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Mysterious metal towers are popping up at local [NYC] tunnels, and soon they'll start appearing at bridges, too.
But even people on the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] board in charge of the towers can't say why they're being used or what's in them, CBS2's Dave Carlin reports.
Jose Lugo said the tall metal towers quickly appeared up after the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel tolls[sic] booths came down.
"We don't really know what's the purpose of this," he told Carlin.
It's a $100 million MTA project shrouded in secrecy, with 18 of them for tunnels and bridges. So what are they exactly?
[...] [MTA Chairman] Lhota: "The base of these new pieces that are going up include whatever fiber optics are necessary for those Homeland Security items."
Z backscatter arrays?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 29 2017, @03:03AM (11 children)
Anybody recognize the emitter/receiver configuration?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 29 2017, @03:15AM (9 children)
Looks more like optical/chemical detection rather than RF/microwave, possibly with some IMSI-catcher stuff in there. It smells all and can detect explosives, drugs, toxins, the smell of human fear, pirated software, and bootleg DVDs.
I have a weird tale of my own regarding weird shit on light posts. If I quit shitposting on Soylent, it means they got me. I am in good health, happy, with a very well-functioning vehicle, and have no plans whatsoever to commit self-harm.
Anyway, as of a few years ago, I started noticing cylindrical antenna radomes mounted on much of the street light posts. Going to look at one up-close with the naked eye revealed a yellow triangle of RF radiation warning as well as a coax (probably with n-type connector) feed from the cereal box-sized electronics enclosure to the antenna*.
One time, I saw a crew in a utility truck maintaining one. The company was called Liberty [Something], with the Liberty Bell as their logo, based out of Corona, CA. Looking at their website I noticed that military background was heavily emphasized in their job application -- much more than usual given that industry.
Now that is weird, you'd think with all the telecom experts here in San Diego you'd have a local firm (or the city itself) be maintaining those. IMSI catchers, perhaps? Like the ones found in DC by the security experts?
* Come-on, I know that at least one of you knows what that really is. What the hell are they?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 29 2017, @04:37AM
This reminds me of something somewhat similar I saw going up on the DC Mall last year: they installed a bunch of towers with odd pod-things on them, and some pretty big cabling going to the pods. I didn't catch who the installers were affiliated with; I might have a photo of these things somewhere. But sometime after the inauguration, they seemed to disappear, and I don't see them there any more.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Friday September 29 2017, @04:57AM
My guess is those are a nodal packet switching backup for the city.
In the event all hell breaks loose and the internet/cell towers go down, the city police/fire/medical will still have communication.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Friday September 29 2017, @01:31PM (3 children)
Eth-OH has it. I remember as a kid walking 2 miles to middle school past a light industrial area that had an official EPA air quality monitoring station at its eastern border (prevailing winds, etc) and the crazy number and direction of vents vaguely reminds me of that old thing from days long ago. Air vents everywhere at all heights above ground and all directions with grates to keep the birds nests out. In the old days it was a large station like five or so square yards of something that looked like a weird star trek episode complete with some blinking lights, I guess newer tech shrinking it down, etc.
Those vents are very air-move-y not EE waveguide for cell phones.
Obviously this isn't boring EPA its some cloak and dagger .mil NBC monitoring stuff. Neutron activate dust particles or maybe FTIR organic chemical gasses or both.
Of course it MIGHT be a cell phone or blue tooth or tire pressure, or all three, sniffing system with about $100 of industrial air duct products bolted on that do absolutely nothing at all to throw us off. OR it does air monitoring for NBC terror/false flag weapons in addition to RF sniffing. Given how little space and power it takes to do RF stuff it probably has a special package bolted onto it regardless of what its "supposed" to do.
Until I saw the pics I thought they were talking about gates. We had gates added to our interstate on ramps in the early war on terror era. I would imagine tunnels and bridges need gates for handing fires and accidents, this is of course different.
It looks like a bad place for a camera, so its not for visual stuff. Unless its there to throw us off...
Speaking of tire pressure monitoring systems, those are serial numbered for tracking vehicle purposes. Kinda creepy how those were demanded on all vehicles not just ford exploder SUVs. Although of course IIRC they rammed those tracking device thru, merely months before people started carrying tracking device smartphones everywhere including in cars, so they're kinda useless for general surveillance now compared to delicious tracking abilities of smart phones.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Friday September 29 2017, @01:57PM (1 child)
In the video they showed a closeup of one of the "units" and it looked like behind the louvers it had a large square grid of round things, which reminded me of some kind of LED lighting array, I would assume not in the visible spectrum if that's what's it is. Does it look like a plausible component of an air sampling system?
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Friday September 29 2017, @02:32PM
Sure, there's a classic particle detector design where you shine light thru the air and have what amounts to a computer watching a microscope, with infinite patience, watch individual illuminated particles float by, then scale up the numbers to ug/cu meter or whatever.
Then you have the computer vision system play analysis games on the particles to bin them by particle size or even identify them "oh thats a spec of diesel soot, that's an individual concrete dust chunk, that's an anthrax spore, whoopsie sound the alarm"
Or its theater set crews mocking up something to trick us into thinking a RF station is an air quality station.
Or its something else, of course.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday September 30 2017, @01:48AM
But... you can turn a cell phone off, or even put it in a tinfoil bag.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 29 2017, @02:41PM
That tracks with a security contract that I was tangentially involved with the bidding on back in 2013 - sniffers to be placed on top of buildings and other places looking for traces of bioweapons, they (said that they) could PCR amplify and identify many common bioweapons from unique DNA sequences. Then, of course, the in-field lab has to communicate threat detections back to the command/control network, using much the same network as video security cameras.
What steered me away from such things was the sort of uniformity of the towers in the New York footage, looked like maybe 16 identical hooded pods with that array of things in each one, but maybe...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @06:24PM
They're for Project Bluebeam or whatever the fuck it's called. For projecting holograms so we can have a fake second coming of god or some such garbage. That'd be my guess! :D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @09:49PM
aren't they testing the gunshot sensor/detectors?
i thought they were going to put those all over, to add even more data to their cyber crime fighting patriot stuff.
in addition to bluetooth, IMEI and wifi mac address collection as you drive pass, vin and license plate too. airplane mode for phones on your passengers doesn't actually disable that stuff and they are guilty by association with whoever is targeted for example making. blue tooth in cars is the best thing since red light cameras. just imagine a license plate that yells its number 24x7.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday September 29 2017, @01:53PM
Could it be a photon-emitter array? (LEDs) With batteries and a charger in the ventilated cage? Kept "secret" to let everyone speculate, worry, and stew?