Manhattan's Area 51

November 24, 2016 6:50 AM

Titanpointe, the NSA's spy hub located in a windowless AT&T skyscraper in New York.
posted by beagle (38 comments total)

More Manhattan's Teufelsberg, I'd say.
posted by Devonian at 7:01 AM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Reading the The Intercept on any given day is like experiencing a horror movie.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:14 AM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

‘Barad-dûr Titanpointe, the “Dark Tower,” is a fictional place in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings Manhattan and is described in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and other works. It is an enormous fortress of the Dark Lord Sauron. Donald, whence he rules the volcanic and barren land of Mordor ‘Murica. Located in northwest the heart of downtown Mordor, Manhattan near Mount Doom, the Eye of Sauron Donald keeps watch over Middle-earth from its highest tower.’—source.
posted by misteraitch at 7:36 AM on November 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

The silent "e" really classes it up.
posted by AndrewInDC at 7:42 AM on November 24, 2016 [18 favorites]

pointe? Like do NSA agents pronounce it like the dictionary.com voice, ˈtaɪt n pwɛ̃t? 😂
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:46 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

You mean it's not Information Retrieval headquarters?
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:52 AM on November 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

The silent "e" really classes it up.

They really have a hardon for that silent E, both TITANPOINTE and SKIDROWE.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:55 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I wonder how many film students in NYC have made dystopian sci fi shorts using exterior footage of this building as their establishing shot ('cause I know I would if I were them).
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:57 AM on November 24, 2016

So that must be the building that hold Samaritan then right? Because if Samaritan actually exists, it begins to explain a lot of 2016.
posted by koolkat at 8:00 AM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

T̢̳̜͉̮͉̞̑H̥̬̠̯̦̉R̻̣ͬ͟E̥̅͜Ḁͣ͆T̠̠̝̮̫̳͓̃̌̄ͧ̈́͋ͭ ̫͙̟͆̒Ď̼̯̬̬͐̈ͭ͝E͟T̠̫ͧ̾ͫͬ͂Eͭ҉͕͓̜̘̹̹Ĉ̷̳̘̲ͤ̌͒̐T͕̦̙͌͂ͯ͑̌ͦE̼͉̜̙̳͕̬͌̎̿Ď̟̜̄͑̌̽̃ͬ:͈̪̼͗̈̍̄̈́͋͞ ̗̫̺̟̈́͐ͯͧͫ̍ ̢̼̯̮͔̯̥̦̄́ͬ̄̊k̷ͬͪͥ̈́̔ͨ͂o͓̹̤͂̔̋̀o͍͖͂l͇͔̳̤̹̹͙͌̀c̫͙͔͕̏̄ͭa̯̤̲ͬ͗͆͞t̶̞̩̙͕͕̠̰̃̀̒ͥ
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:05 AM on November 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

It's a bit of dark humor on behalf of the cosmos that Mark Klein, who blew the whistle on an NSA's wiretapping in 2006 in San Francisco, also worked at this facility on the other side of the country during the entirety of the 1980's.
posted by antonymous at 8:06 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I used to live near there. My wife and I didn't know what it was, but we called it the NSA datacenter building. It was not exactly a hard guess.
posted by milarepa at 8:15 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Eh, it's not an NSA building. It's a colocation building and, yeah, AT&T is probably getting paid by the NSA to tap their cross-Atlantic cables there but, as a whole, the building itself isn't an NSA facility. The Intercept article does mention this but it's a bit scattered. I'm not too sure about the radio monitoring part of the article. That seems more speculative since a Google maps aerial shot just shows 2 satellite dishes however where they point is interesting since only one points south(towards geostationary satellites) and the other one seems to be pointing east. I would've guessed that they'd be using the teleport facility on Staten Island but it looks like those dishes got removed in 2005. Anyways, those were my thoughts when reading the article.
posted by I-baLL at 8:38 AM on November 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I feel like the mere act of reading that story just put me onto multiple watchlists.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:38 AM on November 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I recently had art piece at a show 2 or 3 blocks south of that building and walked by it every day.

Whoever designed the building had a certain flair. It looks like somewhere between a place that people would murder each other in Æon Flux and an electro-orthanc; with no openings in the north, east(?), or west sides of the building until about 6 stories up where you see those giant vents.

On the south side, there are the steps, facade, and entrance. The pictures in the article don't really give the entryway justice. The facade is faded and the whole entrance looks abandoned as if no one has actually opened the door since 1982ish. Everything else looks quite well maintained, only the vestigial door for people has withered.
posted by ethansr at 8:58 AM on November 24, 2016 [9 favorites]

OTOH, seeing stories like that and avoiding reading them would probably show up as deliberately trying to avoid drawing attention to yourself, and would thus put you on other watchlists.
posted by acb at 8:59 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

The silent "e" really classes it up.

needs moar umlauts for maximum evil
posted by entropicamericana at 9:13 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

entrance looks abandoned as if no one has actually opened the door since 1982ish.

Current tech is pretty darned reliable and requires a pretty small staff, there must be a loading dock where virtually all tech traffic proceeds leaving it not unlikely that the "front door" unused for years.

The building is probably at this point basically a data center with racks and racks of computers with really great bandwidth. The actual fiber data paths probably look like almost empty conduits, the original wired network that would have been physically huge would probably run on a single fiber the thickness of a pencil lead.
posted by sammyo at 9:41 AM on November 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

AT&T's service buildings all tend to be windowless and unfriendly-looking. There's one that's not a dystopian skyscraper, but certainly gives off the same vibe, just blocks from where I work.
posted by lagomorphius at 9:59 AM on November 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yeah, windows let in heat and light and water, which are all bad for the electromechanical equipment the building originally housed. It used to be packed to the gills with the equipment to handle long distance traffic for the entire northeast plus all the international calls to Europe and who knows where else.

Once they went electronic in the 70s and 80s, they reduced their space requirements by 75% or so. (Four entire floors of switch gear into one floor) These days, the gear is even smaller than that, but there is less incentive to replace them since it's not as drastic a change in space at the volume of traffic they still handle.

Point being, that transition freed up a lot of space that they can now lease to datacenter operators, other telcos, and/or the NSA, so they do that.
posted by wierdo at 10:08 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Probably the most diabolical thing that the NSA is doing here is getting people to not take them seriously by naming a major program after an 80s hair band.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:17 AM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

teleport facility on Staten Island

That almost certainly means something different than what I'm imagining, but I don't want to spoil things by looking it up.
posted by figurant at 10:17 AM on November 24, 2016 [9 favorites]

lagomorphus is right - the ATT building a few blocks from me here in CA is -not- a skyscraper and it still is a windowless intimidating factory looking building. Not even a little friendly.
posted by FritoKAL at 10:17 AM on November 24, 2016

That almost certainly means something different than what I'm imagining, but I don't want to spoil things by looking it up.

I agree, but I wouldn't mind having that address, you know, just in case.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:19 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Most cities have old telephone exchanges that look like this. There's nothing particularly mysterious about that (if you come across a building like this without knowing, you might wonder though).

What the NSA and similar agencies are up to is deeply disturbing, the architecture of the buildings they utilize not so much.
posted by uffda at 10:22 AM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Psh, like anyone would want to teleport to staten island.
posted by softlord at 10:31 AM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh, no, Staten Island would be the point of exit. Destination? Less picky about that by the day.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:36 AM on November 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I wonder if the second-busiest port in the United States that has a big federal presence would do such a thing?
posted by basicchannel at 11:02 AM on November 24, 2016

So if AT&T is Lithium, who are Artifice, Serenade, and Rocksalt? (And by that I mean it's pretty obvious, but which is which)

I walk by a windowless building like the one in basicchannel's photo every day (but smaller). I have noted that it's pretty boring and uninteresting looking. Like almost TOO uninteresting, not a single sign, company name, or anything. Even electrical substations have more information. Sometimes there are CenturyLink trucks in the lot, though.
posted by ctmf at 11:51 AM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Probably the most diabolical thing that the NSA is doing here is getting people to not take them seriously by naming a major program after an 80s hair band

Creating their Skidrowe "logo" in what looks like MS Paint surely helps.
posted by AndrewInDC at 12:00 PM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

It was an unusually audacious, highly sensitive assignment: to build a massive skyscraper, capable of withstanding an atomic blast, in the middle of New York City.

When I read that sentence I wondered how many twenty and thirty year olds read it and ask themselves, "why would an atomic blast be a design concern?"
posted by peeedro at 12:20 PM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I used to live right across the street from that very building! I actually think it's quite beautiful.
posted by rossmeissl at 1:26 PM on November 24, 2016

I am perversely delighted that the floorplan is labelled in Eurostile Bold Extended, as befitting something out of a dystopian science fiction movie.
posted by Major Clanger at 1:47 PM on November 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Los Angeles has a storage facility that's very much like it.
posted by Omon Ra at 2:08 PM on November 24, 2016

Also, if AT&T is LITHIUM, on the theory that letters are protons, does that mean that Verizon is NITROGEN?
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:05 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

They really have a hardon for that silent E, both TITANPOINTE and SKIDROWE.

It's not out of the question that it signifies something in their compartmentalization scheme. Are there other members of this family known to the public?
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:20 AM on November 25, 2016

Interesting that the secret equipment is inside SCIFs (vibration and electromagnetic isolated chambers). I wouldn't think that would be necessary, since it's evident that this is done with the full cooperation of the phone companies -- and electromagnetic isolation seems a bit pointless if you're running massive network links into the things.

Other than that I don't see any real surprise here. Manhattan is one hub of the NSA's surveillance network, but probably not even a particularly important one since there aren't a whole lot of data centers or long-distance fiber terminations there.
posted by miyabo at 8:09 PM on November 25, 2016

Interesting that the secret equipment is inside SCIFs (vibration and electromagnetic isolated chambers). I wouldn't think that would be necessary

Quantum computers for breaking all the encryption.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:30 PM on November 26, 2016 [1 favorite]