
New Snowden leaks unravel mystery behind NSA's UK base - cheleby
https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/06/menwith-hill-station-leak/
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dogma1138
FORNSAT could potentially be iffy, but OVERHEAD and GHOSTHUNTER is exactly the
kind of programmes that the NSA and any other national SIGINT agency is
supposed to run. Geographically confined and directed at specific adversaries
to achieve clear military goals.

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trendia
When you say those are the programs that they're "supposed to run", I ask, who
gave them that mandate?

Specifically ... Who gets to determine which programs the NSA is allowed to
run? And who gets to determine what civilian data they are permitted to
retain? And who gets to determine the "acceptable" number of civilian
casualties when they bomb in Yemen?

~~~
jessaustin
Respectively, uhhh... NSA, NSA, and a combination of CIA and Pentagon.

Did you expect checks and balances?

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888uuii
Galvanized. Wonder how many alarms that word sets off.

* This is your reminder that the total and permanent cessation of human killing and torture must be rapidly achieved.

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anexprogrammer
EDIT: The source article is a much better, longer, read and does actually
indicate new information - suggest the link is updated:

[https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-
targete...](https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-targeted-
killing-surveillance/)

Not sure how much mystery there was - Duncan Campbell revealed most of this
(the Engadget summary anyway) in the 80s.

~~~
dboreham
20-odd years ago I lived a few miles from Menwith and drove past it on the way
to work. A few years before that I had worked on hardware for massively
parallel systems, much of which ended up in black projects. As I drove by, I
would muse as to how much of my gear was whirring away in that place..

fwiw everyone in the local tech industry knew the real mission for the base in
1993 so I'm also not sure how much of the article is "new news".

In those days I would frequent a village pub close to the base that run a quiz
one night every week. The pub had a public bar and a smaller back dining room
/ saloon bar. I quickly learned that only certain people were allowed to
frequent the back room on quiz night (I never saw them); that they were very
very good at quizzes; and by custom the pub banned any questions specific to
the USA in the quiz.

~~~
anexprogrammer
A pub that was probably _really_ easy to spot as a haunt of Menwith Hill by
having a car park full of US cars.

Used to surprise me driving past at how many big US cars you'd see driving on
and off base. I'd wonder how it was worth shipping them across the pond
instead of using something local for duration of their posting.

~~~
dingaling
The most puzzling example of a shipped car I saw was a Geo Prizm going in to
the USAF airbase at RAF Lakenheath.

I could understand the big Crown Vics imported by the USAF police to patrol
the nearby roads, but to import a small car based on the Toyota Corolla that
was common on UK roads...?

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somenomadicguy
There was a time when this would have been leaked on Wikileaks and
sensationalized for weeks. Snowden seems to be able to maintain his composure,
grace, and professionalism while in exile in Russia, he's still an
inspiration.

Assange on the other hand, not so much.

(Edited for typos)

~~~
Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd
Snowden handed over those documents to journalists back when he was in Hong
Kong. Ever since he has no direct control over what gets published (or when).

