The NSA spy fortress in the middle of New York City

2016-11-28T13:20:00-05:00

The Intercept has published a fascinating, and eerie, investigation into the iconic Brutalist tower at 33 Thomas Street in Manhattan. Built to withstand a nuclear bomb, the modern fortress has no windows. At night, the building is a dark shadow blocking the illuminated towers around it.

But 33 Thomas Street wasn't built as a fallout shelter—or not for humans at least. Rather, the building was intended to house a massive array of servers, switchboards and computers. According to the Intercept, it's also one of the NSA's most important spy hubs, "used to tap into phone calls, faxes, and internet data."

Documents obtained by The Intercept from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden do not explicitly name 33 Thomas Street as a surveillance facility. However — taken together with architectural plans, public records, and interviews with former AT&T employees conducted for this article — they provide compelling evidence that 33 Thomas Street has served as an NSA surveillance site, code-named T...

Losing yourself in the smart city

2015-12-03T18:35:00-05:00

Thanks to Big Data, it is now next to impossible to reside anonymously in a modern city. Why? Because data anonymization itself is almost impossible without using advanced cryptography. Our every transaction leaves a digital marker that can be mined by anyone with the right tools or enough determination.

Archinect - News

The NSA spy fortress in the middle of New York City

Losing yourself in the smart city