Watch an RC Plane Drop Whistleblowing Fliers Over NSA's Dagger Complex

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Watch an RC Plane Drop Whistleblowing Fliers Over NSA's Dagger Complex

Activists are trying to persuade NSA employees to quit.
Janus Rose
New York, US

A group of privacy activists from the tactical media group Peng! has been putting boots on the ground outside the headquarters of the NSA and GCHQ lately, hoping to help turn employees of the world's most powerful intelligence agencies into whistleblowers.

Now, it seems they've taken to the skies.

In a new video set to cheesy-triumphant music, the group shows first-person footage of a remote controlled plane flying over Dagger Complex, the US military base in Darmstadt, Germany that houses 1,100 employees and serves as the NSA's main European signals intelligence hub. The drone's payload: A fat stack of flyers for Intel Exit, the group's campaign to inspire dissent within the ranks of the NSA, GCHQ, and other spy agencies around the world.

Dagger Complex has a special significance in surveillance-wary Germany, and has long been seen as a slice of the American surveillance state on German soil. The base has been the site of countless protests, including "spy spotting" nature walks organized by activists following the Snowden revelations.

So far, Peng has also set up banners on trucks outside NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland headquarters and GCHQ's donut-shaped base of operations in Cheltenham, England. Whether the campaign is having its intended effect is still anybody's guess, but the message is clearly being sent—by land, sea, or air.