Almost every weekday morning, a device leaves a two-story house near Wiesbaden, Germany, and makes the 15-minute commute along a major autobahn. Around 7 a.m., he arrived at the Lucius D. Clay Kaserne, the European headquarters of the U.S. Army and a key center for U.S. intelligence operations.
The device stops near a restaurant before heading to an office near the base that belongs to a large government contractor responsible for equipping and securing some of the nation’s most sensitive facilities.
For approximately two months in 2023. this unit follows a predictable routine: stops at the contractor’s office, visits to a discreet base hangar, and lunch trips to the base dining facility. Twice last November, he made the 30-minute drive to the Dagger compound, a former NSA intelligence and signals processing center. On weekends, the device can be tracked to restaurants and shops in Wiesbaden.
The person carrying this device is probably not a spy or high-ranking intelligence official. Instead, experts believe they are a contractor working on critical systems — HVAC, computer infrastructure or possibly securing the newly built Consolidated Intelligence Center, a state-of-the-art facility suspected to be used by the National Security Agency.
Whoever they are, the device they carry with them everywhere puts US national security at risk.
A joint investigation by WIRED, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) and Netzpolitik.org reveals that US companies legally collecting digital ad data are also providing the world with a cheap and reliable way to track the movements of US military and intelligence officials abroad, from their homes and their children’s schools to hardened airplane shelters at an air base believed to store US nuclear weapons.
Collaborative analysis of billions of location coordinates obtained from a US-based data broker provides extraordinary insight into the daily lives of US service members. The findings also provide a stark example of the significant risks that the unregulated sale of mobile location data poses to the integrity of the US military and the safety of its service members and their families overseas.
We tracked hundreds of thousands of signals from devices at sensitive American installations in Germany. This includes dozens of devices at alleged NSA surveillance or signal analysis facilities, more than a thousand devices at a sprawling US base where Ukrainian troops were trained in 2023, and nearly 2,000 more at an Air Force base that provides crucial support of US drone operations.
A device possibly linked to the NSA or an intelligence official is broadcasting coordinates from inside a windowless building with a metal exterior known as the “tin box” that is used for NSA surveillance, according to agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Another device transmitted signals from a restricted weapons testing facility, revealing its zigzagging movements through a high-security area used for tank maneuvers and live ammunition training.
