[HN Gopher] Cache of documents declassified by the NRO for its 6...
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Cache of documents declassified by the NRO for its 60th anniversary
Author : starwind
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-11-16 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nro.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nro.gov)
| posnet wrote:
| The NRO have the best mission patches.
|
| NROL-39 seems to be the crowd-pleaser.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches
| edm0nd wrote:
| You can find a bunch of eBay if you search for 'NRO launch
| patch'.
| jamesfe wrote:
| What you really want is NROL-11 which inadvertently revealed
| the classified location of the payload:
| https://gizmodo.com/decoding-hidden-messages-in-those-geeky-...
| programd wrote:
| Randomly skimming the documents, this is my favorite line so far
| from a document discussing funding and competition for a new
| recon satellite system [1]
|
| "Mr. Duckett commented that the Governmant had been carful not to
| pry too deeply into this area because there were a number of
| "gentleman's agreements" between contractors"
|
| Sounds very pragmatic of them.
|
| [1]
| https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/MAJOR%...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Also worth noting that the Deputy SecDef present, David
| Packard, was _the_ Dave Packard.
| 0des wrote:
| title should be "its" not "it's"
| dang wrote:
| It's fixed now. Thanks!
| starwind wrote:
| Thanks! That always confuses me
| starwind wrote:
| Letter explaining some of the information available here:
| https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/news/press/2021/202...
|
| "The SIGINT satellite story" looks interesting:
| https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/HISTOR...
| onychomys wrote:
| It seems so weird that they're still redacting things from the
| late 1960s. All of the technology they're talking about in those
| memos has been far surpassed by even commercial enterprises, so
| who even cares anymore?
| largbae wrote:
| Maybe they promised some ally that they didn't have this tech
| back then and don't want to reveal the lie.
| madars wrote:
| I don't think we know that all tech has been eclipsed
| commercially. Recall that in 2012 NRO donated two unused, spare
| satellites to NASA that were superior to the Hubble telescope
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
| and when President Trump tweeted out a, presumably NRO-sourced,
| picture it was at ~10cm resolution or better
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/t...
| .
|
| More to the point, there are sensors that are not commercially
| interesting but could be interesting for NRO's mission.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| One of the donated telescopes is being used as the basis for
| the Roman (nee WFIRST) telescope, launching some time around
| 2027. It'll also be interesting to see if using the donated
| hardware ends up actually saving any money.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > saving any money.
|
| NASA does not understand these words in this order you have
| put them. By "saving" you mean tripling them, twice?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Yeah, it seems like there were 2 schools of thought.
|
| One saying "let's just build cheap and compact optics
| that meet our minimum requirements"
|
| Another saying "we have this badass hardware available,
| let's use it even though it goes well beyond our original
| design in terms of capabilities and also
| size/weight/complexity"
| numpad0 wrote:
| Maybe some direct successor to the technology is active or
| maybe there is something still have not been discovered by
| civilian competition?
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| To erase intent, blame, liability, and responsibility.
| starwind wrote:
| There's basically no consequences for overclassification, but
| the penalty for underclassification could be a job loss (or in
| the extremely unlikely case, jail)
| ffhhj wrote:
| Just imagine what a time traveler could do with that
| information.
| whartung wrote:
| 60th Anniversary? So many anniversaries.
|
| Anniversary of its founding (1960) [1]. Anniversary of the first
| public mention (1971). Anniversary of first official
| acknowledgment (1973). Anniversary of its existence being
| declassified (1992).
|
| NRO -- abbreviation for "We'd tell you, but then we'd have to
| kill you."
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office...
| uejfiweun wrote:
| The NRO is very spooky. Word on the street is that their tech is
| decades ahead of what is publicly available. I personally wonder
| what kind of crazy capabilities they have all the time.
|
| This is going to sound stupid, but I think the NRO may have
| photonic supercomputers that are being used in combination with
| satellites to scrape the activity of every computer on the
| planet. They have had programs such as TEMPEST for years which
| aim to understand what a computer is doing through analysis of
| it's EM emissions. Imagine a satellite network tuned to these
| frequencies, pointed at the ground at all times, collecting and
| analyzing what all computers are doing all the time using
| unfathomable processing power - I think such a thing may be
| feasible.
|
| Another cool spook program is SENTIENT which is also under the
| NRO. It is an automated intelligence analysis system which
| monitors the globe autonomously. Check out the movie "Eagle Eye"
| for IMO a pretty accurate depiction of what this system may look
| like in practice.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Wasn't Eagle Eye based on ECHELON?
| woodruffw wrote:
| The NRO struggles to put _normal_ reconnaissance satellites in
| the sky[1]. Special satellites with enough juice to Van Eck
| your screen from LEO (or HEO) feels like a stretch. All things
| being equal, it 's probably easier for the USG (or any
| government) to just MITM you or exploit the crappy router in
| your closet.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Imagery_Architecture
| uejfiweun wrote:
| I personally am always skeptical whenever I see a "cancelled"
| program like this. It is a near certainty that some
| officially cancelled programs continued development in the
| classified world, such as the SR-72 or the UCAV.
|
| Admittedly I know nothing, and it's probable that I'm just
| blowing air out my ass. But I would LOVE to believe that the
| USG has got some crazy tech up their sleeve. Because
| hopefully one day they will declassify it and allow for
| commercial development, just like they did with computers and
| the internet.
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(page generated 2021-11-16 23:00 UTC)