The AP/Al Jazeera building appears to have been a cyber and signal intelligence hub ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, May 20, 2021

The AP/Al Jazeera building appears to have been a cyber and signal intelligence hub

The Alma Research and Education Center, which normally does original intelligence analysis of threats on Israel's northern border, takes a look at Israel's bombing of the Al Jalaa towers that housed several media outlets including AP and Al Jazeera.

The roof of the building had a stunning amount of antennas and dishes there:

This is not normal for a media building. These are sophisticated military intelligence gathering tools.

The IDF at the time of the bombing announced that it "contained military assets belonging to Hamas military intelligence." The array of equipment visible indicates that this is an understatement.

Analyst Tal Beeri notes that a week before the bombing, Israel asked that residents of communities near Gaza turn off and disconnect all home security cameras they have inside and outside their houses.

The only reason that makes sense is if Hamas has a way of intercepting the video signals (whether by direct access to the camera or through wi-fi) from miles away, which is certainly possible, especially if the signal is unobstructed - Gaza towers could easily have a direct line of sight into Israeli communities.

Beeri takes an educated guess that Hamas used the building to grab video signals to effectively turn security cameras into their own spy equipment to see where they can plan drone attacks or kidnap attempts.

He says, "The Hamas military intelligence technological research and development unit is accountable for carrying out terrorist activities against Israel and operated inside of a military compound situated within the building. In our assessment, this unit activated offensive cyber or SIGINT capabilities or a combination of both. The antennas on the roof of the building were utilized by this unit to carry out its operations against Israeli targets, both civilian and military."

This is more than plausible. Civilian media hubs do not have that type of array of equipment on their roofs.

And when you understand the potential danger that such an intelligence operation would pose to Israeli civilians - undoubtedly built with Iranian expertise - tweets like this from Ben Rhodes shows how little supposed "experts" know - or in his case, how they try to gaslight everyone.