Comment by exikyut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by exikyut | Hacker News Reader

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> You drove to the site knowing it would all be gone and a strong warning not to turn around if you were near the gate because you just remembered you had your phone in your rental car.

Forgive my denseness (maybe it's because I just woke up), but I'm having a hard time figuring this bit out. If you're near the base, as in not-quite-on the property, you could be anyone, with any arbitrary selection of interesting equipment that needs to drive up to the base then away again. Is it timing - as in, driving away and back will take far too long and make you late?

> We went through a lot of equipment.

On your own dime? :/ I would hope a base like this provides all contractors a reasonable "security enforcement viability" fund, or something like that :)

> I don't even know what the faculty looks like

Wait. What gate were you referring to before, then? Some point you were transported from, but which wasn't the actual location? Hm, perhaps this explains the "don't turn around" bit.

--

Unfortunately I can't find it right now, but I remember the (possibly-apocryphal?) story of the random server, deep in a secure facility, that was part of a botnet. The person who found it didn't think it looked particularly like a honeypot; it was an actual database or equivalent sort of machine. The person informed various higher-ups, but despite the report being acknowledged nothing was ever done to fix it.

A random person going near the gate is, potentially, a spy who has used their equipment to capture data for SIGINT (think "war-driving.") Once they've come close enough to be in your emissions bubble—let alone close enough to photograph your site—you can't let their equipment leave intact.

(And, even if someone's equipment doesn't look like the kind of thing that would capture signals, the thoroughness required to prove that a piece of equipment is benign, is too high a cost to pay for every random passer-by. You don't want a security strategy that allows guerillas to DoS your guards by just constantly bringing benign equipment near them.)

This response assumes, though, that the equipment isn't e.g. connected to a satellite uplink and streaming the data out in real-time. (These sites aren't in reach of any cell towers, but satellite phones will still work.) I'm not sure what answer modern military counterintelligence has for that particular threat.

Military bases are frequently in populated areas; it would be wildly impractical to harass everyone who drives by the perimeter. Half the SCIF spec (which is public!) is about containing sensitive emissions inside the SCIF. And if you did have concerns about the airwaves around the base, why wouldn’t you just draw a bigger perimeter, rather than risk having sensitive areas outside the fence?

This.

I work on Redstone Arsenal. I don't work with anything especially secured, but I've met people who do. They work inside a SCIF; no network, no personal electronics in the SCIF, but there's no particular requirements outside.

This too :-) not special about you. But people worry about information leaks by watches and fitbits, yet half the commenters here easily share where or what they have worked on in a public accessible site

Sure. I was more thinking about the bases in non-populated areas, esp. when the base is large enough that you can’t actually guard or fence the entire perimeter (like an Air Force base where the hypothetical SCIF would encompass thousands of square miles of airspace.)

People can just drive down a random stretch of desert road near Groom Lake and start catching signals from passing test craft. At some scale you’ve got to give up on the concept of an SCIF and just deal with the fact that people are going to be catching some of what you’re putting out, doing whatever you can to mitigate the damage from there. (Which—if you can at least know where such people are from a satellite view and get guards to them within 10mins of the perimeter breach when they’re still either making their way deeper in, or are driving back out through a bunch of nothing—translates to “you can catch up to them and wreck their equipment.”)

Like I said, I’m not sure how this strategy adapts to the existence of satellite phones. I don’t think it does. So far, instead, satellite phones have adapted themselves to it: you can’t get an Iridium phone without a security screening. I’m not sure what will happen if “private cubesat satphone networks” become a cheap commodity thing to insert into orbit—I think the US and other governments are simply trying to stall that process as long as possible. (Look at the history of satphone networks that competed with Iridium to see what I mean.)

Reporters, fisherman, and all sorts of mundane professional applications can get satphones. I’m sure the kind of foreign power that’s interested in our aerospace R&D can as well.

Yes, they can—but they still need a security screening to do so. The point of the security screening is precisely to figure out whether you're "just" a reporter/fisherman/etc., or you're actually a spy or catspaw for a foreign power.

Though, to be clear, "security screening" is a bit of a misnomer here. It isn't a one-time thing. The point of giving someone a security screening isn't really the pre-screening that occurs when you first sign up; it's the continuous monitoring you are implicitly signing up for.

My understanding, from conversations over beers with a few friends retired from the US Navy and NSA:

Signing up for a satphone (or a NEXUS card, or a private pilot's license, or any of a number of other things—including, obviously, secret clearance or access to a security compartment) marks you as a Person Of Interest in PRISM and other monitoring systems. In response, the monitoring systems begin actually caching the event data they see about you into an online data warehouse, rather than just feeding it all into a data lake. The data warehouse is queried out, for each new PoI, to build an individualized ML model (Palantir Intelligence, I think is the software?), where the data initially gathered during your pre-screen is used as the training data—in est, a behavioural baseline. Once the individualized ML model for you is established, it will be run as a batch process (along with thousands of other ML models), about once per day, against any/all newly-arrived PoI event data in the data warehouse. The ML model spits out prediction error; and the system flags anyone with consistently high prediction error as being in need of re-investigation.

In other words, by signing up for a satphone, you're asking the government to keep a detail on you to see if you do anything out-of-character. Just, y'know, a detail that's 99% automated.

I suspect the policy's inclusion of things outside the gate is more likely addressing traffic concerns. Military gates are serious choke points, and the bulk of people going through them have very similar hours, so irregularities can have significant impacts.

The facility was likely at the end of a long road with nothing else on it. It would be seen as suspicious behavior to drive towards it and then turn around without making contact at the gate, to say nothing of scheduling delays.

No idea on equipment costs; it's likely that OPs company had an overhead disbursement for mistakes.

The gate itself was probably a good ways away from the actual facility. If they weren't driven all the way from hotel to site by a driver, then they almost certainly stopped and parked at the gate and were driven the rest of the way under escort and blindfold.

It was a large facility... I think. There was much to see at the gate I went to, other than a gate and considering I knew how things were going to go (lots of making sure you knew the rules) I didn't want to startle anyone by looking around too much (for all I know there were others... who knows...).

I got the feeling the whole driving away thing was more about that if anyone felt things were suspicious, you weren't getting in, and just wasted everyone's time. Protocol was a big deal.

In theory some random joe could somehow drive to this gate, but I'm not sure how, it wasn't exactly on the way to anywhere. I was also told they would know you were coming long before you got there and not just because of the schedule (not sure if that was true, but someone told me that) ;)

It is all curious to talk about now but when you're alone and serious business guys are around you with guns you just behave as innocuous as possible.

As for equipment I belive the customer paid for each visit, equipment included. Everyone knew the rules outright so they paid a ton for everything.

Beyond just one visit sending hardware to sites for repairs and never getting anything back was SOP even for some security minded private companies, so that wasn't all that unusual. Laptops taken... was quite unusual as at the time laptops were quite expensive.

Thanks for replying!

> In theory some random joe could somehow drive to this gate, but I'm not sure how, it wasn't exactly on the way to anywhere.

Ah, that explains a lot.

> As for equipment I belive the customer paid for each visit, equipment included. Everyone knew the rules outright so they paid a ton for everything.

Wow. Part of me says that's crazy, the other part wants to know where to sign up, since this sounds like it paid well :D

(Of course I'm inordinately curious what equipment was being maintained, but we'll just drop that one on the floor since it's probably quite boring)

I believe the rationale is that you're observed as you approach a military base - if you get close and then suddenly turn around it looks suspicious; then they'll have to go track you down, etc

Sounds like a great way to make the army bleed resources.

Presumably these special sites are on US soil. If repeatedly doing that or conspiring to do so with others isn’t in itself illegal there’s probably something on the books they could throw at you.

Conspiring to repeatedly drive around certain public roads? C'mon...

You are generally on military land for quite some distance before you get to the actual gate -- at least that's been the case for every facility I've visited.

Usually there's a large sign "Foo Air Force Base" (or whatever) by the civilian road, then you turn off and drive on a military road for half a mile or more (sometimes much more), then you come to the gate with the guards.

But you've still been on military land, and subject to military rules and laws, from the instant you enter their property.

Edit: just checked. The guardhouses for two of the gates at a local facility are respectively about 800/1,000 feet away from the public road, and about 600/800 feet inside the perimeter fence (the one with signs reading "patrolled by dogs", "deadly force authorized", etc.).

You're very much not on public roads / property by the time you get to the gate, at least at the facility I went to.

There are towns that have "no cruising" laws making it illegal to repeatedly drive around a certain area. And under certain circumstances repeatedly driving past someone's house could be harassment or stalking.

Ah, glorious freedom

It would also bleed your own, possibly at the same or faster rate.

Dudes are at the gate are there regardless, them hopping in a vehicle to have a chat with you probabbly costs very little... if not nothing at all.

If the government wants to do something legally beyond that, they probabbly would feel it is worth it to discourage such behavior.

Yeah I assumed that was the case.

Also I got the impression that even if they checked you at the gate and you didn't account for something in your car or on you and they found something you shouldn't have, they could deny you entry right there and you weren't getting back in anytime soon. Someone panicking and driving away might set off some dude's suspicions and you weren't going to fix things... and it took a while to schedule everything.

It was as much about protocol and just making good choices / customer service (don't scare your customer) as anything else.

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