I dislike this article whenever it comes up in that it conflates the NSA activity at the site (TITANPOINTE) with the building in a very confusing way. The building is not an NSA building, it is an AT&T building. The NSA is a tenant, along with many other organizations who use the building for meet-me and internet exchange purposes. It's absolutely true that the NSA has a concerning relationship with AT&T that has evidently allowed them to conduct widespread surveillance at telephone switches, but this article seems to be making a case that the building itself is an edifice of the NSA... which is no more true than an Amazon data center.
It is interesting that the building is nuclear-hardened, but it was started in 1969, which was about five years after it became standing policy for AT&T to nuclear-harden all major long-lines facilities. It's not at all unique to this building and is unrelated to the NSA, nuclear-hardened AT&T exchanges can be found from major cities to small towns across the United States (Farmington, New Mexico, for example), and a large portion of surviving microwave relay sites are hardened. The general standard was roughly for a 100KT detonation at five miles, but some facilities were built for more. The motivation was survivable telecommunications after a nuclear attack, which was primarily a requirement of the US Government which relied on AT&T to build out AUTOVON as a survivable C2 and continuity of government system (and AT&T was generously paid for this work). Alongside AUTOVON, AT&T designed and operated systems like ECHO FOX which provided telephone connections to Air Force One and other national emergency command post aircraft. The end-user client here was mainly the POTUS and Strategic Air Command (later Army and Navy components of the triad), not intelligence.
The choice of architect was a fairly simple one, he was, at the time, a notable architect who was friendly with the federal government (who was in part the client due to AUTOVON and other C2 programs, not intelligence) and had prior experience working on hardened facilities like embassies.
It feels like the author chose this rather confusing way of presenting the issue, conflating the physical building with NSA activity that occurs in it, mostly just to weave in the architecture criticism. The building itself is very interesting, but really does nothing to advance the NSA story and rather seems to suggest that the scale of NSA activity is far larger (the whole building!) than it really is (generally thought to be a single suite on one floor, and far from the only suite occupied by staff of AT&T tenants). What the NSA has seems to basically be an office space, cage, and cross-connect agreement, which tons of other tenants also have... the NSA is just unusual in that the cross-connects go to interfaces configured for lawful intercept (which is more a telecom term of art and not a judgment of the legality).
It’s an intercept piece, so there’s always the drama and eye roll associated with them.
That said, how many cages or suites are leased by an intelligence agency isn’t really germane… the fact that they are or were there at all is the news. The square footage is particularly irrelevant as the building and “condo” owners are known to perform various tasks for intelligence services.
Where that building is located and who is served by it make it very strategic, and it’s imo naive to assume that the security, intelligence and counterintelligence services weren’t stakeholders in the building and network designs in the 60s and 70s. (A heyday for illegal behaviors for these entities)
Here is perhaps a better wording of my ultimate concern about the article: The NSA's relationship to AT&T, even in the context of the article, is not dissimilar to the FBI's. A variety of federal agencies have extremely close relationships with AT&T (and generally all other major telecoms) including colocated staff and equipment---equipment being somewhat required by the lawful intercept protocol design. The American public should be made aware that this is now a broad, nationwide concern that's rooted in the everyday policy of telcos and the federal government... tangling it up so much in _this specific building_ with borderline conspiratorial implications mystifies the issue and makes it actually seem smaller than it is.
What the NSA does at 33 Thomas is not special, it is mundane. And that is much more frightening. If anything I suspect the NSA's intercept infrastructure is inferior to that of the FBI, because it's more likely to be legacy and because the NSA likely insists on transitioning the data to one of their own networks (which AT&T almost certainly has a hand in operating). There's talk in the documents of an NSA engineer having to work on an intercept project... rather surprising as law enforcement agencies just fill out the form and get the data! I suspect the NSA wanted to set up its own crypto equipment in an AT&T facility.
The possibility that the NSA was somehow involved in the design of the building is a theory with little evidence, and seems unlikely: AT&T had fairly detailed design standards for telephone offices, drawn from a variety of papers in e.g. BSTJ exploring the different practical factors. Even more elaborate design requirements were imposed by Cold War research on nuclear survivability by the military and AEC, and military concerns of sabotage (which had been a design consideration in telecom networks since WWII when it was feared the Japanese would come ashore sneakily and destroy West Coast telephone infrastructure, although this never occurred). It's difficult to imagine an NSA desire that the building would not have met: they could obtain space for equipment/technicians, cross-connections, and access to their own secure networks in any major exchange. The facilities were highly secure by virtue of being major exchanges. The NSA does apparently have a SCIF there but "SCIFing" existing spaces, i.e. in leased buildings, is a well understood process that doesn't require any special involvement (and couldn't have anyway as the modern SCIF concept is newer than the building).
Indeed, if the NSA has been so deeply involved in 33 Thomas, perhaps because of it being a critical exchange in the international network, one would wonder if they are similarly involved in other such exchanges like Mojave, or SCPs such as those of the competitive long distance carriers? I'm sure they are, no speculation about the architect's loyalties required.
There is some value in presenting information in a way that regular people would take the time to read and understand.
The key here is you are being spied on by your government in the heart of NYC and AT&T is helping.
The video with this article takes the motif further with a sort-of X-Files like presentation and set of mysterious sounding voiceovers.
From the start, I thought this building reminds me of the one Will Smith’s character reported to in “Men in Black.”
To some extent all information in news is editorialized for an angle that draws the reader in.
Could it be the truths of this story are so well known to you that it is hard to enjoy the way this is presented? Perhaps, in the same way the TV show “Silicon Valley” is unattractive to some startup founders as too close to home?
I'll shamefully admit that I sometimes end up writing about a topic because I had recently commented on it on HN, but this time it was the other way around.
So... Like, yeah. What's really kind of stupid, to me, is that The Intercept think this facility is unique in any way, shape, or form for the Cold War. Like, it's totally on average.
Anyone here think the USSR Ministry of Communications, KGB and FSB were lacking any of this? Anyone believe Putin has just simply put away all the evesdropping gear?
Anyone believe the Chinese were not then and are not doing this right now?
Or that any of the other major powers down to the lowest level tinpot dictators on the planet were not or are not now operating monitoring gear at their own access points to major trunk phone and networking lines?
While yes, in the US we take our civil liberties incredibly to heart, I worry far more about the people in far more sketch countries in the world, where the wrong call to the wrong person gets you disappeared the same day.
Find me the building where this is going on in Syria. Find me where in China this sort of operation is going on. Or the UAE. Or KSA. Because guaranteed, if this freaks you out in midtown Manhattan, what's going on in those countries will turn your stomach.
It is interesting that the building is nuclear-hardened, but it was started in 1969, which was about five years after it became standing policy for AT&T to nuclear-harden all major long-lines facilities. It's not at all unique to this building and is unrelated to the NSA, nuclear-hardened AT&T exchanges can be found from major cities to small towns across the United States (Farmington, New Mexico, for example), and a large portion of surviving microwave relay sites are hardened. The general standard was roughly for a 100KT detonation at five miles, but some facilities were built for more. The motivation was survivable telecommunications after a nuclear attack, which was primarily a requirement of the US Government which relied on AT&T to build out AUTOVON as a survivable C2 and continuity of government system (and AT&T was generously paid for this work). Alongside AUTOVON, AT&T designed and operated systems like ECHO FOX which provided telephone connections to Air Force One and other national emergency command post aircraft. The end-user client here was mainly the POTUS and Strategic Air Command (later Army and Navy components of the triad), not intelligence.
The choice of architect was a fairly simple one, he was, at the time, a notable architect who was friendly with the federal government (who was in part the client due to AUTOVON and other C2 programs, not intelligence) and had prior experience working on hardened facilities like embassies.
It feels like the author chose this rather confusing way of presenting the issue, conflating the physical building with NSA activity that occurs in it, mostly just to weave in the architecture criticism. The building itself is very interesting, but really does nothing to advance the NSA story and rather seems to suggest that the scale of NSA activity is far larger (the whole building!) than it really is (generally thought to be a single suite on one floor, and far from the only suite occupied by staff of AT&T tenants). What the NSA has seems to basically be an office space, cage, and cross-connect agreement, which tons of other tenants also have... the NSA is just unusual in that the cross-connects go to interfaces configured for lawful intercept (which is more a telecom term of art and not a judgment of the legality).