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A Multibillion-Dollar U.S. Spy Agency Few Know Exists
- brilliantcode 10y agoRead the article and it made me think about just how long the US hegemony will last, it's array of tools deployed against the rest of humanity is vast: - It blackmails the rest of the globe with the biggest nuclear deterrence across land, sea, air and probably space. - It ensures trading routes remain open by muscling American naval and air superiority. Not to benefit others or play fair, it's there to benefit American interests. - It actively undermines and spies under 3 letter acronyms, including it's own citizens and allies to benefit American corporarchy [1] - It consistently outspends the rest of the world combined on it's military upkeep which guarantees it's #1 postion. Just how long on earth will such superficially-democratic superpower maintain it's hegemony? It's like holding everyone hostage and telling them to trade with each other by selling their own clothing or body with the US taking a cut on every transaction. This is fucked. [1]: http://amslang.enacademic.com/2064/corporarchy http://amslang.enacademic.com/2064/corporarchy
- stonogo 10y agoYour invective borders on hysterical and does not encourage anyone to believe that engaging with you on this topic will be productive. If you don't like downvotes, feel free to post this to a web forum that doesn't implement them.
- brilliantcode 10y agoThe value I got from reading your comment was nil. If you have nothing to add to the discussion, why do you contradict yourself by replying?
- ChuckMcM 10y agoExcept they aren't facts, certainly not as presented. Consider, you state: "blackmails the rest of the globe with nuclear deterrence" Blackmail is the threat to expose something the victim doesn't want to see exposed, in exchange for some price or service. Nuclear deterrence, is just that, deterrence. Meaning to mitigate (or deter) an adversary from attacking. "it ensures trading routes remain open" -- all nations with navies protect legitimate trade from pirates, there are ships from at least a half dozen navies protecting cargo from Somali pirates for example. The US uses its intelligence agencies to undermine the constitution in the service of corporate interests [paraphrased, if you don't agree feel free to correct my interpreatation] -- The US certainly doesn't do this as a matter of policy, if you know of a different policy it would help your case to actually include it as a citation. "it outspends the rest of the world on defense" -- In terms of real dollars or in terms of percentage of GDP? The last time I checked as a percentage of GDP, Israel outspent everyone else but I haven't looked in a while. There is also an economic size effect here, the US spends more (in real dollars) than any other country on social programs as well (for example). You probably want to stick to per capita numbers though if you're doing nation-state comparisons. There are lots of things you can say about the US that are both facts, and make the country look bad, but the choices you made aren't facts so they have a hard time persuading the reader of your 'hegemony' thesis.
- brilliantcode 10y agoSo who bombed Hiroshima? which oil rich part of the world do you think they were raining bombs from aircraft carriers? Who spies on US allies and their corporations to benefit American ones? Who spends more than the US on the military?
- stonogo 10y agoYou seemed disturbed that you were being downvoted. I tried to explain why people would choose to do that instead of engaging with you on the topic. I'm not responsible for whether or not you choose to extract value.
- cstross 10y agoYou're American, aren't you? It's perfectly normal human behaviour to assume that one's own country's motivations and activities are benevolent and effective. However, the picture looks very different to folks living outside the magic circle of the national border. Those of us on HN who are not Americans find the giant sprawling US intelligence-industrial complex to be potentially terrifying — especially in view of the USA's demonstrated ability to extradite or kidnap (via extraordinary rendition) people it assumes to be hostile, and in extremis to target people for assassination by flying killer robot. It's the sort of capability that, in the hands of a Doctor Doom figure, or just a corrupt megalomaniac -- as opposed to the erudite, contemplative, great-hearted, and scholarly President of the United States of America who we all know and love -- would be the making of a dystopian novel or a superhero comic. (But of course, that would never happen.)
- stonogo 10y agoI'm mortified by many things in my government, and I actively work to improve them. You may note I didn't disagree with him... or you may not, because you seem to be acting like I did. The OP seemed genuinely upset that nobody wanted to engage him on the topic, and angry that he was getting downvoted, so I tried to help him understand why people might just downvote and move on. Sorry if that caused you inconvenience.
- dan7678 10y agoAs one of the other comments makes clear, it's a matter of perspective. The ones that benefit always see it in a pretty light, regardless of whether the rest of the world absolutely hates it. If you insist for someone's words to be tailored to be lovey-dovey or the kind you'd expect from the pretty-light side, then don't read criticism because it'll always sound "invective" to you.
- stonogo 10y agoThanks for making an account to explain internet comments to me. This website is generally squarely centered on the silicon valley perspective. It's not irrational to expect people to react from that viewpoint. If you want to engage in productive dialogue, it helps to tailor your communications to the audience. It's possible to do so without compromising your values.
- dan7678 10y agoSince you seek to genuinely help the follow and now apparently me, I would reckon you take internet comments quite seriously, so you're welcome. Naturally, this particular topic is touchy for both sides here, so it's just as irrational to expect him to dress it up without feeling what a potential respondent would feel if the original poster had an invective tone. It's hard, and I don't blame him for delivering it like that.
- stagbeetle 10y agoI don't have the ability to downvote, so I'll chime in with my own view. I think it's just the way the world works and if it wasn't the U.S being up there it would be another country (U.K, Russia, China) that do awful things because they could get away with it. Plus, add in the obligatory "absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's a terrible situation, but what do you suppose an effective alternative is? Because cooperating and "compromise" have never been the most beneficial for both parties.
- brilliantcode 10y agoNot sure why you are being downvoted. Seems like any criticism of America on HN lately is automatically receiving drive by downvotes. All colonialism is inherently evil. I guess you are saying the US is the "lesser evil" which I tend to agree. I have no idea what the alternative is, I'm just writing what I observe based on facts that this article reminded me of.
- stagbeetle 10y agoThen if I may criticise you, people don't appreciate others complaining without offering a solution to the problem.
- galtwho 10y agoI think his criticism is directed at the inference that USA is benevolent.
- willholloway 10y ago"It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak." - George Orwell, You and the Atomic Bomb
- Overtonwindow 10y agoActually it's very well known in terms of MASIN and GEOINT. I once even interviewed with them back in the day, and they don't do a lot to hide their presence. I think they're not in the news a lot because what NGIA does and what Google and a lot of private satellite imagery companies do, is really the same.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoAs a point of reference, NGA is the National Intelligence Manager (NIM) for GEOINT, while DIA is the NIM for MASINT. [1]https://www.dni.gov/index.php/about/faq?start=2 https://www.dni.gov/index.php/about/faq?start=2
- fersc 10y agoIf the US didn't hold this position, someone else would. Who would you rather be in control.
- StavrosK 10y agoSomeone else, definitely.
- echo_nevada 10y agoand then that someone else would be just as bad. No right answer.
- StavrosK 10y agoI'd rather have the power spread out, than have it all in one country.
- jbronn 10y agoAll that copy and they don't even mention the NRO, who design and operate satellite sources the NGA depends upon.
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoMust not have heard of it.
- mirimir 10y ago> In 1961, the CIA and the Air Force jointly formed a centralized administrative office to run the spy satellite program. This was the National Reconnaissance Office, an organisation so secret that even today [1982] its very name is considered classified information. (p.243) > -- James Bamford: THE PUZZLE PALACE, 1982. http://n3krozoft.com/_xxbcf67373.TMP/NSA/nro.html http://n3krozoft.com/_xxbcf67373.TMP/NSA/nro.html
- wonderous 10y agoThis agency is not secret; in fact, Google Earth (aka Keyhole) was a startup they backed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole,_Inc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole,_Inc
- martinald 10y ago"one million terabytes per day" from two drones. The private sector should get their hands on This RF technology. Edit: this was a joke. I imagine that is getting close to the Shannon limit with available RF spectrum.
- ishi 10y agoEven if it is possible to generate so much data, where would you store it? You would need to install 333 units of VNX5800 per day (each one stores 3PB): https://store.emc.com/en-us/Solve-For/STORAGE-PRODUCTS/VNX5800/p/VNX-VNX5800-storage-platform https://store.emc.com/en-us/Solve-For/STORAGE-PRODUCTS/VNX58...
- paulmd 10y agoit's like saying that Netflix sends "one million terabytes per day"... if you are looking at the decompessed bitmaps Gorgon Stare is the platform to which the ARGUS-IS system is basically a camera upgrade. It works by "tiering" the data so objects of tactical interest get downlinked quicker and more frequently. You're certainly not sending raw bitmaps over the air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare I would imagine that you would effectively take a "keyframe" image and then record "P-frames" on top of that like any other compression system. Only instead of a psychovisual model you have a psycho-tactical model, where you want to throw lots of bandwidth at the objects of interest and not so much to everything else. But yeah, 6 petabytes per day is the throughput of the camera system. Most of the data will be compressed away especially on the live downlinks, and they will probably only retrieve a high-quality copy of the full "historical" data (with high-quality data on objects that aren't designated "interesting") at the end of the mission when the Reaper lands. After all, you just can't beat the bandwidth of a Reaper full of tapes hurtling down the runway... Time for napkin math! If you figure they are putting out 6 petabytes (6000 terabytes) of raw data per day, and let's say they are flying 20 commodity hard drives at 10 TB per drive... that gives you 200 TB per day of video, and you'd need to hit a compression ratio of 30:1 over the uncompressed bitmaps. Seems plausible, like I bet you could get that out of a standard H264 encoder with decent quality (assuming it supports the resolutions - or you start chunking the video up). Even a more reasonable figure like 5-10 hard drives per day (60-120x compression) would probably still be within the reach of standard encoders. H264 is pretty good especially when your baseline is "raw bitmaps". Remember, the US military doesn't give a fuck about money. Flying out a couple C-17s of hard drives every month to support a whole combat theater is chump change, especially if it means other hardware/wetware isn't getting blown up. And at least with the Gorgon Stare system they only retained data for 30 days, so we're not even talking about a huge throughput in terms of hardware for permanent retention. edit: here is a more serious technical analysis of it that I dug up http://ambivalentengineer.blogspot.com/2012/08/argus-is.html http://ambivalentengineer.blogspot.com/2012/08/argus-is.html
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoIt's not for lack of effort that NGA is not more widely known. In fact NGA has a pretty great portal for NGA specific consumer applications which leverage unclassified GEOINT capabilities: https://apps.nga.mil/Home https://apps.nga.mil/Home Not all are great, but some of the apps are really useful and valuable. It's a huge and hugely valuable organization that has started to become the analysis backbone for current intelligence - largely because decision makers want photos. The AF and NRO run the satellite system, but pretty much everything valuable that is in Low Earth Orbit that takes "pictures" is processed and analyzed through the NGA - then fused and productized with all source data from CIA/DIA/NSA. Truly invaluable organization - if bloated (like everything in the USG).
- avar 10y agoHere's the video referenced in the intro where Obama doesn't know what the NGA is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC7tG48iTj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC7tG48iTj4
- paulcole 10y agoGood way to maintain his folksy image.
- canistr 10y agoI misread the "Five Guys" as "Five Eyes" in the video title. Five Eyes Burgers & Fries would actually be a great name for some joint operation/meeting/etc.
- Apocryphon 10y agoMurders and Spies, I think is the parody
- arjie 10y agoPage 60 of Coup d'État by Edward Luttwak describes a large number of US intelligence agencies, the nominal hierarchy, and (I think) the actual hierarchy. The NGA is in there, interestingly, along with a bunch of others I never thought existed.
- theWatcher37 10y agoCare to list it here?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- notpeter 10y agoIt lists 21 distinct agencies: * Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) * Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) * National Security Agency (NSA) * Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (OICI) * Border and Customs Service Intelligence Unit [Homeland] * US Coast Guard Intelligence [Homeland] * Office of Homeland investigations [Homeland] * Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) [State] * Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence [Treasury] * Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) [Defense] * National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) * National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) * US Cyber Command * US Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency (ISR) * National Air and Space Reconnaissance Center (NASIC) * US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) * National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) [Army] * US Marine Core Intelligence Activity (MCIA) * US Navy Department's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) * FBI National Security Branch [Justice] * Office of National Security Intelligence of Drug Enforcement Administration (ONSI DEA) [Justice] Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook, Revised Edition (2016) by Edward N. Luttwak. Pages 60-62 http://amzn.to/2nlZrDC http://amzn.to/2nlZrDC The first edition (1968) is timeless, but the revised edition (2016) is amazingly on-point and is updated to reflect the structural changes which have occurred in the half century since it's first printing. It's only 300-odd pages, highly recommended.
- caf 10y ago
- aluminussoma 10y ago(editing comment since it is inaccurate) For those interested, the original Youtube interaction is in the link posted in the child comment. [2]: http://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2009/05/in-which-the-president-discovers-an-american-intelligence-agency-at-five-guys-018755 http://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2009/05/in-which-the...
- desdiv 10y agoI think you're just watching the wrong part of the video. This part[0] matches the transcript word by word. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1TxMKaYHYA#t=5m55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1TxMKaYHYA#t=5m55s
- aluminussoma 10y agoThank you! I will edit my comment accordingly. I listened to the video and it was driving me mad that I couldn't find that part. That was the timestamp in the Politico post, but I missed the conversation. I guess that Five Guys is popular with the NGA.
- desdiv 10y agoGoogling "NGA" gets me the following, in order: 1. A Chinese gaming forum 2. The spy agency's official Twitter mouth piece 3. The spy agency's own website 4. National Governors Association 5. Spy agency's Wikipedia article That's some fine reverse-SEO work right there.
- angry_octet 10y agoNah, its just that all those other groups have an SEO budget. If NGA does it is probably via a big prime contractor like LM and completely ineffectual.
- seanlinmt 10y agoIf you didn't know the agency exists, how would anyone know what to Google for?
- thaumasiotes 10y agoMaybe by noticing their official Twitter account. I mean, if you were trying to hide, that seems like an obvious thing to cut out.
- icebraining 10y ago"satellite spying agency" returns direct links to the NRO's and NGA's Wikipedia pages.
- luckydude 10y agoI'm pretty sure I did a ton of work for these folks. In about 1994 or 1995 was the boss a woman? If so, yeah, I know these people and have some stories that I can share because in spite of their desire to get me to get clearance, I didn't. Which was a good choice on my part but wasn't that clear at the time. If these are the same people, in 1994 they could read 3 inch headlines from a satellite. That was the stuff I worked on. Edit: in reading through the thread I wonder if the people I knew were the NRO.
- ccrush 10y agoWhy is this a political hit piece instead of an article? Thanks for the two facts about the agency, but were half dozen or so attacks on the POTUS really necessary? If anything, the previous POTUS, a constitutional scholar that campaigned on ending domestic surveillance, has recently relaxed the rules on espionage by allowing non-intelligence agencies to access surveillance data. Furthermore, I don't think it's fair to turn an article about a little-known government agency into bullshit click bait propaganda. Either title the post "look at what Trump can do with the nation's aerial and spatial espionage agency" or make it substantially about that. This is pure click bait garbage, and it is disguised as being of interest to this community to spread propaganda. I would be fine with an opinion or two thrown in there, but making the first two paragraphs about the agency and the rest of it an opinion and hit piece is just a waste of everyone's time. Thanks for the garbage post.
- lucio 10y agoVery well put.
- jakeogh 10y agoedit: Not the CFR, I had the mag name mixed up.
- repples 10y agoIt's a reasonable concern that Trump may try to abuse his power in this area as well, given his rhetoric and behavior so far. Nothing wrong with pointing that concern out, to give the article some context about the potential domestic power of this agency.
- foxhedgehog 10y agoAre journalists just going to do this with every agency in the IC now? FEW KNOW THAT THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT TRACKS MONEY LAUNDERING, COULD TRUMP COME AFTER YOUR WELLS FARGO ACCOUNT?
- jedberg 10y agoActually it's the Secret Service that tracks money laundering. Contrary to popular belief, that is actually their main job -- protecting the currency of the United States. Protecting the President is just their side job. You're partly right though -- up until 2003 they were part of the Treasury department, but they were re-orged into DHS when it was created. But your point is still valid.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- foxhedgehog 10y agoI thought this was part of the charter of OTFI also?
- briandear 10y agoYou're partly right: Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is one of the lead agencies that combat money laundering. There's a huge amount of overlap though.
- bhaumik 10y ago"The NGA is to pictures what the NSA is to voices. Its principal function is to analyze the billions of images and miles of video captured by drones in the Middle East and spy satellites circling the globe. But because it has largely kept its ultra-high-resolution cameras pointed away from the United States, according to a variety of studies, the agency has never been involved in domestic spy scandals like its two far more famous siblings, the CIA and the NSA." The rest is political fluff.
- TACIXAT 10y ago>With the capability to watch an area of 10 or even 15 square miles at a time, it would take just two drones hovering over Manhattan to continuously observe and follow all outdoor human activity, night and day. This is not correct. Manhattan has tall buildings which are a great defense against arial surveillance. They also do not do active monitoring. So if you travel more than 10 - 15 miles, you would end up entering or exiting their surveillance radius, which means they couldn't link your entire set of actions together. Further, the resolution is not very good. They can currently trace back cars and humans walking, but the features are not great. So if you were to board a bus and exit the bus, and you weren't wearing some very distinct color (or you took off your jacket), you would be lost to them. The company that provides this service is called PSS. I do not like them very much. [1] 1. https://www.pss-1.com/ https://www.pss-1.com/
- kozikow 10y ago> Further, the resolution is not very good. They can currently trace back cars and humans walking, but the features are not great. Yes, it's pretty hard to even tell it's a human from aerial image. This is how humans look at 7cm/pixel (DJI drone at 150m altitude): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9P9V4RHDRkkalJYcmZWTG1JeFk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9P9V4RHDRkkalJYcmZWTG1JeFk..., https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9P9V4RHDRkkTEN6Y0hQVTRIbGc https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9P9V4RHDRkkTEN6Y0hQVTRIbG.... Shameless plug: We don't plan to do any surveillance, but at tensorflight.com we automatically detect a few object classes and our automatic human detector is almost ready. https://twitter.com/tensorflight/status/843606859399405568 https://twitter.com/tensorflight/status/843606859399405568 , please get in touch at kozikow@tensorflight.com if you are interested in this space.
- MichaelMoser123 10y agoThey can track your location by looking at the current cell id of you phone connection (also a much better way of identification) so what's the point of these drones? Also there are lots of CCTV cameras at every corner for tracking people without a cell phone.
- deleted 10y ago
- gozur88 10y ago>The NGA is to pictures what the NSA is to voices. Its principal function is to analyze the billions of images and miles of video captured by drones in the Middle East and spy satellites circling the globe. Eh, what? What does the National Reconnaissance Office do, then? I thought that was their job.
- caf 10y agoIt seems like the NRO build and operate the platforms, and the NGA has the analysts that task them and look at the results.
- Afforess 10y agoThe NGA is up there with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in lack of public exposure. The NRO launches a lot of the satellites the NGA also uses for GEOINT and spying in general. NRO launches are part of the public record, but their missions are almost never revealed, and all clandestine in nature. The launch craft and missions are frequently given ... frankly villainous names and logos ... I wish I was jesting, but take a look for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches . I don't know how else to describe a mission with a motto like "Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach" with a Cthulu-entity as the figurehead - for a government agency mission no less. People are always sort of disbelieving when I show them this sort of thing, in plain day. I can't figure out how the media has managed to never capitalize on this.
- planteen 10y agoMissile squadrons also have creepy patches. Like this: http://m.ebay.com/itm/221802923522?_mwBanner=1 http://m.ebay.com/itm/221802923522?_mwBanner=1
- caf 10y agoThat's quite funny - the map-encircling octopus has a long history, but doesn't tend to be self-applied! http://jaredfarmer.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Political-Octopus.jpg http://jaredfarmer.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Political-...
- icebraining 10y agoLooking at the list, some people are certainly having a good time drawing those patches.
- supernumerary 10y agoSide note: the 'persistent stare' tech mentioned in the article used to go under the evocative aegis: 'gorgon stare'.
- mankash666 10y agoI'm no fan of trump or his propensity to bend the rules. But this article is prophecizing doomsday scenarios with far too much gusto to be taken seriously. Yes, I learned of a stealthily intelligence agency, but also learned that today's news outlets don't really have editorial integrity
- sabalaba 10y ago"Few know exist" but publicly recruit at most Universities in the U.S.
- azinman2 10y agoNote that the UK had had CCTV for years now, which is a lower tech version of the same thing. It's not all that hypothetical, and we can at least look to it for consequences.
- briandear 10y agoIs this philosophically any different than London converting nearly every square meter with cameras? The technology is better but essentially it's an air camera system.