyAGSaPXW0ezA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D259.5%26pitch%3D-3!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xc3a7ddcb8a1c1559!8m2!3d40.7165287!4d-74.0059204 https://www.google.com/maps/place/AT%26T+Long+Lines+Building...
- dmooney1 10y ago
  Sounds like a telephone company central office where all the local copper wires land.
  - mrbill 10y ago
    Here's what the local CO looks like in my hometown (~6K people). It was still a SxS switch when I was in high school (early 90s) but has since been upgraded; I presume most of the building is empty at this point and it's just used as staging for repair parts (see the pic of the back fenced-in area). http://imgur.com/a/MMSK4 http://imgur.com/a/MMSK4
  - profmonocle 10y ago
    And it's not surprising you'd never see anyone come or go. These offices typically don't have permanent staff; technicians stop by for maintenance as needed.
  - dalke 10y ago
    Agreed. Here's what one looks like where I used to live: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.685061,-105.9393468,3a,75y,53.36h,90.5t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sXAuS8MS1Qanj2xiAAK9OWA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.685061,-105.9393468,3a,75y,5... . Centrally located, no public entrances, and no windows. I imagine the lack of windows also helps make it more secure, and less vulnerable to vandalism.
- satysin 10y ago
  > I'm not saying it's a spy room Oh it is totally a data collection point.

GuiA 10y ago

> how many more of these rooms exist, and where exactly they are Dozens, if not hundreds, in every major US city at the very least. Have we really not learned anything in the recent years, that we're still unsure about such basic questions? Imagine the KGB at its peak activity, bump it up by a few orders of magnitude, and you have the NSA. Man, despite everything, the US is still really good at brainwashing even its most tech savvy citizens. > I'm surprised we haven't had many more leaks about them given what I would consider the ease of identifying them I think you're greatly overestimating "the easy of identifying them", and how much the average AT&T employee knows/cares. Things are also probably much better hidden now compared to 2006.

zeveb 10y ago
> Dozens, if not hundreds, in every major US city at the very least. That's the most paranoid thing I've read in ages. NSA's job isn't domestic surveillance.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  So weird then, because thats exactly what they do....
- alanwatts 10y ago
  The terms "foreign" and "domestic" are meaningless in the context of the world wide web.
- Alupis 10y ago
  > NSA's job isn't domestic surveillance We've known since 2013 that is certainly is.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    GP hasn't gotten the memo. Instead of "paranoid fantasy" now they're supposed to say "nothing new here; intelligent people have known about this for decades".
  - 10y ago

ci5er 10y ago

There was a big T-splitter in NYC back in the 90s that would route copies of eastern seaboard and transatlantic telecom (voice) traffic. I don't know which TLA was attached. And then there was the DNS/Internet stuff in Crystal city about the same time. There was all the KDC back-door administrivia out of Maryland too, but that was less interception of traffic and more making sure they had the keys to decrypt it all...

dccoolgai 10y ago

There was a room at work that ATnT "owned" that we weren't allowed in...hmmm...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

trhway 10y ago

> I'm surprised we haven't had many more leaks about them given what I would consider the ease of identifying them. the last guy who blew whistle on the beam splitters attached to Google's and the others' fibers is happy, given the alternative, to live in Putin's country...