Traffic analysis reveals spy satellite details
Udhay Shankar N
udhay at pobox.com
Tue Feb 5 00:41:25 EST 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/science/space/05spotters.html
When the government announced last month that a top-secret spy satellite
would, in the next few months, come falling out of the sky, American
officials said there was little risk to people because satellites fall
out of orbit fairly frequently and much of the planet is covered by oceans.
But they said precious little about the satellite itself.
Such information came instead from Ted Molczan, a hobbyist who tracks
satellites from his apartment balcony in Toronto, and fellow satellite
spotters around the world. They have grudgingly become accustomed to
being seen as “propeller-headed geeks” who “poke their finger in the
eye” of the government’s satellite spymasters, Mr. Molczan said, taking
no offense. “I have a sense of humor,” he said.
Mr. Molczan, a private energy conservation consultant, is the best known
of the satellite spotters who, needing little more than a pair of
binoculars, a stop watch and star charts, uncover some of the deepest of
the government’s expensive secrets and share them on the Internet.
<snip>
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com
More information about the cryptography
mailing list