Message-ID: <freemail.20040426110152.74898@fm6.freemail.hu>
From: etomcat at freemail.hu (Feher Tamas)
Subject: Who watches your steps? Big Brother 'n' da alienz!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/25/area_51_hackers/

Area 51 hackers dig up trouble with their shovels
by Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus, 25 May 2004

To the Area 51 buffs who journey to the Nevada desert in the hopes of
catching a glimpse of unexplained lights in the sky or to bask in the
mythic allure of the region, 58-year-old Chuck Clark is almost as much
a part of the local color as the Black Mailbox.

A resident of tiny Rachel, Nevada - 100 miles north of Las Vegas along
the Extraterrestrial Highway - the amateur astronomer and author has
spent years keeping an eye on the spot the government calls
the "operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada." He's said to be a
frequent presence at the Little A'Le'Inn, where you can purchase post
cards and tee shirts, enjoy an "Alien Burger," and walk out with a copy
of Clark's "Area 51 & S-4 Handbook" to guide you on your journey into
the desert.

But this self-appointed military watchdog is harder to find these days:
messages left for him at the Inn go unreturned, and his media
appearances have dried up like Groom Lake itself. "I think he's really
not as motivated to talk to the media anymore as he used to be," says
friend and fellow base-watcher Joerg Arnu. The reason: it turns out the
truth really was out there, and the government didn't appreciate Clark
digging it up.

Clark didn't find the Roswell craft or an alien autopsy room - in fact,
while officially shrouded in secrecy, the 50-year-old base is generally
believed to be dedicated to the terrestrial mission of testing
classified aircraft. "The U2 spy plane, the SR-71, the F-117A stealth
fighter, all were flight-tested out of the Groom Lake facility," says
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists'
Project on Government Secrecy. The myth of Area 51 memorialized in
films, T.V. shows and novels is a function of the secrecy that
surrounds it. "It is a concrete manifestation of official secrecy at
its most intense, and that invites a mixture of paranoia and
speculative fantasy that has become ingrained in popular culture," says
Aftergood.

Even without aliens, the facility has its secrets, and last year while
roaming the desert outside the Groom Lake base Clark stumbled upon 
one
of them: an electronic device packed in a rugged case and buried in the
dirt. Marked "US Government Property," the device turned out to be a
wireless transmitter, connected by an underground cable to a sensor
buried nearby next to one of the unpaved roads that vein the public
land surrounding the base. Together, the units act as a surveillance
system, warning someone - somewhere - whenever a vehicle drives 
down
that stretch of road.

Similar devices had been spotted in the area in the early 90s, but they
were crude and bulky, stashed in the bushes and easily spotted. They
were later withdrawn. The new road sensors are more clandestine, 
given
away only by a slender antenna poking up through the dirt. "They're
very, very hard to find, because there's just this little wire, like a
blade of grass," says Arnu.

Sniffing Out Surveillance
Arnu, a Las Vegas software engineer, has shared Clark's preoccupation
with the Groom Lake base since 1999, when he made a trip to the area 
to
see what all the fuss was about. "I thought, okay, I'll give it a try,
see what's out there... A couple of days turned into a couple of weeks
and before I knew it I started developing a website about Area 51,"
says Arnu.

So when Clark found the new generation of road sensor, Arnu drove out
to help investigate further. The pair found that, at close range, they
could use a handheld frequency counter to pick up the wireless signals
given off by the devices as a car passes. Over the following month and
half, Clark and Arnu engaged in a kind of geocaching game with the Men
in Black, systematically sniffing out the road sensors with the
frequency counter, exhuming them, and opening them up. They 
discovered
that each device was coded with three-digit identifier that could be
read off an internal dial, allowing Arnu to make a list that correlated
each unit's ID number with its GPS coordinates, creating a virtual map
of a portion of the surveillance network surrounding the Groom Lake
facility. Some of the sensors were miles away from the base.

"We dug up about 30 or 40 of them on various access roads leading to
the base on public land," Arnu says, insisting that he and Clark always
carefully reburied each unit after logging it, and even tested it with
the frequency counter to make sure it was still working before moving
on to the next one.

Based on their survey, Clark and Arnu have estimated that there are
between 75 and 100 sensors, on public land used by hikers and
photographers in addition to curiosity seekers. "I think it is
absolutely inappropriate," says Arnu. "You have to understand that
people going out there - not everybody is interested in Area 51...They
track these tourists on public land going about their hobby."

When they'd gathered sufficient evidence that the Air Force was 
bugging
the desert, Arnu and Clark revealed the road sensors on Arnu's 
website,
Dreamland Resort, a forum and information site for Area 51 aficionados
and the "Official Home Page of the world-famous Little A'Le'Inn."

The reaction from the government was immediate, according to Arnu: 
the
road sensors were fitted with a new feature aimed at better eluding
detection. Now the transmitters would wait a minute or two before
broadcasting an alarm, so that desert wardrivers are out of range
before the transmission takes place - at least, using relatively
insensitive detection equipment like a frequency counter.

Undeterred by the innovation, in June of last year Clark led a news
crew from Las Vegas' KLAS television station into the desert and 
showed
them some of the road sensors.

The following week, according to the station's report, FBI and Air
Force agents raided Clark's trailer home in Rachel, and carted off his
computer, photographs and records. The next day, Arnu got a call at
work from the FBI. "They demanded that I speak with them the very 
same
day," he says.

The Case of the Missing Sensor
The investigation sparked something of a backlash in Nevada. The Las
Vegas Review Journal editorialized against the FBI's tactics. In the
Las Vegas Mercury, George Knapp, the newsman who filmed the KLAS
segment, asked how far the government should be allowed to go in
protecting the secret base. "If you or I accidentally kick one of these
hidden transmitters, should the feds be able to seize our Macintosh and
photos of Aunt Betty?"

Arnu describes the probe as an intimidation tactic. "It didn't lead
anywhere," he says. "It was basically a dead-end from the beginning
because we didn't break any law... We dug [the sensors] up without
damaging them or destroying them."

But court documents unsealed earlier this year reveal that there was an
unsolved mystery lurking around Groom Lake. It seems that a month 
prior
to the raid, one of the road sensors went missing - vanished, like an
abductee pulled into a flying saucer.

The government didn't charge anyone with stealing US property, but 
last
December it charged Clark with a single count of interfering with a
communications system used for the national defense. On March 12th,
2003 Clark allegedly obstructed, hindered and delayed "a signal from a
mini intrusion device" located outside "the Nevada Test and Training
Range" -- a reference to the government land that encompasses the 
Groom
Lake site.

"He removed one," says Natalie Collins, a spokesperson for the U.S.
Attorney's Office in Las Vegas. "It says that there, so it's fine for
me to confirm that."

In a deal quietly reached with prosecutors last January, Clark agreed
to "either locate and return the sensor removed on March 12, 2003 or
pay restitution to the United States Air Force to replace the missing
sensor." In exchange, the government agreed to suspend proceedings
against Clark and to place him on a kind of probation called "pretrial
diversion": if Clark goes a year without interfering with any of the
road sensors, and doesn't otherwise break the law, the government will
drop the felony charge.

Clark's phone number is unlisted, and he didn't respond to repeated
messages left for him at the Little A'Le'Inn over the course of several
months, and inquiries passed through Arnu. His attorney also declined
to return repeated phone calls on the case.

Arnu says his friend never told him about a missing sensor, or his
agreement to return it. "I refuse to believe that Chuck would be stupid
enough to remove one," says Arnu. "I know... that he agreed to lay low
for a year." Clark's adventures near the most famously secret patch of
real estate in the world appear to have pulled him beneath the very
cloak of secrecy he poked and scratched at for so many years. He has,
in a sense, become a part of Area 51.

******************

Fight the future!

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