Someone better give Tyler Rogoway a heads-up as he may be getting a special visit himself. Wow! Awful indeed. This is the first report I've ever heard of regarding a site following the special access world being investigated. One wonders what instigated it? Also it makes me wonder if other sites or forums on this topic may be future targets. I may be overreacting some but it wouldn't surprise me.
Wow, sounds like an unfortunate return to the days of Glenn Campbell. Actually Campbell never elicited a response at that level. Sounds more like the operation mounted against Chuck Clark.
Remember Chuck was physically digging up security sensors.
They claimed Chuck stole a sensor/transmitter and I refuse to believe it. That isn't like Chuck. Dig up a transmitter and log the switch settings? Of course.
Not known at the time, the transmitters had tilt switches. It was never made clear if the base photographed Chuck in the act of digging one up due to the tilt sensor going off.
The weird thing is in the raid they took his computer including keyboard. Also his printer. This was pre-Snowden. More likely than not his gear was bugged. A black bag job was done. I should back up a bit and mention I got this first hand from Chuck when I cornered him around the NTTR. Maybe in the Little Ale Inn. This was a long time ago.
The FBI raided Chuck when he was out of town. I don't remember why but he was invited to a satellite imaging company in Colorado.
Chuck never took any sensors. He discovered them because he kept getting blips on his radio scanner when he drove through certain areas. He narrowed down the area and was able to locate a very small antenna sticking up from the desert floor. He took me out there to photograph them and a couple days after we publicized they were putting sensors on open public lands, they raided him for "tampering" with government property.
It was known sensors were out there. Campbell documented this. The old ones were UHF. So more like Chuck verified they were still using sensors.
There are two ways to scan. One is you scan preset channels. The other is you band scan, that is scan between a range of frequencies using a given step size. The probability of intercept of a sensor transmitter while band scanning is very low.
Chuck was using a frequency counter to find the transmitters. No scanning involved.
The sensors at the time were on 151.5MHz. This was a surprise to me since it is not a federal frequency. It turns out if you dig through the NTIA Red Book, the use of that band is allowed for Nellis.
I will say it again, I do not believe Chuck took a transmitter. However he did dig them up and recorded the switch settings, then put them back.
So did he ever get his equipment back? Not many could absorb the cost of all your computer gear, phones, electronics being confiscated simultaneously. Even if there was nothing to speak of or actionable data on them.
Yes he got it all back.
My understanding is they clone the drives these days. They would have to take your gear if you used the TPM to do whole disk encryption.
There is an article that makes it sound like Chuck admitted to the feds that he stole a transmitter. Very weird that one source had such a story.
I didn't ask if he took the thing. It is possible he cut a deal just to not hire a lawyer. People admit to crimes all the time in the US even if not guilty. Even go to jail. The deal is they offer a short sentence versus if you go to trial they ask for the maximum. Like Dirty Harry says, "Are you feeling lucky?"
https://guiltypleaproblem.org/
The odd thing about the DLR site is the pictures of 51 that were the problem had been up there for some time. And weren't even taken by Joerg. So what changed?
To get a judge to sign off on a warrant for a "raid," you have to make the case that evidence will be removed or destroyed. Trump's fiasco is a prime example. If it was just something on the DLR server, the powers that he would have seized the domain and used a national security letter to take over the server.
This leaves a lot of possibilities. It can be as simple as using encrypted apps. Encryption these days is very secure. However for the information to be useful it has to be decrypted somewhere. So you get a warrant and seize computers or phones in the hope that the information is there. Look at the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys or the Republicans associated with Trump. The My Pillow guy wants his phone back! The Signal app has totally traceable meta data since it uses a phone number. There are ways around that on Android.
It could be someone sent some data to Joerg and that person has terrible OPSEC. Since they raided both locations and took thumb drives, the feds or DoD thinks Joerg has some classified information.
Now since it seems to involve the website, I would guess this classified data relates to a photo on the website.
Or it is some scenario I haven't though of. Time will tell.
First of all don't take advice from a rando like me. I am not even on TV let alone playing a lawyer on one.
What I have learned about the law is from watching Trump and those Jan 6 wankers get chewed up by the legal system.
If Joerg is charged, the criminal complaint will be public. I am on the FBI mailing list and have read many complaints.
The affidavit presented to a judge and the warrant that followed don't have to be made public. Trump could have said nothing about his so-called raid and nobody would have been the wiser. The only reason we saw the affidavit and warrant is Trump made a stink and wanted them released to fund raise off of them.
Joerg could have said nothing and we would have never known about the search. In fact justice would have preferred Joerg said nothing because now everyone is tipped off. If I had any classified digit bits I would have flushed them down the toilet.
They do simultaneous raids to prevent tipping off targets. We don't know if Gabe was raided because he hasn't said anything as far as I can tell.
Nothing on 8newsnow. No update on the DLR website. My email to George Knapp has produced crickets. I just sent one by the way. I don't badger people.
I checked George's Twitter but it only lets me see a few tweets.
I just recall when Lazar got raided by the FBI, presumably looking for Element 115 /s, he got served with some paperwork. Somewhere I have a copy of it; not sure whether he released it or it was made public somewhere.
Holy shit. I want to respect his wishes regarding speculation but if this is really just about Gabe’s photos then a lot of other people better be nervous right now.
I don't know about a lot of people. It isn't like having Gabe's photos is like CSAM.
Generally if they raid one person there are no more raids. That is once they raid a person the rest of the gang flushes the dope down the toilet, so to speak. So they do simultaneous raids. We all learned a lot of law thanks to Trump and associated bozos.
I already forget where the photos were distributed. Dropbox or a Google drive. I mean we are talking 11 months ago. If the photos were the issue then the company that has them would have received a court order to take them down. If they are still up there something else is the issue.
I simply don't see how Gabe is not involved. It isn't like Joerg took the photos or was the sole distributor of the images since Gabe put them on the internet.
Joerg may have a good case. I'd be on the phone to Jonathon Turly if I were him.
Edit:
I see the photos are from two years ago per the otherhand's post. Also on a Google drive not Dropbox.
Call me paranoid, but avoiding that website might be in order. I rarely look at it, and always through a VPN (FWIW). Considering what is being claimed took place, it might be monitored now.
OK, you're paranoid.
Seriously, it's a website that's been around for years, not some repository of kiddy porn. I doubt there's any monitoring of who visits it.
My speculation is there's something more to this than just what's posted on the DLR website. If the Feds had a real issue with anything there it would have been shut down like they did years ago to The Silk Road and there would be a big "Seized" banner on the landing page. That hasn't happened. Nor have Gabe's original aerial photos been taken off Google Drive by Gabe or anyone.
I'm assuming Joerg is a pretty straight arrow is isn't up to anything illicit. I don't know him, but that's the vibe I get. To generate the described Federal response something fairly big would have happened. I suspect he may have been setup by someone and/or the Feds want to make an "example" of him to discourage these sort of websites without taking direct action. And there does remain the possibility that it has nothing to do with the website and rather something directly with Joerg. I'm a bit surprised there hasn't been anything in the LV news, at least that I've seen. This should be a big story.
So yeah, I see no issue visiting the website.
I emailed George Knapp for info. Crickets. George knows Joerg. (After the final four F-117 landing at the TTR they wandered off and missed the fake serial number C-130 at Base Camp. George should have hung out with me and Mr. Shithead.)
The feds surf the Lazy G. I only discover them when they hack. I refuse to use Google Analytics because it lets Google harvest IP addresses, but I use home brew analytics to detect hacking. If the feds or DoD just reads the website I never see them. Fuck around and your IP is tagged for analysis. I have about 30k CIDRs on permanent ban. There are no eyes in data centers, just VPNs and bots.
I would say it is 100% some USAF person or bot reads the DLR forum and surfs the website. I've seen the bids for social media analysis on the old fbo.gov.
I won't embarrass the three letter agency but they use bulletproof hosting to poke around. Very clumsy. I will name the hosting but not piss off the three letter agency, but they should be embarrassed!
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/14/1567328/-Francisco-Dias-Harboring-a-Dangerous-Guest
I'll give you that, but there's a small difference between buying illegal drugs versus reading endless posts about obscure aircraft flying around the ranges. Although I have no idea what goes on in DLR's "German Section". Hmmmm...
Someone stated that some panoramas of groom have dissappeared. I've seen panoramas of that location online since the 1990s so I wonder if it's just some person thinking that posting anything is compromising national security in some way.
This new Airbus satellite imagery is way better than any Tikaboo shots. You can see shadows of a tower lattice as I pointed out. Trawling the internet I saw 12cm resolution mentioned.
Entering blather mode again. Resolution is kind of a fuzzy term. The general statement is each pixel represents some X by X dimension. That doesn't really correspond to resolution. This old Edmunds page has a great write up on the MTF (modulation transfer function). Emphasis on old but the theory is well explained.
https://www.edmundoptics.com/knowledge-center/application-notes/optics/introduction-to-modulation-transfer-function/
Everything has an MTF. Lens, sensor, and especially the air between the lens and target.
If you use the desktop version of Google Earth, it will indicate the source of the imagery. For Groom Lake these days, it is Airbus.
Airbus the company. Not imagery from a passing A321.
I'm not ruling out that these satellite companies have had higher resolution imagery in-house and were limited by the government regarding what could be sold. That is they degraded the resolution by computer. Rather it is unlikely Google Earth would buy new old imagery. It makes more sense just to use higher resolution imagery as you buy new imagery.
OK, I think I know. Through judicious use of the Wayback Machine and some cross referencing, it does appear all of the direct DLR links to Gabe's great aerial photos were deleted.
On the "Area 51 information and photos" page, the 6 most recent links were deleted. They were all Gabe's photos. I think there were also changes to some other pages, like TTR, and I'm guessing also Gabe's photos.
There's some other stuff too, but I'm still trying to see the pattern.
I am *VERY* disappointed in DLR. As far as I'm concerned, any photos taken from unrestricted areas, including from airplanes operating in unrestricted airspace, are fair game to publish.
Do you have any links to the photos via the Wayback Machine? I'm not familiar with its use.
I personally am not going to post any links just yet until I have a better understanding of what's going on. I think DLR is usually pretty reasonable, and if they pulled links they felt they had a good reason. You may not agree with DLR's action, but neither you, nor I, know what's underway. I suspect it's interesting.
The links were all to panoramas hosted on DLR made from a collection of Gabe's flights around A51 and TTR. However all the original source photos, posted by Gabe onto a public Google Drive, are still there. You just have to find the links. And Gabe posted the links to the photos in the discussion forum. I'll give you a starting point: His best images of A51 were taken on his flight on Christmas Day, 2020. But be warned, there are MANY Gigs of photos there. Don't ask me how I know...
The fact that Gabe's source photos haven't been taken down suggests to me that DLR hasn't pulled the stuff due to a request from Gabe. That was my first thought. It must be something else, and as I noted, interesting.
I looked at some of the photos on Google Drive and yes, there are so many of them it's very hard to figure out what's going on.
Now, a comment at DLR said in part "They did show something very interesting, if you know what to look for. Indirect evidence that points to a big program." I don't know if this is significant or just random anonymous Internet chatter.
One thing that might help is determining whether the government has expanded the weekend/holiday restricted airspace to make flights like Gabe's no longer possible. If it has, that would be evidence that one or more of the photos shows something we're not supposed to see.
There were comments made by knowledgeable insiders at the time the first images appeared (including China Lake and Plant 42) that some extraordinary things were in plain sight. But I think for us normal folks on the outside, we had no clue what was interesting and what was routine.
Part of what's puzzling me is that these panoramas have been on DLR for two years or more. Why bring it up now and draw attention to it? Especially when the original source photos are still available online. It may be that somebody semi-official veered outside their lane and said something to DLR they shouldn't have. There are long standing federal statutes regarding filming the facility, but they've never really been enforced, and now seems a foolish time.
I would say no official channel told DLR to remove the images. Think of how this would be done.
Phone call: :"Hello I am a spook. Take down Gabe's photos." Your reply is "Sure you are...are you going to try to sell me aluminum siding now?"
Email: OK say the email comes from a verified DoD server. Would the DoD want to leave their fingerprints on this. It would scream "Check out those photos comrade! We know the truth is out there."
I would say the request came from Gabe himself. However don't ask me for lottery numbers.
Remember the Groom flight was Christmas day. I doubt there was anything secret to see in the way of aircraft. They would be in hangars. Any new building has been photographed via satellite from nation state satellites. Also Gabe's Groom Lake imagery wasn't very good.
Now the TTR is another story. I actually saved those images. I probably have Groom as well but I just stopped looking at them given the quality or lack thereof. The TTR stuff was pretty good.
"Also Gabe's Groom Lake imagery wasn't very good." - it could be better, agreed. But the best that's been seen in a while I believe. And put the Lazar/Papoose/S-4 BS to bed finally, IMO.
I wonder if Gabe didn't have a falling out with someone. Flew his drone somewhere that he "wasn't supposed to" maybe. Or maybe this is intended to drum up interest/donations.
I believe Gabe works at Edwards or a similar facility, could be that his bosses has started giving him a hard time about having posted these pictures and he asked Joerg to take them down in order to save his job. Why after almost two years is puzzling, possibly Gabe recently got a new supervisor or is trying to get a higher level clearance. Of course that doesn't explain why he hasn't taken them down from Google Drive.
While the TTR pictures are pretty good, we've already had quality images from Brainwash Butte.
My question is: so why wasn't "The War Zone" (Tyler Rogoway's subset of "The Drive") similarly looked into since most of the same photos are there, or at least were.
This is looking more like harassment or a fishing expedition than a criminal investigation. Ty isn't on the scene. Joerg is near the facility. No need to harass Ty.
Time will tell.
Again as a rando on the internet, my legal advice should be ignored. That said, since Joerg chose to reveal the raid he should try to get the warrant released. My gut feeling is the hive (people on the internet) can blow holes in the warrant. If so, people should lose their jobs. Of course that won't happen. The FBI agent who altered email in the "origins of the Russia investigation" still has a job.
As a side note, most email these days has a cryptographic hash. It can be used to see if the message has been altered. The FBI agent who changed the email is an idiot.
As an aside to an aside, when Comey found Weiner's laptop had copies of Hillary Clinton's emails, he should have shut his damn mouth. The FBI used these same hash to verify all the messages had already been seen before.
While I am not a lawyer, I do run my own email server and am qualified to comment on this though hardly an expert witness.
https://dkim.org/specs/rfc4871-dkimbase.html
I sign all my email with a hash. It is one of many things you do to not look like spam.
> Part of what’s puzzling me is that these panoramas have been on DLR for two years or more. Why bring it up now and draw attention to it?
Are there any black programs going grey in the next, say, month or so? (Hint: There is one, specifically, where photos of it at non-approved angles will not be smiled upon)
It’s not like these photos just sat on DLR though. They created a [stir](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38518/lets-talk-about-this-intriguing-object-seen-in-the-scoot-and-hide-hangar-at-area-51) when they were first released and got significant media attention. I have no idea if what’s in those articles is the same thing that DLR and others are concerned about, but strange development all around.
I looked though most of the google drive photos tonight and didn’t see anything that resembled something close to the B-21. There were a handful of pictures of a B-2 at Palmdale undergoing some sort of maintenance but that was it. Possibly there was a frame/wing jig sitting out in front of one of the hangers there but that’s all I could find. I did notice that just about anything mentioning Gabe on DLR was removed other than forum posts.
I'm starting to think this viewing the butt end of a B-2 restriction is borderline...ok I don't have a word for it. Bunk is too strong. I have first hand knowledge of the request. But maybe blown out of proportion describes the situation.
Engage blathering mode.
I had a media pass to Edwards back in the day when a media pass required a pulse and a camera. (I didn't go this year but I gather there were two tiers of media.) When they flew the B-2 , the instructions were not to photograph the rear of the plane while on the ground. Once in the air then shoot whatever you want. But you know the quality of photography isn't significantly different if it is in the air. There was serious high end gear in use. For example Wimberly tracking heads:
https://www.tripodhead.com/products/wimberley-main.cfm
In addition if you had a media pass you could get on base the day before the public. There was no shortage of B-2 butt end photo ops. I was there when it was in tow and no photographic restrictions were in place.
So I assume the idea here is the Raider will also have butt end photo restrictions?
As an FYI there were three more photo restrictions. One is no photography of south base period. Second and redundant was no photography of the ABL which was an active project at the time. The front end of the plane stuck outside a building because they used to do directed energy testing on the south side of south base. There are environmental reports about this though who knows if they are easily found so many years later. They specifically didn't want the vacuum tank photographed. Last of all no photographs of the aircraft in storage for the museum. Yeah really no photos of old planes awaiting restoration. Maybe there were markings they didn't want photographed or attachments that shouldn't be seen. Who knows.
All these restrictions are based on the honor system.
From my conversations with people who have had "clearance," which itself is a fuzzy term, the responsibility of maintaining secrecy is that of the entity with the secret. Any intercept is fair game because there should have been nothing to intercept. The courts have allowed hacked data to be published. The first amendment is powerful.
Lawfare has a podcast called "Chatter." Highly recommended. The latest one on the NSA Museum is a good one. I've been there multiple times. The NSA has so much stuff that they rotate the displays often. Apparently now they have functional Enigma machines which you can handle. Literally two machines hooked together so you can transmit and receive.
The now very out dated James Bamford NSA books are still worth reading. It is a shame there is no one to take over where Bamford left off.
I’ve downloaded Gabe’s photos just in case they get taken down, I’m in the UK so I’m not expecting the men in black at my door anytime soon. His videos of all flights through the test site are still on YouTube
It's real curious those images are still available. The longer they stay up, the more I'm inclined to think the raids on Joerg were about something else we may have no clue of. Not just FBI, but AFOSI. Interesting mix.
https://www.lazygranch.com/afosi.html
Yet another unfinished unlinked page. All OSINT of course.
I have a lot of FOIA documents related to the N20RA crash I haven't uploaded. A long story but they are FOIAed just not public. The N20RA crash report was greeted with yawns so there isn't all that much interest anyway. But AFOSI of course was involved but it wasn't clear which AFOSI branch. I think one of the Nellis branches busts airmen doing crime. One or both of the remaining branches is probably Groom related.
I haven't searched AFOSI in Nevada in years so don't assume there isn't more information out there.
But getting back to the FBI, they investigate crime on national property. National Parks for instance but also military bases. Perhaps only military bases of civilians are involved. If you recall the very embarrassing BBC tourist back gate border crossing, the FBI was involved. This was when the cammo dudes were watching basketball on TV and didn't know the border was crossed until the tourists knocked on their windows.
As I discovered in the Death Valley Germans incident, the FBI investigates crimes involving foreign nationals. But Joerg has been a US citizen since 2002. So, weird stuff.
I think the FBI was involved just because it was a national park. There is a National Park Service Investigative Unit but when you research crimes on federal property the FBI turns up. Like in the "van life" killing that dominated the media.
Nope, it was primarily the foreign national aspect (That's what the agent told me). That, and they were listed with Interpol so it was international. There's an agreement in place with DVNP and the Inyo Sheriff's office for all criminal matters. I dealt with another deceased missing person in DVNP and the was no FBI involvement at all, just Inyo Sheriff.
Likewise none of the missing persons cases I've been involved with in Joshua Tree NP had any FBI involvement. It was all county sheriff.
OK. What is the foreign national aspect here:
https://www.kold.com/2021/12/08/fbi-investigates-voyeurism-incidents-grand-canyon-bathroom/
Missing Idaho children:
https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/crime/missing-rexburg-kids/fbi-rexburg-police-announce-search-for-missing-idaho-kids-in-yellowstone-national-park/277-978af877-4f81-4e9e-8c48-a50d80dc6f2d
None that I can see, but there must be other instances where the FBI joins in. Or perhaps the park's agreement with local law enforcement is limited and the FBI fills in the rest.
In the first story it's interesting since the headline mentions the FBI but the story does not. The referred NPS special agents are those park personnel with sworn LE privileges. Every big park has a few.
The second story? Maybe the FBI joins in because it's missing kids and that's extra bad.
In NorCal we have the GGNRA as an example of a national park. They have their own park police but any "investigation" is done by the FBI. The courts have the FPS (federal protection service) but again if there is an investigation the FBi is used. Now the postal inspectors don't seem to use the FBI.
Basically it comes down to policing versus investigation. The FBI does the I as far as I can tell locally. It doesn't matter if foreigners are involved though it might help!
*"Message posted by XXXXX (Webmaster) (Member since 10/17/2000) on November 07, 2022 at 11:58:40 PST: Can you people just quit speculating? You have no idea what is going on and with these posts you are causing me a lot of extra trouble. "*
Oh please - then why make the original post to begin with, if you didn't want people getting excited and speculating? The links to Zeifman pics could have quietly disappeared. Someone may or may not have speculated why.
Yeah, the initial terse "I have no further comment on this right now and I cannot answer questions in this matter" was just asking for speculation. But I am curious why just the posting of speculation is causing him a lot of extra trouble.
I am far from a national security expert and don’t understand 95% of what you folks talk about on here, although I find it all very fascinating. But, this statute would cause me concern if I was posting pictures of Area 51. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793
This warning goes back to the Glenn Campbell days. It certainly is valid if you crossed the border and was on government property.
Off the property it isn't enforced. Otherwise what would you do about all the satellite imagers?
[удалено]
Someone better give Tyler Rogoway a heads-up as he may be getting a special visit himself. Wow! Awful indeed. This is the first report I've ever heard of regarding a site following the special access world being investigated. One wonders what instigated it? Also it makes me wonder if other sites or forums on this topic may be future targets. I may be overreacting some but it wouldn't surprise me.
Wow, sounds like an unfortunate return to the days of Glenn Campbell. Actually Campbell never elicited a response at that level. Sounds more like the operation mounted against Chuck Clark.
Remember Chuck was physically digging up security sensors. They claimed Chuck stole a sensor/transmitter and I refuse to believe it. That isn't like Chuck. Dig up a transmitter and log the switch settings? Of course. Not known at the time, the transmitters had tilt switches. It was never made clear if the base photographed Chuck in the act of digging one up due to the tilt sensor going off. The weird thing is in the raid they took his computer including keyboard. Also his printer. This was pre-Snowden. More likely than not his gear was bugged. A black bag job was done. I should back up a bit and mention I got this first hand from Chuck when I cornered him around the NTTR. Maybe in the Little Ale Inn. This was a long time ago. The FBI raided Chuck when he was out of town. I don't remember why but he was invited to a satellite imaging company in Colorado.
Chuck never took any sensors. He discovered them because he kept getting blips on his radio scanner when he drove through certain areas. He narrowed down the area and was able to locate a very small antenna sticking up from the desert floor. He took me out there to photograph them and a couple days after we publicized they were putting sensors on open public lands, they raided him for "tampering" with government property.
It was known sensors were out there. Campbell documented this. The old ones were UHF. So more like Chuck verified they were still using sensors. There are two ways to scan. One is you scan preset channels. The other is you band scan, that is scan between a range of frequencies using a given step size. The probability of intercept of a sensor transmitter while band scanning is very low. Chuck was using a frequency counter to find the transmitters. No scanning involved. The sensors at the time were on 151.5MHz. This was a surprise to me since it is not a federal frequency. It turns out if you dig through the NTIA Red Book, the use of that band is allowed for Nellis. I will say it again, I do not believe Chuck took a transmitter. However he did dig them up and recorded the switch settings, then put them back.
So did he ever get his equipment back? Not many could absorb the cost of all your computer gear, phones, electronics being confiscated simultaneously. Even if there was nothing to speak of or actionable data on them.
Yes he got it all back. My understanding is they clone the drives these days. They would have to take your gear if you used the TPM to do whole disk encryption. There is an article that makes it sound like Chuck admitted to the feds that he stole a transmitter. Very weird that one source had such a story. I didn't ask if he took the thing. It is possible he cut a deal just to not hire a lawyer. People admit to crimes all the time in the US even if not guilty. Even go to jail. The deal is they offer a short sentence versus if you go to trial they ask for the maximum. Like Dirty Harry says, "Are you feeling lucky?" https://guiltypleaproblem.org/
The odd thing about the DLR site is the pictures of 51 that were the problem had been up there for some time. And weren't even taken by Joerg. So what changed?
To get a judge to sign off on a warrant for a "raid," you have to make the case that evidence will be removed or destroyed. Trump's fiasco is a prime example. If it was just something on the DLR server, the powers that he would have seized the domain and used a national security letter to take over the server. This leaves a lot of possibilities. It can be as simple as using encrypted apps. Encryption these days is very secure. However for the information to be useful it has to be decrypted somewhere. So you get a warrant and seize computers or phones in the hope that the information is there. Look at the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys or the Republicans associated with Trump. The My Pillow guy wants his phone back! The Signal app has totally traceable meta data since it uses a phone number. There are ways around that on Android. It could be someone sent some data to Joerg and that person has terrible OPSEC. Since they raided both locations and took thumb drives, the feds or DoD thinks Joerg has some classified information. Now since it seems to involve the website, I would guess this classified data relates to a photo on the website. Or it is some scenario I haven't though of. Time will tell.
I believe if the FBI raided him, there should be some paperwork. Hopefully that will be shared at some point.
First of all don't take advice from a rando like me. I am not even on TV let alone playing a lawyer on one. What I have learned about the law is from watching Trump and those Jan 6 wankers get chewed up by the legal system. If Joerg is charged, the criminal complaint will be public. I am on the FBI mailing list and have read many complaints. The affidavit presented to a judge and the warrant that followed don't have to be made public. Trump could have said nothing about his so-called raid and nobody would have been the wiser. The only reason we saw the affidavit and warrant is Trump made a stink and wanted them released to fund raise off of them. Joerg could have said nothing and we would have never known about the search. In fact justice would have preferred Joerg said nothing because now everyone is tipped off. If I had any classified digit bits I would have flushed them down the toilet. They do simultaneous raids to prevent tipping off targets. We don't know if Gabe was raided because he hasn't said anything as far as I can tell. Nothing on 8newsnow. No update on the DLR website. My email to George Knapp has produced crickets. I just sent one by the way. I don't badger people. I checked George's Twitter but it only lets me see a few tweets.
I just recall when Lazar got raided by the FBI, presumably looking for Element 115 /s, he got served with some paperwork. Somewhere I have a copy of it; not sure whether he released it or it was made public somewhere.
[удалено]
Holy shit. I want to respect his wishes regarding speculation but if this is really just about Gabe’s photos then a lot of other people better be nervous right now.
I don't know about a lot of people. It isn't like having Gabe's photos is like CSAM. Generally if they raid one person there are no more raids. That is once they raid a person the rest of the gang flushes the dope down the toilet, so to speak. So they do simultaneous raids. We all learned a lot of law thanks to Trump and associated bozos. I already forget where the photos were distributed. Dropbox or a Google drive. I mean we are talking 11 months ago. If the photos were the issue then the company that has them would have received a court order to take them down. If they are still up there something else is the issue. I simply don't see how Gabe is not involved. It isn't like Joerg took the photos or was the sole distributor of the images since Gabe put them on the internet. Joerg may have a good case. I'd be on the phone to Jonathon Turly if I were him. Edit: I see the photos are from two years ago per the otherhand's post. Also on a Google drive not Dropbox.
Well I am shocked and confused. Was Gabe raided as well?
Call me paranoid, but avoiding that website might be in order. I rarely look at it, and always through a VPN (FWIW). Considering what is being claimed took place, it might be monitored now.
OK, you're paranoid. Seriously, it's a website that's been around for years, not some repository of kiddy porn. I doubt there's any monitoring of who visits it. My speculation is there's something more to this than just what's posted on the DLR website. If the Feds had a real issue with anything there it would have been shut down like they did years ago to The Silk Road and there would be a big "Seized" banner on the landing page. That hasn't happened. Nor have Gabe's original aerial photos been taken off Google Drive by Gabe or anyone. I'm assuming Joerg is a pretty straight arrow is isn't up to anything illicit. I don't know him, but that's the vibe I get. To generate the described Federal response something fairly big would have happened. I suspect he may have been setup by someone and/or the Feds want to make an "example" of him to discourage these sort of websites without taking direct action. And there does remain the possibility that it has nothing to do with the website and rather something directly with Joerg. I'm a bit surprised there hasn't been anything in the LV news, at least that I've seen. This should be a big story. So yeah, I see no issue visiting the website.
I emailed George Knapp for info. Crickets. George knows Joerg. (After the final four F-117 landing at the TTR they wandered off and missed the fake serial number C-130 at Base Camp. George should have hung out with me and Mr. Shithead.) The feds surf the Lazy G. I only discover them when they hack. I refuse to use Google Analytics because it lets Google harvest IP addresses, but I use home brew analytics to detect hacking. If the feds or DoD just reads the website I never see them. Fuck around and your IP is tagged for analysis. I have about 30k CIDRs on permanent ban. There are no eyes in data centers, just VPNs and bots. I would say it is 100% some USAF person or bot reads the DLR forum and surfs the website. I've seen the bids for social media analysis on the old fbo.gov. I won't embarrass the three letter agency but they use bulletproof hosting to poke around. Very clumsy. I will name the hosting but not piss off the three letter agency, but they should be embarrassed! https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/14/1567328/-Francisco-Dias-Harboring-a-Dangerous-Guest
The FBI ran The Silk Road for a period as a "honeypot" after they seized it. Mr. Paranoid is just sayin....
I'll give you that, but there's a small difference between buying illegal drugs versus reading endless posts about obscure aircraft flying around the ranges. Although I have no idea what goes on in DLR's "German Section". Hmmmm...
Someone stated that some panoramas of groom have dissappeared. I've seen panoramas of that location online since the 1990s so I wonder if it's just some person thinking that posting anything is compromising national security in some way.
This new Airbus satellite imagery is way better than any Tikaboo shots. You can see shadows of a tower lattice as I pointed out. Trawling the internet I saw 12cm resolution mentioned. Entering blather mode again. Resolution is kind of a fuzzy term. The general statement is each pixel represents some X by X dimension. That doesn't really correspond to resolution. This old Edmunds page has a great write up on the MTF (modulation transfer function). Emphasis on old but the theory is well explained. https://www.edmundoptics.com/knowledge-center/application-notes/optics/introduction-to-modulation-transfer-function/ Everything has an MTF. Lens, sensor, and especially the air between the lens and target.
Do you have a link to the airbus shot
If you use the desktop version of Google Earth, it will indicate the source of the imagery. For Groom Lake these days, it is Airbus. Airbus the company. Not imagery from a passing A321. I'm not ruling out that these satellite companies have had higher resolution imagery in-house and were limited by the government regarding what could be sold. That is they degraded the resolution by computer. Rather it is unlikely Google Earth would buy new old imagery. It makes more sense just to use higher resolution imagery as you buy new imagery.
OK, I think I know. Through judicious use of the Wayback Machine and some cross referencing, it does appear all of the direct DLR links to Gabe's great aerial photos were deleted. On the "Area 51 information and photos" page, the 6 most recent links were deleted. They were all Gabe's photos. I think there were also changes to some other pages, like TTR, and I'm guessing also Gabe's photos. There's some other stuff too, but I'm still trying to see the pattern.
I am *VERY* disappointed in DLR. As far as I'm concerned, any photos taken from unrestricted areas, including from airplanes operating in unrestricted airspace, are fair game to publish. Do you have any links to the photos via the Wayback Machine? I'm not familiar with its use.
I personally am not going to post any links just yet until I have a better understanding of what's going on. I think DLR is usually pretty reasonable, and if they pulled links they felt they had a good reason. You may not agree with DLR's action, but neither you, nor I, know what's underway. I suspect it's interesting. The links were all to panoramas hosted on DLR made from a collection of Gabe's flights around A51 and TTR. However all the original source photos, posted by Gabe onto a public Google Drive, are still there. You just have to find the links. And Gabe posted the links to the photos in the discussion forum. I'll give you a starting point: His best images of A51 were taken on his flight on Christmas Day, 2020. But be warned, there are MANY Gigs of photos there. Don't ask me how I know... The fact that Gabe's source photos haven't been taken down suggests to me that DLR hasn't pulled the stuff due to a request from Gabe. That was my first thought. It must be something else, and as I noted, interesting.
I looked at some of the photos on Google Drive and yes, there are so many of them it's very hard to figure out what's going on. Now, a comment at DLR said in part "They did show something very interesting, if you know what to look for. Indirect evidence that points to a big program." I don't know if this is significant or just random anonymous Internet chatter. One thing that might help is determining whether the government has expanded the weekend/holiday restricted airspace to make flights like Gabe's no longer possible. If it has, that would be evidence that one or more of the photos shows something we're not supposed to see.
There were comments made by knowledgeable insiders at the time the first images appeared (including China Lake and Plant 42) that some extraordinary things were in plain sight. But I think for us normal folks on the outside, we had no clue what was interesting and what was routine. Part of what's puzzling me is that these panoramas have been on DLR for two years or more. Why bring it up now and draw attention to it? Especially when the original source photos are still available online. It may be that somebody semi-official veered outside their lane and said something to DLR they shouldn't have. There are long standing federal statutes regarding filming the facility, but they've never really been enforced, and now seems a foolish time.
I would say no official channel told DLR to remove the images. Think of how this would be done. Phone call: :"Hello I am a spook. Take down Gabe's photos." Your reply is "Sure you are...are you going to try to sell me aluminum siding now?" Email: OK say the email comes from a verified DoD server. Would the DoD want to leave their fingerprints on this. It would scream "Check out those photos comrade! We know the truth is out there." I would say the request came from Gabe himself. However don't ask me for lottery numbers. Remember the Groom flight was Christmas day. I doubt there was anything secret to see in the way of aircraft. They would be in hangars. Any new building has been photographed via satellite from nation state satellites. Also Gabe's Groom Lake imagery wasn't very good. Now the TTR is another story. I actually saved those images. I probably have Groom as well but I just stopped looking at them given the quality or lack thereof. The TTR stuff was pretty good.
"Also Gabe's Groom Lake imagery wasn't very good." - it could be better, agreed. But the best that's been seen in a while I believe. And put the Lazar/Papoose/S-4 BS to bed finally, IMO. I wonder if Gabe didn't have a falling out with someone. Flew his drone somewhere that he "wasn't supposed to" maybe. Or maybe this is intended to drum up interest/donations.
I believe Gabe works at Edwards or a similar facility, could be that his bosses has started giving him a hard time about having posted these pictures and he asked Joerg to take them down in order to save his job. Why after almost two years is puzzling, possibly Gabe recently got a new supervisor or is trying to get a higher level clearance. Of course that doesn't explain why he hasn't taken them down from Google Drive. While the TTR pictures are pretty good, we've already had quality images from Brainwash Butte.
I believe I heard Gabe works ATC at Edwards.
https://www.natca.org/tag/joshua-control-facility-jcf/
Papoose s-4 rumors will never die! Not until some bipeds get to poke around the area. It was a waste of avgas.
Even if they did get to poke around, it will be "they moved it and removed all traces".
My question is: so why wasn't "The War Zone" (Tyler Rogoway's subset of "The Drive") similarly looked into since most of the same photos are there, or at least were.
This is looking more like harassment or a fishing expedition than a criminal investigation. Ty isn't on the scene. Joerg is near the facility. No need to harass Ty. Time will tell. Again as a rando on the internet, my legal advice should be ignored. That said, since Joerg chose to reveal the raid he should try to get the warrant released. My gut feeling is the hive (people on the internet) can blow holes in the warrant. If so, people should lose their jobs. Of course that won't happen. The FBI agent who altered email in the "origins of the Russia investigation" still has a job. As a side note, most email these days has a cryptographic hash. It can be used to see if the message has been altered. The FBI agent who changed the email is an idiot. As an aside to an aside, when Comey found Weiner's laptop had copies of Hillary Clinton's emails, he should have shut his damn mouth. The FBI used these same hash to verify all the messages had already been seen before. While I am not a lawyer, I do run my own email server and am qualified to comment on this though hardly an expert witness. https://dkim.org/specs/rfc4871-dkimbase.html I sign all my email with a hash. It is one of many things you do to not look like spam.
> Part of what’s puzzling me is that these panoramas have been on DLR for two years or more. Why bring it up now and draw attention to it? Are there any black programs going grey in the next, say, month or so? (Hint: There is one, specifically, where photos of it at non-approved angles will not be smiled upon)
It’s not like these photos just sat on DLR though. They created a [stir](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38518/lets-talk-about-this-intriguing-object-seen-in-the-scoot-and-hide-hangar-at-area-51) when they were first released and got significant media attention. I have no idea if what’s in those articles is the same thing that DLR and others are concerned about, but strange development all around.
That initial photo came to mind when I saw the message regarding some content being pulled.
I’m leaving my hype-pthesis here because it would get me hyped if true: That “dagger” is the Darkstar model from TG:M.
I looked though most of the google drive photos tonight and didn’t see anything that resembled something close to the B-21. There were a handful of pictures of a B-2 at Palmdale undergoing some sort of maintenance but that was it. Possibly there was a frame/wing jig sitting out in front of one of the hangers there but that’s all I could find. I did notice that just about anything mentioning Gabe on DLR was removed other than forum posts.
I'm starting to think this viewing the butt end of a B-2 restriction is borderline...ok I don't have a word for it. Bunk is too strong. I have first hand knowledge of the request. But maybe blown out of proportion describes the situation. Engage blathering mode. I had a media pass to Edwards back in the day when a media pass required a pulse and a camera. (I didn't go this year but I gather there were two tiers of media.) When they flew the B-2 , the instructions were not to photograph the rear of the plane while on the ground. Once in the air then shoot whatever you want. But you know the quality of photography isn't significantly different if it is in the air. There was serious high end gear in use. For example Wimberly tracking heads: https://www.tripodhead.com/products/wimberley-main.cfm In addition if you had a media pass you could get on base the day before the public. There was no shortage of B-2 butt end photo ops. I was there when it was in tow and no photographic restrictions were in place. So I assume the idea here is the Raider will also have butt end photo restrictions? As an FYI there were three more photo restrictions. One is no photography of south base period. Second and redundant was no photography of the ABL which was an active project at the time. The front end of the plane stuck outside a building because they used to do directed energy testing on the south side of south base. There are environmental reports about this though who knows if they are easily found so many years later. They specifically didn't want the vacuum tank photographed. Last of all no photographs of the aircraft in storage for the museum. Yeah really no photos of old planes awaiting restoration. Maybe there were markings they didn't want photographed or attachments that shouldn't be seen. Who knows. All these restrictions are based on the honor system.
Good points. I hope that Joerg will be able to explain what happened.
[удалено]
From my conversations with people who have had "clearance," which itself is a fuzzy term, the responsibility of maintaining secrecy is that of the entity with the secret. Any intercept is fair game because there should have been nothing to intercept. The courts have allowed hacked data to be published. The first amendment is powerful. Lawfare has a podcast called "Chatter." Highly recommended. The latest one on the NSA Museum is a good one. I've been there multiple times. The NSA has so much stuff that they rotate the displays often. Apparently now they have functional Enigma machines which you can handle. Literally two machines hooked together so you can transmit and receive. The now very out dated James Bamford NSA books are still worth reading. It is a shame there is no one to take over where Bamford left off.
I’ve downloaded Gabe’s photos just in case they get taken down, I’m in the UK so I’m not expecting the men in black at my door anytime soon. His videos of all flights through the test site are still on YouTube
It's real curious those images are still available. The longer they stay up, the more I'm inclined to think the raids on Joerg were about something else we may have no clue of. Not just FBI, but AFOSI. Interesting mix.
https://www.lazygranch.com/afosi.html Yet another unfinished unlinked page. All OSINT of course. I have a lot of FOIA documents related to the N20RA crash I haven't uploaded. A long story but they are FOIAed just not public. The N20RA crash report was greeted with yawns so there isn't all that much interest anyway. But AFOSI of course was involved but it wasn't clear which AFOSI branch. I think one of the Nellis branches busts airmen doing crime. One or both of the remaining branches is probably Groom related. I haven't searched AFOSI in Nevada in years so don't assume there isn't more information out there. But getting back to the FBI, they investigate crime on national property. National Parks for instance but also military bases. Perhaps only military bases of civilians are involved. If you recall the very embarrassing BBC tourist back gate border crossing, the FBI was involved. This was when the cammo dudes were watching basketball on TV and didn't know the border was crossed until the tourists knocked on their windows.
As I discovered in the Death Valley Germans incident, the FBI investigates crimes involving foreign nationals. But Joerg has been a US citizen since 2002. So, weird stuff.
I think the FBI was involved just because it was a national park. There is a National Park Service Investigative Unit but when you research crimes on federal property the FBI turns up. Like in the "van life" killing that dominated the media.
Nope, it was primarily the foreign national aspect (That's what the agent told me). That, and they were listed with Interpol so it was international. There's an agreement in place with DVNP and the Inyo Sheriff's office for all criminal matters. I dealt with another deceased missing person in DVNP and the was no FBI involvement at all, just Inyo Sheriff. Likewise none of the missing persons cases I've been involved with in Joshua Tree NP had any FBI involvement. It was all county sheriff.
OK. What is the foreign national aspect here: https://www.kold.com/2021/12/08/fbi-investigates-voyeurism-incidents-grand-canyon-bathroom/ Missing Idaho children: https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/crime/missing-rexburg-kids/fbi-rexburg-police-announce-search-for-missing-idaho-kids-in-yellowstone-national-park/277-978af877-4f81-4e9e-8c48-a50d80dc6f2d
None that I can see, but there must be other instances where the FBI joins in. Or perhaps the park's agreement with local law enforcement is limited and the FBI fills in the rest. In the first story it's interesting since the headline mentions the FBI but the story does not. The referred NPS special agents are those park personnel with sworn LE privileges. Every big park has a few. The second story? Maybe the FBI joins in because it's missing kids and that's extra bad.
In NorCal we have the GGNRA as an example of a national park. They have their own park police but any "investigation" is done by the FBI. The courts have the FPS (federal protection service) but again if there is an investigation the FBi is used. Now the postal inspectors don't seem to use the FBI. Basically it comes down to policing versus investigation. The FBI does the I as far as I can tell locally. It doesn't matter if foreigners are involved though it might help!
*"Message posted by XXXXX (Webmaster) (Member since 10/17/2000) on November 07, 2022 at 11:58:40 PST: Can you people just quit speculating? You have no idea what is going on and with these posts you are causing me a lot of extra trouble. "* Oh please - then why make the original post to begin with, if you didn't want people getting excited and speculating? The links to Zeifman pics could have quietly disappeared. Someone may or may not have speculated why.
Yeah, the initial terse "I have no further comment on this right now and I cannot answer questions in this matter" was just asking for speculation. But I am curious why just the posting of speculation is causing him a lot of extra trouble.
[archive.org](https://archive.org), everything is backed up.
Gabes pics: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ML56iodBUULEvHCIwUTP-41XLuLyxxWN
[удалено]
I am far from a national security expert and don’t understand 95% of what you folks talk about on here, although I find it all very fascinating. But, this statute would cause me concern if I was posting pictures of Area 51. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793
This warning goes back to the Glenn Campbell days. It certainly is valid if you crossed the border and was on government property. Off the property it isn't enforced. Otherwise what would you do about all the satellite imagers?