A friend of a friend somewhere in the Pacific Northwest found some zines in the bottom of a backpack. Amongst them was just a folded up one-page document on printer paper. No author, no idea where it came from, not even a title. But it provided some insight into a tool of the Surveillance State not often discussed. These are the contents of that document.
Today while extremely bored at work, I was perusing state owned theatre level ISR assets, as one does.
In the course of my light reading I discovered a US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite series known as Orion. It is one of the largest satellites humans have ever built, over 330 feet across, sitting in geostationary orbit. Its primary structure is an absolutely massive radio dish antenna. Orion, also called Mentor, is a SIGINT or Signals Intelligence satellite. It is capable of isolating the signal of a single cell phone or wifi router, and each one of the 3 currently on orbit can see roughly 1/3rd of the planet. There is no signal between VHF and Microwaves over half a watt of radiated power generated on earth that these do not hear. Each single satellite costs more than an entire Nimitz Class carrier.
Truly there is no safety from imperial hegemony’s gaze.
This got me thinking about what operational security means in the 21st century. Any message over the internet it is safe to assume is catalogued safely away by the NSA. Any signal generated wirelessly is heard by Mentor and the NRO. We’re on camera from 100 Ring door bells each day. When every form of communication and just your very existence is vulnerable to some form of intercept, what does hiding mean? What is privacy in a panopticon?
There is a term I hear most commonly in radio, but which applies to any kind of information analysis.
The “noise floor.”
In radio the noise floor is the background radio signal. Cosmic microwave background, the remnants of every other radio user in your region, solar wind all blended together. Noise in the information sense is data with no information. In radio a signal can be so quiet at reception that it is fully hidden in the noise floor.
A radio operator can use an SDR to visualize this floor, and if they listen to it, they hear only static. Weak signals can, with effort, be heard through the noise, but you have to know where to look for them.
Therein lies the key to hiding in any domain. You can always be detected, your communications always intercepted, but you do not have to be noticed. The goal of someone seeking to hide in this brave new world so desperately afraid of not knowing, is to not be worth the time, attention, or compute power of the organizations or individuals who might seek to know you. If you present another voice in a storm of millions, there is nothing to make you stand out of the pattern, nothing to target. Become as noise.
As AI and machine learning progresses, this noise floor continues to lower. Palantir can see patterns humans miss, and the only fool proof way to hide is to emit nothing at all, but steps can be taken to reduce your informational SNR. Stay safe comrades, stay hidden.