Since publishing a story about an apparent National Security Agency surveillance site in New York, The Intercept has obtained several previously unseen photographs from within the building, offering a rare glimpse behind its thick concrete and granite walls.
On Wednesday, we reported that top-secret documents indicate there is an NSA spy hub inside the massive, windowless skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street, used by AT&T to route communications across the world. The 550-foot tower contains equipment that covertly monitors phone calls, faxes, and internet data, according to the documents. But with the exception of employees who have worked at the building, few people have ever been allowed inside the iconic brutalist structure, which was built to withstand a nuclear attack amid the Cold War.
Stanley Greenberg, a 60-year-old artist based in Brooklyn, shared a series of photographs he took in September 1992 while visiting 33 Thomas Street. Back then, before the 9/11 attacks, security was not as tight. At the time, Greenberg was carrying out research for a book, “Invisible New York,” and AT&T granted him access. The photographs never made it into the book, but Greenberg revisited his photo archive this week and sent the pictures to The Intercept after reading the revelations about the building’s apparent role as an NSA site, code-named TITANPOINTE.
© Stanley Greenberg
One of Greenberg’s photos (featured at the top of this article) clearly shows some of AT&T’s “4ESS switch” equipment used to send phone calls across networks. The NSA’s documents describe the TITANPOINTE facility as containing a “RIMROCK access,” which is what the agency calls the 4ESS switches that it taps into. By 2004, at least one of these was an “international gateway” used to route foreign calls to and from the U.S., a former AT&T engineer has said.
Another photograph taken by Greenberg (below) shows a room full of large batteries, which were likely used as a back-up energy source for the building in the event of a power failure. Original planning documents for 33 Thomas Street state that it would have enough emergency power to last two weeks, enabling it to become a “self-contained city” in the event of a catastrophe.
© Stanley Greenberg
Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, worked at 33 Thomas Street between 1981 and 1990. During The Intercept’s initial research into the building, he shared a series a photographs that he took inside in 1988, which show his office space, a row of large black back-up batteries, and some of the primitive computer technology — including large disk drives the size of washing machines — used by AT&T at the time.
“During night shifts you’d be alone,” Klein said of his time in the skyscraper. “You’d walk around in dimly lit rows of equipment and only switch on fluorescent lights in the area you were working.”
The ground floor, Klein added, had a large cafeteria that was fitted with gleaming stainless steel equipment, but it was never open for business. “You’d go down there to empty tables and bring the sandwich you brought from home.”
Former AT&T technician Mark Klein sits alongside dozens of back-up batteries used as an emergency power source for a computer room inside 33 Thomas Street.
via Mark Klein
“It was like they planned for it, but in the end, they didn’t need it. Which fits with the nuclear war scenario, having this idle cafeteria that could open in an emergency.”
Klein later moved to California, where he continued his work for AT&T. In 2006, he alleged in a sworn court declaration that the company had maintained a secure room in one of its San Francisco offices, which he stated had been equipped with NSA technology to spy on phone and internet traffic. Klein told The Intercept that he didn’t know of any NSA presence at 33 Thomas Street, but it did not surprise him to discover its apparent role as the TITANPOINTE surveillance site.
“I always assumed and gathered information back then that there were numerous other offices like the one in San Francisco,” he said. “I was only aware of the ones on the West Coast, from talking to people. But logically I assumed there had to be some in places like New York or Chicago, the major telecom centers.”
At 33 Thomas Street in 1988, former AT&T technician Mark Klein worked daily to store company data using disk drives the size of washing machines.
via Mark Klein
Certainly should not be a surprise the countries spy on each other. What better place to do it than an international gateway switch? 33 Thomas St. is just like the dozens of other central office switching centers I’ve been in over the last 40 years. Difference is that these days the equipment to carry equivalent traffic is about 1% of the size from the #4ESS’s heyday. All switching offices have those big racks of batteries. Typically, they are engineered to run the equipment anywhere from 8-24 hours. They also act as a filter for the inbound commercial power isolating the switching equipment from it. While there are multiple hours of battery capacity, the diesel generator normally kicks in after any commercial power outage and keeps the batteries charged.
I love the madness of the people who think they would be able to carry on after a nuclear strike on New York, like all you need to do it build a huge windowless skyscraper-come-bunker, fill it with computers, spy gear and batteries, and hole-up for a couple of weeks with some Pot Noodles and Playboys and wait till the worst of the radiation dies down. Even if the enemy’s nukes didn’t utterly destroy the place anyway, even if they failed to make any sort of impact, the retaliatory strike by the Americans themselves would be so OTT – somewhere between a million Chernobyls and crashing into the Sun – that the radioactive fire-storms engulfing large areas of Russia or China (or wherever, but those two are I suppose the traditional enemies and Merkel can’t even be bothered to get upset about being spied on and the Germans on the whole have gone all guilt-ridden and totally wussy since WW2) would just stink up the entire planet.
Whoever was left would go absolute and murderously feral for any number of reasons – anger, insanity, religious fanaticism, gung-ho opportunism, psychopathy, terror or just plain pragmatism coz everyone else is. The guys in the building by necessity would be computer geeks and in my post-apocalyptic vision there is a vicious gang dedicated to hunting them as a sport.
What it really should be full of is medical supplies, practical clothing, frozen vodka shots to help with the shock of the first few weeks, and enough pure MDMA and glo-sticks for a big apologies-all-round love-in. The Russians are on the whole a pleasant enough people and the women are generally worth getting up close to on a cold Nuclear Winter’s night.
The broader and rather ironic problem also remains: the cunts that get a place in the bunkers are the very same cunts who started the nuclear war in the first place and tend not to be the sort of people to maintain peace for very long. Kind of pointless saving them and their computer.
I keep saying, “We the people” should “vote” on our IRS tax return forms
RCL
Are you saying that the government taxes us and then uses our taxes to spy on us? HOW COULD THAT BE?! Oh, I see, the whole shebang is SUPER SECRET!!!
Here’s another test. If these don’t open don’t blame me. Blame NSA!
http://www.wisvetsmuseum.com/collections/oral_history/transcriptions/B/Borden,%20Cliff%20-%20WPT%20-%20_OH%201004_.pdf
http://www.itemonline.com/opinion/x2112911426/Military-intelligence-Oxymoron-or-not
http://huachuca.army.mil/files/History_WhosWho.pdf (see “Breckinridge, William M.” “chief of the Army Security Agency from April 1960 to May 1962”)
http://bangordailynews.com/2014/02/17/opinion/tuesday-feb-18-2014-medicaid-expansion-nsa-surveillance-summer-lunch-programs/
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/veterans_profiles/voices-of-valor-maurice-ramon/article_c7926376-cdfe-5751-bc18-e27942b42fc8.html
http://obits.abqjournal.com/obits/show/233938
http://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/100/Bill/SJR0668.pdf
I’m certain that all the 30,000 bleached emails of Hillary Clinton can be found right there, and then AG Sessions can proceed with the lynchings.
I hear Ecuador is blooping lovely, right J?
I’m CJ Hooker.
Hardly
This is a test to see if certain information I have posted three times, is the reason why my comments with that information do not appear. Either the Intercept has banned me for some reason, or the scumbags at my IP, AT&T are censoring me by virtue of that information.
Well…now I know. Here is the second test. Using that information to see if this reply posts. Originally, I was replying to Ricardo Camilo López, who was replying to photosymbiosis’ comment. This is what I tried to post.
Ricardo Camilo López said:
quote”I would throw in as well that Nobel Peace Prize, constitutional lawyer, “it turns out I am really good at killing people”, “Mr Yes we can”, “people are complex” (while explaining Trump’s win to his daughters) guy in case they have any doubts.”unquote
Add every House and Senate Intelligence Committee member for the last 50 yrs, who voted YEA for every secret law that allowed the Surveillance State to spawn into existence, notwithstanding FISA court Judges, and those Presidents who signed off on it’s birth. Of course, everything had to be funded..in secret, and few Congress members ever know how it’s done as Senator Pike found out the hard way. But there ARE those in the OMB(Office of Management and Budget) who do. However, the real criminals sit at the top of the Federal Reserve as it is they who provide the “loans” to the USG, which are the foundation of the 100 yr old scheme to place every single human in America into perpetual financial bondage via their insidious, 16th Amendment, and their collection arm, the IRS, which ironically, came into existence at the very same time the Federal Reserve Act was spawned in 1913. And btw, ever wonder how the whole system works? Try to trace where your income taxes actually goes. You will ultimately come to a dead end called Puerto Rican Trust 62. This is where the “buck” stops.. pun intended. Many people have tried to pry open the secrets that lie beyond.. including this man, who actually filed suit to do so. From my understanding..this case has been in perpetual “limbo” from the time it was filed.
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/taxreformpanel/comments/_files/033005MitchellPaul.pdf
Moreover, read what Paul Mitchell has to say about the whole system. It will astound you.
http://www.supremelaw.org/sls/31answers.htm
Well… now I know. I just tried to post that same info as a reply to my test above. It wouldn’t post. I’m done. Now I know someone does not want certain info to appear on this site. I WILL figure out a way to succeed.. one way or another. Censorship is Alive and Well in the Surveillance State of Amerika… care of the capitalist scum at AT&T
try typing it backwards…
This is my THIRD attempt to reply to Ricardo Camilo López’s reply to photosymbiosis post below. I don’t know what is going on, but I suspect AT&T, who is my IP(I have no other choice). I am resorting to posting my reply as a regular comment to see if I am being censored.
Ricardo Camilo López said:
quote”I would throw in as well that Nobel Peace Prize, constitutional lawyer, “it turns out I am really good at killing people”, “Mr Yes we can”, “people are complex” (while explaining Trump’s win to his daughters) guy in case they have any doubts.”unquote
Add every House and Senate Intelligence Committee member for the last 50 yrs, who voted YEA for every secret law that allowed the Surveillance State to spawn into existence, notwithstanding FISA court Judges, and those Presidents who signed off on it’s birth. Of course, everything had to be funded..in secret, and few Congress members ever know how it’s done as Senator Pike found out the hard way. But there ARE those in the OMB(Office of Management and Budget) who do. However, the real criminals sit at the top of the Federal Reserve as it is they who provide the “loans” to the USG, which are the foundation of the 100 yr old scheme to place every single human in America into perpetual financial bondage via their insidious, 16th Amendment, and their collection arm, the IRS, which ironically, came into existence at the very same time the Federal Reserve Act was spawned in 1913. And btw, ever wonder how the whole system works? Try to trace where your income taxes actually goes. You will ultimately come to a dead end called Puerto Rican Trust 62. This is where the “buck” stops.. pun intended. Many people have tried to pry open the secrets that lie beyond.. including this man, who actually filed suit to do so. From my understanding..this case has been in perpetual “limbo” from the time it was filed.
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/taxreformpanel/comments/_files/033005MitchellPaul.pdf
Moreover, read what Paul Mitchell has to say about the whole system. It will astound you.
http://www.supremelaw.org/sls/31answers.htm
1 Wiltshire in LA
100 Biscayne Blvd in Miami
Forget the Street in NY
and never been to the one in CHI
Back in the 90’s these were the 4 main jumping off points for US calls. Almost all foreign and the majority of US long distance call routed through these buildings. Nothing nefarious just where all the big boys and most of the smaller carriers located their equipment for tech and business reasons.
We literally rented a 4 foot by 4 foot open space in the NY location.
Would be easy for NSA types to have a room in the basement, where the cables came in, to tap into.
Since 95′ much of this has been somewhat decentralized.
quote”We literally rented a 4 foot by 4 foot open space in the NY location.”unquote
Who is…”we”?
The Telecom company I work for. I was the CTO so the least was my responsibility
Probably 60 Hudson St.
An error by the Intercept in formatting this article: the paragraph about the cafeteria and its stainless steel equipment is formatted as a pull quote, but it needs to be formatted as regular body text.
The NSA having a domestic site linked to AT&T would make sense given what the Snowden docs reveal.
The whole point of programs like STELLAR WIND and PRISM was to intercept international communications going through the US. Many of the early media stories about PRISM claimed that NSA had “direct access” to the servers of the telecoms, although this turned out to be untrue. The telecoms basically retained control of their sites and, based on the controversially broad FISC warrant, forwarded the messages that NSA thinks it has the legal authority to collect.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-nsa-spy-on-an-array-of-internet-traffic.html)
And, of course, the above article notes that this is the only site in New York where AT&T has an FCC license for such stations. TITANPOINTE also seems to be home one of America’s biggest “gateway switches” routing international calls from the US.
In 2013 the government released some FISC opinions; according to them, “upstream collection” involves “the acquisition of internet communications as they transit the internet backbone facilities of [redacted, but presumably the telecoms].”
(https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/fisc0912.pdf)
The location is also interesting. Perhaps this facility is used for NSA’s operations against the UN, the IMF, the World Bank or the dozens of foreign consulates in New York.
The title of this article should read: LOOK INSIDE THE WINDOWLESS NEW YORK SKYSCRAPER LINKED TO THE NSA (20 years ago!) Because everything about this article is very old… The class batteries – replaced with LSA/AGM batteries, Number 4 ESS switching system, I live in arizona (87 central offices) and my mother retired for 18 years was an engineer switched over to 5ESS from the old cross bar system of the 50’s. So your guy gave you nothing secret at all!
Please call all this spying by what it is; the formation of a new STASI state with a Hitler-like character, Donald Trump, to go with it all.
Thank you, President Obama.
I would throw in as well that Nobel Peace Prize, constitutional lawyer, “it turns out I am really good at killing people”, “Mr Yes we can”, “people are complex” (while explaining Trump’s win to his daughters) guy in case they have any doubts.
RCL
Add every House and Senate Intelligence Committee member for the last 50 yrs, who voted YEA for every secret law that allowed the Surveillance State to spawn into existence, notwithstanding FISA court Judges, and those Presidents who signed off on it’s birth. Of course, everything had to be funded..in secret, and few Congress members ever know how it’s done as Senator Pike found out the hard way. But there ARE those in the OMB(Office of Management and Budget) who do. However, the real criminals sit at the top of the Federal Reserve as it is they who provide the “loans” to the USG, which are the foundation of the 100 yr old scheme to place every single human in America into perpetual financial bondage via their insidious, 16th Amendment, and their collection arm, the IRS, which ironically, came into existence at the very same time the Federal Reserve Act was spawned in 1913. And btw, ever wonder how the whole system works? Try to trace where your income taxes actually goes. You will ultimately come to a dead end called Puerto Rican Trust 62. This is where the “buck” stops.. pun intended. Many people have tried to pry open the secrets that lie beyond.. including this man, who actually filed suit to do so. From my understanding..this case has been in perpetual “limbo” from the time it was filed.
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/taxreformpanel/comments/_files/033005MitchellPaul.pdf
Moreover, read what Paul Mitchell has to say about the whole system. It will astound you.
http://www.supremelaw.org/sls/31answers.htm
This is my second attempt to get my reply posted.. if this appears, I’ll bite my tongue.
Add every House and Senate Intelligence Committee member for the last 50 yrs, who voted YEA for every secret law that allowed the Surveillance State to spawn into existence, notwithstanding FISA court Judges, and those Presidents who signed off on it’s birth. Of course, everything had to be funded..in secret, and few Congress members ever know how it’s done as Senator Pike found out the hard way. But there ARE those in the OMB(Office of Management and Budget) who do. However, the real criminals sit at the top of the Federal Reserve as it is they who provide the “loans” to the USG, which are the foundation of the 100 yr old scheme to place every single human in America into perpetual financial bondage via their insidious, 16th Amendment, and their collection arm, the IRS, which ironically, came into existence at the very same time the Federal Reserve Act was spawned in 1913. And btw, ever wonder how the whole system works? Try to trace where your income taxes actually goes. You will ultimately come to a dead end called Puerto Rican Trust 62. This is where the “buck” stops.. pun intended. Many people have tried to pry open the secrets that lie beyond.. including this man, who actually filed suit to do so. From my understanding..this case has been in perpetual “limbo” from the time it was filed.
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/taxreformpanel/comments/_files/033005MitchellPaul.pdf
Moreover, read what Paul Mitchell has to say about the whole system. It will astound you.
http://www.supremelaw.org/sls/31answers.htm
What’s the goal of all this surveillance???
Completing the goal of Eve in the Garden — taking a bite out of the Apple.
Acquiring the Power of God — the All Knowing who knows your thoughts and minds.
The entire Apparatus is the brainchild of criminal psychopaths who want to rule the world by dictatorship.
That’s been the goal since its inception. Democracy is an illusion. Now, every elected leader serves the role as a used car salesman and fall guy. Some are even willing to play the part designated by the Wizard of Oz behind the scenes. Some are not.
Time and history alone will ultimately reveal the truth and the sort order as to who is ultimately responsible.
Nothing more; nothing less.
Time and history don’t reveal anything; people do. We make the mistake of thinking that the hard work, persistence, and sacrifice of those who came before are simply “time and history alone.”
QUESTION: What’s the goal of all (ALL) this surveillance?
ANSWER: To feed a steady endless stream of raw biometric tactile uditory and visual data to the European and American “Brain Initiatives” and train advanced undisclosed military and private sector AI systems?
I really bet that absolutely nothing has changed since the Snowden revelations; the system is still diverting all traffic on the trunk fiber cables to NSA data centers via the use of NARUS splitters (essentially a prism that takes all the fiber optic data and turns it into two identical streams; one goes to the NSA, the other to the original destination).
More amusingly, AT&T was apparently also using this system to scan user internet activity in order to sell targeted advertising:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/atts-plan-to-watch-your-web-browsing-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
This is exactly what the NSA is also doing – although they are more likely looking for “identifiers” like these:
What a bunch of STASI-minded clowns – Keith Alexander, Michael Hayden, James Clapper – throw them in a jail cell and give them a copy of the U.S. Constitution to copy over and over until they’re released.
Are we sure the acid isn’t for making bodies disappear?
How much did the BLARNEY Stone cost?
For all the evil they are capable of at the hands of their twisted overlords, switch & server rooms are tremendously boring visuals.
The banality of evil and all that.
Perhaps they should turn it into a museum of obsolete telecommunications equipment.
Also, this building is no more built to withstand a nuclear attack than the Titanic was built to withstand an iceberg.
Can’t tell if you’re joking about the telecom equipment or what. The photos are from decades ago. The bottoms ones are from the late 80’s. I doubt any of the equipment aside from the physical racks themselves are even in there anymore.
Really you need to recruit some video gamers and get this released as a FPS map for something. The Intercept loves interfacing with popular culture, doesn’t it? I’d like to see how the Alpha Team in their fancy exoskeletons make out when they’re standing next to those vats of acid and somebody opens up with a minigun. :)
Really, the spies have a bit of an Achilles heel in thinking that they are so much smarter than everybody that they can tell the truth and get away with it. Consider Mike Pompeo, quoted in 2013: “The NSA is not intentionally listening to your phone calls. Feel free to talk to your friend. Tell him or her anything you’d like. Your government is not recording those phone calls.” Yeah, your government isn’t recording those calls, it’s the British, Canadian, Australian or New Zealand government! (but almost certainly the British) Very funny, but those guys have told that joke a lot of times before.
Rest assured the UK’s Investigatory Powers Bill (Snoopers Charter) will only expand GCHQs collection of the CONTENTS of entirely domestic (in-country) correspondence of Americans for the NSA (who have strategically offshored elements of their wholesale violation of US Citizens 4th amendment rights) just as that same Investigator Powers Bill (Snoopers Charter) will expand the UK’s current practice of recording (and transcribing to searchable text) the in-country voice and video calls of every American citizen.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161117/07202536067/parliament-passes-snoopers-charter-opens-up-citizens-to-whole-new-levels-domestic-surviellance.shtml
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/16/british_pols_sign_off_on_surveillance_law/
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3221459/Snooper-s-Charter-as-Passed.pdf
Amazing that the entire British lawmaking scum passed the IPB.. unanimously. This tells me something. .. like they are owned. Lock.. stock.. and barrel… just like ours. Of course, at the time of passing the bill, the owners were at the top of the Burg Kalifa, clinking glasses of $40k per bottle champagne while rolling on the floor in gut splitting laughter.
“She blinded me with science.”