Practically each weekday morning, a tool leaves a two-story residence close to Wiesbaden, Germany, and makes a 15-minute commute alongside a significant autobahn. By round 7 am, it arrives at Lucius D. Clay Kaserne—the US Military’s European headquarters and a key hub for US intelligence operations.
The system stops close to a restaurant earlier than heading to an workplace close to the bottom that belongs to a significant authorities contractor liable for outfitting and securing among the nation’s most delicate services.
For roughly two months in 2023, this system adopted a predictable routine: stops on the contractor’s workplace, visits to a discreet hangar on base, and lunchtime journeys to the bottom’s eating facility. Twice in November of final yr, it made a 30-minute drive to the Dagger Complicated, a former intelligence and NSA alerts processing facility. On weekends, the system may very well be traced to eating places and outlets in Wiesbaden.
The person carrying this system seemingly isn’t a spy or high-ranking intelligence official. As an alternative, consultants imagine, they’re a contractor who works on vital programs—HVAC, computing infrastructure, or probably securing the newly constructed Consolidated Intelligence Middle, a state-of-the-art facility suspected for use by the Nationwide Safety Company.
Whoever they’re, the system they’re carrying with them in every single place is placing US nationwide safety in danger.
A joint investigation by WIRED, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), and Netzpolitik.org reveals that US corporations legally amassing digital promoting knowledge are additionally offering the world an inexpensive and dependable approach to observe the actions of American navy and intelligence personnel abroad, from their properties and their youngsters’s colleges to hardened plane shelters inside an airbase the place US nuclear weapons are believed to be saved.
A collaborative evaluation of billions of location coordinates obtained from a US-based knowledge dealer offers extraordinary perception into the every day routines of US service members. The findings additionally present a vivid instance of the numerous dangers the unregulated sale of cellular location knowledge poses to the integrity of the US navy and the protection of its service members and their households abroad.
We tracked a whole bunch of 1000’s of alerts from gadgets inside delicate US installations in Germany. That features scores of gadgets inside suspected NSA monitoring or signals-analysis services, greater than a thousand gadgets at a sprawling US compound the place Ukrainian troops were being being trained in 2023, and practically 2,000 others at an air power base that has crucially supported American drone operations.
A tool seemingly tied to an NSA or intelligence worker broadcast coordinates from inside a windowless constructing with a steel exterior generally known as the “Tin Can,” which is reportedly used for NSA surveillance, based on company paperwork leaked by Edward Snowden. One other system transmitted alerts from inside a restricted weapons testing facility, revealing its zig-zagging actions throughout a high-security zone used for tank maneuvers and stay munitions drills.