_________ SWAT MAGAZINE ISSUE TWENTY NINE MAY 2000 __________ / \___________________________________________/ \ / Menwith Hill March 2000 Protest \ / by GrEEn_GobLiNz \ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm writing this a few weeks after the event, so please excuse any slight inaccuracies, this is my account of the things that happened whilst i was there. I finished work at 13.20 and ended up going to menwith on my mates suggestion. Arrived at around 14.00 ish. A makeshift car park was in use, and on the way there we passed several police cars, for some reason they didn't appreciate us doing the peace sign. Anyhow we manaqged to catch up with thye procession just before the main gates, the protest was about 500 strong, including the presence of Chumbawumba and Mark Thomas. The car park outside the main gates is usually absolutely out of bounds to the public, but on this day it provided ample oppertunities for photos to be taken and veggie burgers to be fried (seriously!), lets face it though, there was no way that they could arrest the crowed who were there. I actually didn't have my camera with me, but i manged to get some pics from someone on alt.ph.uk, do a search for the menwith hill thread if you are interested in other peoples accounts of the protest. I'll include the pics if it doesn't make the zip file too big. (pics were not sent, or not included - Phreakazoid) Along the way Mark Thomas rung somebody up in France who used to work for Menwith hill, asked a few questions and then casually explained to him that in answering him he had infact broken the official secrets act. I met one of my mates there who afctually gave his friends phone number to Mark to call on his show, the point to this was that this persons dad works in security at Menwith. I didn't get chance to talk to Chumbawumba, to be honest i didn't even recognise them, they kinda look different on stage! One person i did get to speak to though was Mark Thomas. He was a bit bissy so i only got chan ce to say hi, but he did explain that he wasn't actually filming that day and was just there out of interest. The actual point of the protest was against the echelon project which is basically like the Windoze find application, it consists of a series of satellites which intercept messeges on phones, emails etc, transferrs these to computers which then filter out and record messeges containing words such as IRA, explosives and also useful for steeling tellecommunications contracts from poor countries, enough sed. This meant that various people were dressed in luke skywalker outfits- hours of amusement. After a while the proccession started again, a few broke off to walk along the perimeter fence, one guy even ended up going arse over tits in the mud. Being able to walk that close to the compound was quite a rarity in itself, usually there are 4 machine gunners posted at strategic positions along the fence, but these had been removed for purposes of publicity. When we reached the crosss roads we all waited for everybody to catch up, in accordance with the police wishes we waited on only one lane of the road, for the minute anway. Shortly after we stopped, two huge army wagons wanted to get through, and seen as we were all very tired some bloke suggested we all sat down This plea was met with discoueragement from the police, of the intelligently worded, 'Oh don't sit down'. The bloke and a few others did sit down to the police man's own words 'Oh sit down then' At this time i laughed and ssaid something mildly abusive about the wonderful work the police did, i was joined in my insults by several others and before the police knew it the road was completely blocked by people. It later turned out that the wagons were actually British, and some soldiers who were on training, and had been warned about the protest and had been told not to come that way, decided to do it anyway. I'm Hacked666, GrEEn_GobLiNz, or just plain Goblinz. This is my first article, so i thought i might as well introduce myself. I like to think of myself as a bit of an all rounder, specialising in pyros and pedo-hunting. I admit that i have a lot to learn in the hacking field, but i'm getting there.