Index
Mass Surveillance Electronic Police State Police Intelligence Forward Intelligence Teams Police Enforced ANPR The Ring of Steel Interception Modernisation Program Mastering the Internet Communications Data Bill Government Communications Headquarters Crimint Carnivore Narus Insight Room 641A Radome Waihopai Facility
Mass Surveillance Politics of Control
Mass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance of an entire population, or a substantial fraction thereof. Modern governments today commonly perform mass surveillance of their citizens, explaining that they believe that it is necessary to protect them from dangerous groups such as terrorists, criminals, or political subversives and to maintain social control. Mass surveillance has been widely criticized on several grounds such as violations of privacy rights, illegality, and for preventing political and social freedoms, which some fear will ultimately lead to a totalitarian state where political dissent is crushed by COINTELPRO-like programs. Such a state may also be referred to as an Electronic Police State. Privacy International’s 2007 survey, covering 47 countries, indicated that there had been an increase in surveillance and a decline in the performance of privacy safeguards, compared to the previous year. Balancing these factors, eight countries were rated as being ‘endemic surveillance societies’. Of these eight, China, Malaysia and Russia scored lowest, followed jointly by Singapore and the United Kingdom, then jointly by Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. The best ranking was given to Greece, which was judged to have ‘adequate safeguards against abuse’. Many countries throughout the world have already been adding thousands of surveillance cameras to their urban, suburban and even rural areas. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union have directly stated that “we are fast approaching a genuine surveillance society in the United States - a dark future where our every move, our every transaction, our every communication is recorded, compiled, and stored away, ready to be examined and used against us by the authorities whenever they want.”
Electronic Police State E-surveillance 17 point to define an Electronic Police State: 1. Daily Documents: Requirement of state-issued identity documents and registration. 2. Border Issues: Inspections at borders, searching computers, demanding decryption of data. 3. Financial Tracking: State’s ability to search and record all financial transactions: Checks, credit card use, wires, etc. 4. Gag Orders: Criminal penalties if you tell someone the state is searching their records. 5. Anti-Crypto Laws: Outlawing or restricting cryptography and/or privacy enhancing technologies (anonymity networks). 6. Constitutional Protection: A lack of constitutional protections for the individual, or the overriding of such protections. 7. Data Storage Ability: The ability of the state to store the data they gather. 8. Data Search Ability: The ability to search the data they gather. 9. ISP Data Retention: States forcing Internet Service Providers to save detailed records of all their customers’ Internet usage. 10. Telephone Data Retention: States forcing telephone companies to record and save records of all their customers’ telephone usage. 11. Cell Phone Records: States forcing cellular telephone companies to record and save records of all their customers’ usage. 12. Medical records: States demanding records from all medical service providers and retaining the same 13. Enforcement Ability: The state’s ability to use overwhelming force (exemplified by SWAT Teams) to seize anyone they want, whenever they want. 14. Habeas Corpus: Lack of habeas corpus – the right not to be held in jail without prompt due process. Or, the overriding of such protections. 15. Police-Intel Barrier: The lack of a barrier between police organizations and intelligence organizations. Or, the overriding of such barriers. 16. Covert Hacking: State operatives removing – or adding! – digital evidence to/ from private computers covertly. Covert hacking can make anyone appear as any kind of criminal desired. 17. Loose Warrants: Warrants issued without careful examination of police statements and other justifications by a truly independent judge.
Electronic police states are characterized by government surveillance of telephone traffic, cellular telephone traffic, emails, Internet surfing, video surveillance and other forms of electronic (including fiber optic) tracking. A crucial characteristic of this process is that the data is gathered universally and silently, and only later organized for use in prosecutions in legal proceedings. The inhabitants of an electronic police state may be almost fully unaware that their communications and activities are being recorded by the state, or that these records are usable as evidence against them in courts of law. Those who are aware of these facts may be restrained in their complaints or actions against their governments, knowing that any embarrassing, juvenile or unlawful actions in their past can be pulled from pre-existing databases, which could lead to humiliation and/or criminal trials. In addition, there is also a risk of such databases being widely used in civil proceedings, wherein opposing attorneys demand access to all evidence related to an individual, including vast government databases. This issue seems not to have been addressed by the legal system of any nation thus far. The classification of a country or regime as an electronic police state may be debated. Because of the pejorative connotation of the term, no country has ever identified itself as an electronic police state. The classification is often established by one or more external critics. Some people maintain that it is the appropriate job of a state to monitor anything and everything it can to keep its citizens safe. Concerns over privacy and abuse may be considered far less significant than the gains to be provided by surveillance. Often the discussion may hinge on an estimation of the state’s morality. Specific examples are often used to justify surveillance activities, usually in the absence of counter-examples.
Police Intelligence Tracking and Predicting Crime Police intelligence refers to an element of the British police. Staffed by police officers and support staff, its purpose is to track and predict crime with a view to curbing it. Function: Intelligence analysts investigate who is committing crimes, how, when, where and why. They then provide recommendations on how to stop or curb the offences. As part of this, analysts produce profiles of crime problems and individual subjects, and produce both strategic (overall, long-term) and tactical (specific, short-term) assessments within the confines set by the individual police force. These assessments and profiles are used to both monitor and predict crime, aiming to move policing from ‘reactionary’ investigation to ‘proactive’ investigation. Analysts look for links between a wide variety of intelligence sources to work out what is going on, and make recommendations on how to stop it. This is done at all levels, from local police stations dealing with town issues, to whole county crime, regional crime and beyond. Personnel: At the heart of police intelligence is the intelligence analyst. Analysts are drawn from diverse backgrounds; some are graduates from any academic background and some are retired police officers. Most have experience working in an analytical field. They are recruited on a per-vacancy basis directly by the police force that will employ them, not through any national scheme. Analysts work very closely with regular police officers on particular areas of crime; an analyst might work with a police officer on a vehicle crime desk, or a violent crime desk, for example. Opportunities exist for progression within the profession; while individual forces differ, an analyst can become a lead analyst, senior analyst or principal analyst. Opportunities are likely to exist for analysts to work on a national level with the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Tools: Analysts have a huge, even endless, variety of sources to work from. These include the UK National DNA Database, Police National Computer, crimint, crime reports and information from witnesses, information from informants and agents, local knowledge, surveillance logs, force intelligence summaries and even newspaper reports. Intelligence Units have staff whose job is to build up and develop intelligence (such as the police officers mentioned above), and analysts are expected to make sense of this information and identify gaps for intelligencegathering officers to fill.
Forward Intelligence Teams Ground Surveillance
Forward Intelligence Teams (FITs) are two or more police officers who are deployed by UK police forces to gather intelligence on the ground and in some circumstances, to disrupt activists and deter anti-social behaviour. They use cameras, camcorders and audio recorders to conduct overt surveillance of the public. An unsuccessful legal challenge has been made against their use of overt surveillance, but in 2009 it was ruled that they must justify retention of photographs on a case-by-case basis. Any information that is kept is recorded on the crimint database. Political activists have criticised FITs and said that they feel the aim of FIT deployment during protests is to prevent legal protests. Journalists have also complained that FITs attempt to stop them photographing protests and that they conduct surveillance of journalists. A campaign group, Fitwatch, formed in 2007 that aim to obstruct FITs and conduct sousveillance on the officers. Two members of the group were arrested at the 2008 Climate Camp on obstruction charges. A similar police surveillance unit, the Video Intelligence Unit is operated by Greater Manchester Police. In June 2010, the Home Office announced it would review the use of FITs during public order policing.
Police Enforced ANPR Automatic Number Plate Recognition
The UK has an extensive automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) CCTV network. Police and security services use it to track UK vehicle movements in real time. The resulting data are stored for 5 years in the National ANPR Data Centre to be analyzed for intelligence and to be used as evidence. Following the formation of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition after the 2010 General Election, it was announced in July 2010 that the system is to be placed under statutory regulation. This is likely to establish a right in law to collect the data, and place controls on its use, storage and access by third parties. The Protection of Freedoms Bill 2011 was introduced in February in order to provide for tighter regulation of ANPR. The National ANPR Data Centre is being built alongside the Police National Computer because of the need to be constantly updated with lists of suspect drivers and vehicles.Car Registrations are checked against lists from the Police National Computer, including vehicles of interest to the police for crimes such as burglary or theft of petrol. Uninsured drivers will be identified from data provided by the insurance industry, Vehicles without a valid MoT test certificate will be flagged, vehicles without a valid tax disc or with unlawful number plates will be identified. The National ANPR Data Centre allows analysis across police force boundaries. If a vehicle enters the CCTV network, the police should have an image of it entering the area, which may also show the driver and passenger. As the data generated is stored for 5 years the police argue criminals could be identified and linked to vehicles. The National ANPR Data Centre uses an Oracle database, with data for analysis extracted to a PostgreSQL database to avoid affecting core performance, and custom-written Java software with specific police networks rather than the internet used to send and receive data. The design of the system will also take into account future changes to the way cars will be recognised, such as electronic vehicle identification - when a unique identity chip is built in to the bodywork.
The Ring of Steel Fortress Urbanism
The ring of steel is the popular name for the security and surveillance cordon surrounding the City of London, installed to deter the IRA and other threats. The term was borrowed from an earlier stage of the Troubles when the centre of Belfast was fortified against attacks, the perimeter of which was known as the ring of steel. Roads entering the City are narrowed and have small chicanes to force drivers to slow down and be recorded by CCTV cameras. These roads typically have a concrete median with a sentry box where police can stand guard and monitor traffic. City planners call these types of precautions “fortress urbanism”. Some roads have been closed to traffic entirely. Despite the term “ring of steel”, the roadblocks and chicanes are actually created with concrete blocks, sometimes plastic coated, that are wedged together. The measures were introduced following a massive IRA bombing campaign in the City in the early 1990s such as the 1992 Baltic Exchange bombing and the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing. At this time the sentry posts were guarded by armed police almost continuously. Initially the ring of steel consisted of plastic cones and on duty policemen which the locals described as the “ring of plastic”. It served the purpose of providing a visible sign to the public that the City authorities were taking the threats of more attacks by the IRA seriously. This was replaced by more permanent structures consisting of concrete barriers, checkpoints and thousands of video cameras. Following IRA ceasefires the police presence was curtailed. Following the September 11 attacks, and a reported increased terrorist threat to the United Kingdom, security has been stepped up again somewhat, with occasional spot checks on vehicles entering the cordon, although not to previous levels. In December 2003, the Ring of Steel was widened to include more businesses in the City. This was as a direct result of a police report that categorized a terrorist attack on the City as “inevitable”. Traffic entering the City is also monitored and recorded at the boundary of the London congestion charging zone, which covers a wider area.
Interception Modernisation Programme Intercepting Data
The Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) is a UK government initiative to extend the government’s capabilities for intercepting and storing communications data. It has been widely reported that the IMP’s eventual goal is to store details of all UK communications data in a central database. In 2008 plans were being made to collect data on all phone calls, emails, chatroom discussions and web-browsing habits as part of the IMP, thought likely to require the insertion of ‘thousands’ of black box probes into the country’s computer and telephone networks. The proposals were expected to be included in the Communications Data Bill. The “giant database” would include telephone numbers dialed, the websites visited and addresses to which e-mails are sent “but not the content of e-mails or telephone conversations.” Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Home affairs spokesman said: “The government’s Orwellian plans for a vast database of our private communications are deeply worrying.” The Home Office has denied reports that a prototype of the IMP had already been built. Reports in April 2009 suggest that the government has changed its public stance to one of using legal measures to compel communications providers to store the data themselves, and making it available for government to access, with the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith stating that “there are absolutely no plans for a single central store.” The new plans are thought to involve spending £2bn on paying ISPs to install deep packet inspection equipment within their own networks, and obliging them to perform the cross-correlation and profiling of their users’ behaviour themselves, in effect achieving the original goals of the IMP by different means. A detailed analysis was published by the Policy Engagement Network of the London School of Economics on 16 June 2009. The All Party Privacy Group held a hearing on IMP in the House of Commons on 1 July 2009. The UK’s new coalition government has apparently revived the IMP in their recent Strategic Defence and Security Review. The proposal is similar to the NSA Call Database established by GCHQ’s American counterpart NSA and the Titan traffic database established by the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment.
Mastering The Internet Net Massive Surveillance
“Mastering the Internet” is reportedly a massive UK government mass surveillance project led by the British communications intelligence agency GCHQ, with a budget of over £1 billion. According to reports in The Register and the Sunday Times, as of early May 2009, contracts with a total value of £200m had already been awarded to suppliers. Responding to these reports, GCHQ issued a press release countering these claims of mass surveillance, stating that “GCHQ is not developing technology to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain, or to target everyone in the UK”. This, therefore, does not refute the possibility that they are intending to monitor almost all internet use or target almost everyone in the UK.
Communications Data Bill The UK’s Orwellian Plans The Communications Data Bill includes plans in the United Kingdom to collect data on people’s phone, e-mail and web-browsing habits for mass surveillance. The government database would include telephone numbers dialed, the websites visited and addresses to which e-mails are sent but not the text of e-mails or recorded telephone conversations. Since October of 2007 telecommunication companies have been required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for twelve months. The bill would extend the coverage to Internet website visited, email messages, and VOIP data.Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat Home affairs spokesman said: “The government’s Orwellian plans for a vast database of our private communications are deeply worrying.” Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the police and security services needed new powers to keep up with technology. And she promised that the content of conversations would not be stored, just times and dates of messages and calls. Details of the times, dates, duration and locations of mobile phone calls, numbers called, website visited and addresses e-mailed are already stored by telecoms companies for 12 months under a voluntary agreement. The data can be accessed by the police and security services on request - but the government plans to take control of the process in order to comply with an EU directive and make it easier for investigators to do their job. Information will be kept for two years by law and may be held centrally on a searchable database. Without increasing their capacity to store data, the police and security services would have to consider a “massive expansion of surveillance,” Ms Smith said in a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research earlier. She said the “changes we need to make may require legislation” and there may even have to be legislation “to test what a solution to this problem will look like”. There will also be new laws to protect civil liberties, Ms Smith added, and she announced a public consultation starting in the New Year on the plans. “I want this to be combined with a well-informed debate characterised by openness, rather than mere opinion, by reason and reasonableness,” she told the IPPR. Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve, for the Conservatives, said: ”Ministers claim the database will only be used in terrorist cases, but there is now a long list of cases, from the arrest of Walter Wolfgang for heckling at a Labour conference to the freezing of Icelandic assets, where antiterrorism law has been used for purposes for which it was not intended.” “I hope that this consultation is not just a sham exercise to soft-soap an unsuspecting public.”
Government Communications Headquarters British Intelligence Agency
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is a British intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the UK government and armed forces. Based in Cheltenham, it operates under the guidance of the Joint Intelligence Committee. CESG (originally Communications-Electronics Security Group) is the branch of GCHQ which works to secure the communications and information systems of the government and critical parts of UK national infrastructure. GCHQ was originally established after World War I as the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS or GC&CS), by which name it was known until 1946. GCHQ is the responsibility of the UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, but it is not a part of the Foreign Office, and its Director ranks as a Permanent Secretary. GCHQ is led by the Director of GCHQ, currently Iain Lobban, and a Corporate Board, made up of Executive and Non-Executive Directors. Reporting to the Corporate Board is Sigint missions (comprising Maths & cryptoanalysis, IT & computer systems, Linguists & translation and the Intelligence analysis unit), Enterprise (comprising Applied Research & emerging technologies, Corporate knowledge & information systems, Commercial supplier relationships and Biometrics), Corporate management (comprising Enterprise resource planning, Human resources, Internal audit and the Architecture team) and the Communications-Electronics Security Group. GCHQ operates in partnership with equivalent agencies worldwide in a number of bi-lateral and multi-lateral relationships. The principal of these is with the United States (National Security Agency), Canada (Communications Security Establishment), Australia (Defence Signals Directorate) and New Zealand (Government Communications Security Bureau), through the mechanism of the UK-USA Security Agreement, a broad intelligence sharing agreement encompassing a range of intelligence collection methods. Relationships are alleged to include shared collection methods, such as the system described in the popular media as ECHELON,as well as analysed product.
Crimint UK’s Criminal Database
Crimint is a database run by the Metropolitan Police Service of Greater London which stores information on criminals, suspected criminals and protestors. It supports the recording and searching of items of intelligence by both police officers and back office staff. As of 2005 it contained seven million information reports and 250,000 intelligence records. The database makes it much easier for police officers to find information on people, as one officer who used the system stated in 1996: “With Crimint we are in a new world. I was recently asked if I knew something about a certain car. In the old days I would have had to hunt through my cards. I would probably have said, ‘Yes, I do, but . . . ‘. With Crimint I was able to answer the question in about fifteen seconds. And with Crimint things just don’t go missing.” People are able to request their information from the database under data protection laws. Requests have shown that the database holds large amounts of information on protesters who have not committed any crimes. Information is stored for at least seven years. Holding information on people who have never committed any offence may be against people’s human rights.
Carnivore Monitoring Software
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Carnivore was a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a customizable packet sniffer that can monitor all of a target user’s Internet traffic. Carnivore was implemented in October 1997 and replaced in 2005 with improved commercial software such as NarusInsight. Configuration The Carnivore system was a Microsoft Windows-based workstation with packet-sniffing software and a removable disk drive. This computer must be physically installed at an Internet service provider (ISP) or other location where it can “sniff ” traffic on a LAN segment to look for email messages in transit. The technology itself was not highly advanced — it used a standard packet sniffer and straightforward filtering. The critical components of the operation were the filtering criteria. To accurately match the appropriate subject, an elaborate content model was developed. Placement The Carnivore system could be installed on a system either through the cooperation of the system owner, or by use of a court order. Once in place, the system was restricted by U.S. Federal law to only monitor specific persons. Under the current regulations, publicly acknowledged government personnel are required to get a warrant or court order naming specific people or email addresses that may be monitored. When an email passes through that matches the filtering criteria mandated by the warrant, the message is logged along with information on the date, time, origin and destination. This logging was believed to be relayed in real time to the FBI. All other traffic would presumably be dropped without logging or capture. Several groups expressed concern regarding the implementation, usage, and possible abuses of Carnivore. The Electronic Privacy Information Center also made several releases dealing with it. The FBI countered these concerns with statements highlighting the target-able nature of Carnivore. After prolonged negative coverage in the press, the FBI changed the name of its system from “Carnivore” to the more benign-sounding “DCS1000.” DCS is reported to stand for “Digital Collection System”; the system has the same functions as before. The Associated Press reported in mid-January 2005 that the FBI essentially abandoned the use of Carnivore in 2001, in favor of commercially available software, such as NarusInsight.
NarusInsight Surveillance Software Narus is a company, now owned by Boeing which produces mass surveillance systems. It was founded in 1997 by Ori Cohen, who had been in charge of technology development for VDONet, an early media streaming pioneer. It is notable for being the creator of NarusInsight, a supercomputer system which is allegedly used by the NSA and other bodies to perform mass surveillance and monitoring of citizens’ and corporations’ Internet communications in real-time, and whose installation in AT&T’s San Francisco Internet backbone gave rise to a 2006 class action lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, Hepting v. AT&T. Some features of NarusInsight include: • Scalability to support surveillance of large, complex IP networks (such as the Internet) • High-speed Packet processing performance, which enables it to sift through the vast quantities of information that travel over the Internet. • Normalization, Correlation, Aggregation and Analysis provide a model of user, element, protocol, application and network behaviors, in real-time. That is it can track individual users, monitor which applications they are using (e.g. web browsers, instant messaging applications, email) and what they are doing with those applications (e.g. which web sites they have visited, what they have written in their emails/IM conversations), and see how users’ activities are connected to each other (e.g. compiling lists of people who visit a certain type of web site or use certain words or phrases in their emails). • High reliability from data collection to data processing and analysis. • NarusInsight’s functionality can be configured to feed a particular activity or IP service such as security, lawful intercept or even Skype detection and blocking. • Compliance with CALEA and ETSI. • Certified by Telecommunication Engineering Center (TEC) in India for lawful intercept and monitoring systems for ISPs. • Playback of streaming media (i.e. VoIP) • Rendering of web pages • Examination of e-mail • Ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols
Room 641A Intercept Facility
Room 641A is an intercept facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency, beginning in 2003. Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, three floors of which were occupied by AT&T before SBC purchased AT&T. The room was referred to in internal AT&T documents as the SG3 [Study Group 3] Secure Room. It is fed by fiber optic lines from beam splitters installed in fiber optic trunks carrying Internet backbone traffic and, therefore, presumably has access to all Internet traffic that passes through the building. The room measures about 24 by 48 feet (7.3 by 15 m) and contains several racks of equipment, including a Narus STA 6400, a device designed to intercept and analyze Internet communications at very high speeds. The existence of the room was revealed by a former AT&T technician, Mark Klein, and was the subject of a 2006 class action lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T. Klein claims he was told that similar black rooms are operated at other facilities around the country. Room 641A and the controversies surrounding it were subjects of an episode of “Frontline”, the current affairs documentary program on PBS. It was originally broadcast on May 15, 2007. It was also featured on PBS’s NOW on March 14, 2008.
Waihopai Facility Satellite Communications Monitoring Facility
New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau operates what it describes as a satellite communications monitoring facility in the Waihopai Valley. First announced in 1987, the facility has been identified by MP Keith Locke as part of ECHELON, the worldwide network of signals interception facilities run by the UKUSA consortium of intelligence agencies (which shares global electronic and signals intelligence among the Intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ). It contains two satellite interception dishes (shielded by giant radomes). Few details of the facility are known, but it is believed that it intercepts and processes all phone calls, faxes, e-mail and computer data communications. It is thought that this data is then sorted and shared with the other members of the UKUSA group. The Waihopai station is a sister operation to a similar facility run at Tangimoana, which is a smaller version of Waihopai. The site is a regular target for protesters and activists who are attempting to have the base closed down. The Anti-Bases Campaign have had regular yearly protests at the base.
Radome Antenna’s Safety Enclosure A radome (radar dome) is a structural, weatherproof enclosure that protects a radar antenna. The radome is constructed of material that minimally attenuates the electromagnetic signal transmitted or received by the antenna, is transparent to radar or radio waves. Radomes protect the antenna surfaces from the environment and/or conceal antenna electronic equipment from public view. When used on UAVs or other aircraft, in addition to such protection, the radome also streamlines the antenna system, thus reducing drag. A radome is often used to prevent ice and freezing rain from accumulating directly onto the metal surface of the antennas. In the case of a spinning radar dish antenna, the radome also protects the antenna from debris and rotational irregularities due to wind. Its shape is easily identified by its hardshell, which has strong properties against being damaged. For stationary antennas, excessive amounts of ice can de-tune the antenna to the point where its impedance at the input frequency rises drastically, causing voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) to rise as well. This reflected power goes back to the transmitter, where it can cause overheating. A foldback circuit can act to prevent this; however, one drawback of its use is that it causes the station’s output power to drop dramatically, reducing its range. A radome prevents that by covering the antenna’s exposed parts with a sturdy, weatherproof material, typically fibreglass, which keeps debris or ice away from the antenna to prevent any serious issues. It is interesting to note that one of the main driving forces behind the development of fibreglass as a structural material was the need during World War II for radomes. When considering structural load, the use of a radome greatly reduces wind load in both normal and iced conditions. Many tower sites require or prefer the use of radomes for wind loading benefits and for protection from falling ice or debris. Sometimes radomes may be unsightly if near the ground, and heaters could be used instead. Usually running on direct current, the heaters do not interfere physically or electrically with the alternating current of the radio transmission. For radar dishes, a single, large, ball-shaped dome (usually geodesic) also protects the rotational mechanism and the sensitive electronics, and is heated in colder climates to prevent icing. The Menwith Hill electronic surveillance base, which includes over 30 radomes, is widely believed to regularly intercept satellite communications. Radome enclosures have a further use in preventing observers from deducing the direction of the antennas, and therefore which satellites are being targeted.