Practically each weekday morning, a tool leaves a two-story dwelling 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 gadget 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 a few of the nation’s most delicate amenities.
For roughly two months in 2023, this gadget 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 12 months, it made a 30-minute drive to the Dagger Complicated, a former intelligence and NSA alerts processing facility. On weekends, the gadget may very well be traced to eating places and outlets in Wiesbaden.
The person carrying this gadget doubtless isn’t a spy or high-ranking intelligence official. As an alternative, consultants consider, they’re a contractor who works on vital techniques—HVAC, computing infrastructure, or presumably 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 gadget they’re carrying with them in all places 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 affordable and dependable technique to monitor the actions of American navy and intelligence personnel abroad, from their properties and their kids’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 gives extraordinary perception into the day by 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 tons of of hundreds of alerts from units inside delicate US installations in Germany. That features scores of units inside suspected NSA monitoring or signals-analysis amenities, greater than a thousand units at a sprawling US compound the place Ukrainian troops had been being being educated in 2023, and almost 2,000 others at an air pressure base that has crucially supported American drone operations.
A tool doubtless tied to an NSA or intelligence worker broadcast coordinates from inside a windowless constructing with a steel exterior often called the “Tin Can,” which is reportedly used for NSA surveillance, in accordance with company paperwork leaked by Edward Snowden. One other gadget transmitted alerts from inside a restricted weapons testing facility, revealing its zig-zagging actions throughout a high-security zone used for tank maneuvers and reside munitions drills.