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(Updated: November 24, 2015) At three satellite facilities, in Britain, Cyprus and New Zealand, there's a special antenna that allows NSA's partner agencies a significant increase in their capability to collect satellite communications. This antenna is called Torus, and while conventional parabolic dish antennas can only view one satellite at a time, one single Torus antenna is able to receive the signals from up to 35 communications satellites. These rare and expensive Torus antennas are used by some television networks, but a close look at photos of the Five Eyes satellite stations has now revealed the locations where Torus antennas are also used for gathering signals intelligence. A General Dynamics Satcom Technologies Torus antenna with the array of receiver heads clearly visible The Torus antenna is rectangular, instead of circular like the conventional satellite dishes. Its quasi-parabolic shape is actually a section of a geometrical shape called torus , which it gave its...

(Updated: January 6, 2017) Most of the Snowden-revelations are about spying on the internet, but NSA and GCHQ are also conducting the more traditional collection of telephone communications that go through satellite links. What needs to be done before phone calls can be collected, can be learned from two highly detailed technical reports from the GCHQ listening station near Bude in the UK. These reports were published on August 31 last year by the German magazine Der Spiegel and the website The Intercept as part of a story about how Turkey is both a partner and a target for US intelligence. Here we will analyse what's in these reports, which give an interesting impression of the techniques used to transmit telephone communications over satellite links. Satellite dishes at the GCHQ intercept station near Bude, Cornwall, UK Officially, such technical reports are called "informal reports", as opposed to the "serialized reports" that contain finished intelligence...