22 April 1997, Electronic Engineering Times: Space/intelligence technology's embattled frontier Darmstadt, Germany - Technology's tentacles are reaching farther into our private lives as the electronics industry pushes deeper into submicron design. Telecom and networking advances allow us to reach one another via phone, fax, pager, e-mail or videoconference at any time, from almost anywhere. With that expanded access, of course, comes an expanded potential for civil-liberties abuse. The power of the new technology has not been lost on the intelligence community. With the United States in the lead, governments around the globe are extending technology's tentacles into space, the better to monitor their enemies, allies and citizens. In such an atmosphere, privacy evaporates. I spent some time here last month mulling those issues at a conference on "The Ambivalence of Space Technology." I talked to people intimate with the issues of intelligence operations and satellite systems and got a glimpse of an end-use market that appears to be catching us unawares. European citizens and governments alike have expressed concern over the recent expansion of U.S. intelligence bases in Europe. The National Security Agency (NSA) and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) are combining efforts at large sites known as regional SIGINT (signals intelligence) operation centers, or RSOCs. The agencies say the combined operations will lower intelligence costs. But the emphasis on RSOCs transfers most ground-based snooping operations-the exclusive domain of the NSA-to space, putting the NRO at the helm. At a recent Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., NRO director Keith Hall said that the merging of the NSA and NRO bases is the first step in creating "collaborative systems of systems in signals intelligence." In the future, Hall said, those joint efforts could also include the U.S. Space Command, the service intelligence agencies and even commercial resources "borrowed" by the intelligence community. Europe is a key proving ground for those concepts. Its two largest RSOCs - Menwith Hill Station, in British Yorkshire, and Bad Aibling, southeast of Munich, Germany - have expanded significantly since 1990, adding almost quarterly to their arsenals of radomes-large, Kevlar-covered geodesic domes used to protect radar and satellite-downlink dishes from weather and prying eyes-and high-frequency antennas. There are also RSOCs in the continental United States, but those lack the unusual antenna arrays and smaller radomes of the European sites. Critics claim the European equipment is being used to intercept communications among private citizens and companies. What's more, high-ranking British and German officials have found it virtually impossible to challenge the bases or even to inquire about their operations. Much of the outcry has instead come from private citizens. The most visible sources of critics' ire are the proliferating radomes. Menwith Hill has been an Army Security Agency base since 1954 and an NSA base since 1966, and it began installing radomes in 1974. Anne Lee, an Otley applied- physics teacher who has devoted four years to opposing Menwith Hill, said the base now constructs radomes before dish construction begins, so that critics will not know at what targets the dishes are aimed. British journalist Duncan Campbell spent the1980s trying to show that the Moonpenny series of radomes at Menwith were aimed at commercial communication satellites. The Runway Running east and west across the south edge of Menwith is a series of identical radomes, dubbed the Runway, that's believed to be involved in downloading information from the second-generation family of geosynchronous SIGINT satellites known as Vortex or Magnum. The Runway was constructed early this decade-after Campbell did most of his major investigative work. Steeplebush II, a subterranean, radiation-hardened facility surrounded by berms, was installed to process information from the Runway satellites. At the end of 1996, a gigantic radome on the southeast end of the base was constructed. Dubbed GT-6, it appears to be dedicated to receiving information from the third-generation geosynchronous satellites informally known as Advanced Orion or Advanced Vortex. Those satellites, along with polar-orbit satellites called Advanced Jumpseat, all rolled out in the past three years with virtually no publicity. They are launched into space using the Titan 4, a special high-performance rocket that has no purpose other than to lift classified payloads to high orbit. While Lockheed Martin Corp. publicizes every successful Titan 4 launch, the cargo is never revealed. Lee said the construction of new radome families at Menwith Hill implies that radomes are being used in two ways to violate the civil liberties of British citizens: The geosynchronous satellites downloaded at Steeplebush II are tasked with intercepting commercial as well as military communications from orbit, and the Moonpenny radomes listen in from the ground on commercial traffic transmitted from space via commercial relay satellites. Less overt, but perhaps as significant for intercepting commercial traffic, is a new suite of vertical HF antennas constructed in a portion of the base accessible only to the NSA. In the past, the security agency has used concentric rings of so-called circularly disposed antenna arrays-commonly known as elephant cages-to track military radio traffic. Tracy Hart, an RF researcher and critic of the Menwith Hill operation whose Leeds home was raided in March by Ministry of Defence civil police, said new, sparse arrays of omni-gain antennas and associated rhombic antennas appear to target commercial communications. Also clearly visible is a series of very tall antennas known as Knobsticks and Knobsticks II. The defense ministry, Hart said, appeared particularly interested in her Knobsticks research material. Hart added that "there's something coming in behind the Knobsticks array. It's hard to tell what it is, but it seems to be significant." While much less is known about the RSOC at Bad Aibling, the similarities between the U.K. and German bases' overall layouts are striking. British Government Communication Headquarters personnel and German BND intelligence staffers occupy the southwest corners of their respective bases and maintain their own radomes. In the south-central portion of Bad Aibling, in an area equivalent to Menwith Hill's Runway site, the German BND and the NSA maintain an unusual, W-shaped antenna array that, intelligence analyst Erich Schmidt-Eenboom said, is officially claimed to be used in monitoring Russian strategic forces. More similarities Both bases locate their Pusher omni-gain antenna arrays in their northeast sectors-the sites farthest from the national intelligence services' operations. And Schmidt-Eenboom said tall antennas being erected among the NSA radomes in Germany appear similar to Menwith Hill's Knobsticks. The German government has taken a harder line against protesters than have the British authorities, though the latter have adopted a sterner stance in recent weeks. A case in point was the March 12 raid on Hart's home. Ministry police confiscated virtually all her research material on Menwith Hill, and she was told that before the material could be returned, it would have to pass muster under the guidelines of both the British Official Secrets Act and U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Britain's government has also given local police broader authority to arrest protesters. Hart acknowledged that many of her photos and maps of the base could be considered sensitive. But "they even nicked some material printed off the Web and some product catalogs from companies like Raytheon and Antennas for Communications. I guess they don't see a need for private citizens to have marketing literature about radomes," she quipped. Germany always has maintained a tough stance against critics of the Bad Aibling RSOC, warning, for example, that anyone who photographs the base without authorization could face a long prison sentence. In its March 17 issue, news magazine Der Spiegel published a color photo spread of Bad Aibling and asserted that the base was involved in the interception of civilian phone and fax communications in member countries of the European Union. A number of those attending the space-intelligence conference here last month attempted to take pictures at the base on March 19 but were turned away by U.S. troops. Is an Orwellian future being shaped on the EDA workstations of the world's electronics-design centers? Perhaps that smacks of paranoia. But these cautionary anecdotes illustrate how technology cleverly designed and implemented on the IC level can turn on us at the system level in ways we haven't yet fully fathomed. U.S. military officials have been surprisingly candid about their intent to take maximum strategic advantage of their information trump cards. "We see all dialogue as healthy," Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall said when asked about European opposition to the RSOCs. "But our allies must understand that we bring tremendous capabilities to the table, and it would be to their advantage to find ways we both can use [them]." In a Space Symposium address Widnall called an experiment to send real-time video intelligence from an unmanned drone over Bosnia to intelligence bases in England "an example of information dominance in action. Our space-based forces are the glue that holds that dominance together." In a more blatant revelation of U.S. sentiment, Gen. Howell Estes, commander of the U.S. Space Command, said the United States "is the only nation intellectually prepared for and morally capable" of controlling space-based intelligence. Menwith Hill opponent Lee is nonetheless optimistic. The Menwith radomes, she observed, are positioned on top of an ancient Roman road. She hopes to see "the Menwith balls take their place with the Roman roads as remnants of a former occupier." ----------