L' INTELLIGENCE CYBER par Jean-Paul Pinte

A brief philosophical history of the NSA

RP 191 (May/Jun 2015) / Commentary, Data & Surveillance
Gregoire Chamayou

6 July 1962, NAVFAC base, Barbados.

A grey building stands at the foot of a stone lighthouse overlooking the Caribbean Sea. Inside, a military serviceman is examining the lines being recorded on an enormous roll of paper by the stylus of a sort of gigantic electrocardiogram. We are in one of the secret bases of the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) network, established by the US Navy in the 1950s. Among the clutter of zigzags, from which he has learnt to read the sound of the oceans, the man is looking for a ‘signature’. Today, for the first time, he spots the signal of a Soviet nuclear submarine.

Oceanic enemy