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Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station

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Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station
Station hertzienne de Pierre-sur-Haute
The military radio station of Pierre-sur-Haute. Two military towers are pictured: the Télédiffusion de France relay tower is in the centre, with the living quarters, and a helipad.
Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station is located in France
Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station
Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station
TypeRadio tower complex
Site information
Controlled byFrance
Site history
Built1961
MaterialsConcrete, steel

The Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station is a 30-hectare (74-acre) site used for French military communications. It is in the Sauvain and Job communes, with the boundary between the Rhône-Alpes and Auvergne regions passing through the site. A civilian radio relay has also been built at this location by the telecommunications company Télédiffusion de France.[1]

History

In 1913, a semaphore telegraph (French: Chappe telegraph) was built where the military radio station is now. At the time, it was a small stone building, with the semaphore on top.[1]

In 1961, during the Cold War, NATO asked the French Army to build the station as part of the 82-node transmission network in Europe known as the ACE High system.[2] In this network, the Pierre-sur-Haute station, or FLYZ, was a relay between the Lachens (FNIZ) station to the south and the Mont-Août (FADZ) station to the north.[3] The NATO radio station was using American-made tropospheric scatter equipment to relay voice and telegraph signals on a network stretching from Turkey to the Arctic Polar Circle in Norway.[2] The French Air Force took control of the station in 1974.[1] In the late 1980s, the system is gradually replaced by a combination of national defense systems and some NATO-owned subsystems.[2] The large parabolic antennas, known locally as Mickey's ears, were replaced with the current two-antennas setup in 1991.[1]

Role

The Pierre-sur-Haute station is controlled by the French Air Force and is a subsidiary of the Lyon – Mont Verdun Air Base, 80 km from the station. It is one of the four radio stations along France's north-south axis, in constant communication with the three others: Lacaune, Henrichemont and the Rochefort air base.[4] The station is mainly used for transmissions relating to the command of operational units. If French nuclear weapons (Force de Frappe) were used, the fire order might pass through this relay.[1]

The station has been part of the Commandement Air des Systèmes de Surveillance d’Information et de Communications (Air Command of Surveillance, Information and Communication Systems) since its creation on 1 June 1994; from 1 January 2006, it has been run by the Direction Interarmées des Réseaux d'Infrastructure et des Systèmes d'Information (Joint Direction of Infrastructure Networks and Information Systems).[4]

The station is under the command of a major.[1][5] About 20 personnel are on-site, including electricians, mechanics, and cooks.[1]

Infrastructure

Concrete towers housing the military radio equipment at Pierre-sur-Haute

The station is situated on a 30-hectare site between the communes of Sauvain and Job, positioned over the border between the two departments of Loire and Puy-de-Dôme. The perimeter is surrounded by a high barrier of wood and metal. Military staff and employees arrive via road or tracked vehicles. This road is closed to the public.[1]

Buildings

The radio station, photographed February 2009

There are three towers at the site. The tallest one is a 55-metre high civilian telecommunication tower, owned by Télédiffusion de France.[6] The telecommunication tower is topped by a radome and contains a mode S air traffic control radar beacon system owned by the Directorate General for Civil Aviation. The radar has been in operation since 18 August 2009[7][8] but has experienced malfunctions due to heavy snowfall in the area.[9]

The two remaining concrete towers are owned by the military. The 30-metre high structures[10] have been used since 1991 for radio transmission and reception. These are built to withstand the blast of a nuclear explosion.[1]

Some buildings are used as garages and living quarters, complete with kitchen, dining room and bedrooms. They are linked together by tunnels, 400 metres in total length, so as to avoid walking through thick snow in winter when moving from one building to the other.[1]

Underground facilities

The most important part of the site is the underground part, used for transmissions dispatch: at a speed of 2 [[bit per second|Template:Dabbr]], communications from the towers are analysed, then redirected to be transmitted.[1]

This part of the facility is supplied with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defences: concrete protection defended against electromagnetic pulses by a Faraday cage, positively pressured rooms, etc. The facility has independent water and power supplies.[1]

French-language Wikipedia article

See also: Censorship of Wikipedia

In April 2013, the radio station attracted attention after the French interior intelligence agency Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur (DCRI) attempted to have an article about the facility removed from the French-language Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation asked the intelligence agency what precise parts of the article were a problem in the eyes of the intelligence agency, noting that the article closely reflected information in a freely available 2004 television broadcast by Télévision Loire 7, a local TV station.[11][12] The DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for deletion of the article. The Wikimedia Foundation refused to delete the article, and the DCRI pressured Rémi Mathis, a volunteer administrator of the French language Wikipedia and resident of France, into removing the article.[11][13] The administrator, an employee of the state-owned Bibliothèque nationale de France and president of the association Wikimédia France, obeyed.[14] According to a statement issued by Wikimédia France on 6 April 2013:

The DCRI summoned a Wikipedia volunteer in their offices on April 4th [2013]. This volunteer, which was one of those having access to the tools that allow the deletion of pages, was forced to delete the article while in the DCRI offices, on the understanding that he would have been held in custody and prosecuted if he did not comply. Under pressure, he had no other choice than to delete the article, despite explaining to the DCRI this is not how Wikipedia works. He warned the other sysops that trying to undelete the article would engage their responsibility before the law. This volunteer had no link with that article, having never edited it and not even knowing of its existence before entering the DCRI offices. He was chosen and summoned because he was easily identifiable, given his regular promotional actions of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in France.

— Wikimédia France[15]

Later, the article was restored by another Wikipedia administrator, residing in Switzerland.[15][16][17] As a result of the controversy, the article became the most-read page on French Wikipedia,[18] with over 120,000-page views during the weekend of 6/7 April 2013.[19] It was translated into multiple other languages.[20] The French newspaper 20 minutes,[21] Ars Technica,[18] and a posting on Slashdot,[22] noted it as an example of the Streisand effect in action. The French Ministry of the Interior told the Agence France-Presse that for the moment it did not wish to comment on the incident.[23]

According to a judicial source quoted in an AFP story on 8 April, the article's deletion "was performed as part of a preliminary inquiry" led by the "anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office" on the grounds that the French-language Wikipedia article compromised "classified material related to the nuclear firing orders chain of transmission".[24] A report in Le Point suggested that the article contained "confidential information that may relate to the French nuclear deterrent" such as "rates of resistance of materials".[25]

Following the incident, Télévision Loire 7 said that it expected that the DCRI would request that it take down the original 2004 report on which the Wikipedia article was based, though it had been filmed and broadcast with the full cooperation of the French armed forces.[26] The National Union of Police Commissaires suggested that the next step would be for the judiciary to order French Internet service providers to block access to the Wikipedia article.[25] However, the France-based NGO Reporters Without Borders criticised the DCRI's actions as "a bad precedent". The organisation's spokesman told Le Point that, "if the institution considers that secret defence information has been released, it has every opportunity to be recognised by the courts in arguing and clarifying its application. It is then up to the judge, the protector of fundamental freedoms, to assess the reality and extent of military secrecy." The spokesman noted that the information contained in the article had come from a documentary that had previously been filmed and distributed with the cooperation of the army, and that the hosts and intermediaries should not be held responsible.[27]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Paul-Émile Liogier (reporter) (2004). La base militaire de Chalmazel (documentary) (in French). Télé Loire 7. Retrieved 5 April 2013. {{cite AV media}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); no-break space character in |accessdate= at position 2 (help); no-break space character in |publisher= at position 11 (help)
  2. ^ a b c Jane's Military Communications (1987), cited by Emerson, Andy (14 December 2003). "ACE HIGH". Subterranea Britannica. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  3. ^ "Troposcatter Communication Networks". 30 June 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); no-break space character in |date= at position 3 (help) And "Das ACE High System" (in German). 17 February 2013. Retrieved 5 April 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help); no-break space character in |accessdate= at position 2 (help); no-break space character in |date= at position 3 (help)
  4. ^ a b "Histoire succincte des "SSIC" (systèmes de surveillance, d'information et de communications) de l'armée de l'air" (in French). Association Nationale Air des Télécommunications et du Contrôle, France. 30 June 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); no-break space character in |accessdate= at position 3 (help)
  5. ^ Which in the French army is a contraction for adjudant-major and is in fact an OR-9 non-commissioned officer
  6. ^ "Support n° 449668 situé à Pierre-sur-Haute, sur la commune de Job". Cartoradio (in French). Agence Nationale des Fréquences, France. Retrieved 9 April 2013. {{cite web}}: no-break space character in |title= at position 11 (help)
  7. ^ Info DSNA (PDF) (in French). Vol. 26. Direction des Services de la Navigation Aérienne, France. 2009. Retrieved 7 April 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); no-break space character in |accessdate= at position 2 (help)
  8. ^ Info DSNA (PDF) (in French). Vol. 29. Direction des Services de la Navigation Aérienne, France. 2010. Retrieved 7 April 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); no-break space character in |accessdate= at position 2 (help)
  9. ^ Boukhobza, Khalil (2012). "Influence de l'état d'un radome sur les performances d'un radar secondaire mode S" (PDF) (in French). ENAC, France. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  10. ^ Daugeron, Nicolas (March 2009). "Établissement du Génie de Lyon BA942 : Station de Pierre sur Haute rénovation des infrastructures de l'axe Nord/Sud" (PDF). Espace, groupe SPAC (in French). No. 19. p. 13. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  11. ^ a b Willsher, Kim (7 April 2013). "French secret service accused of censorship over Wikipedia page". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 April 2013. {{cite web}}: no-break space character in |publisher= at position 4 (help)
  12. ^ Poncet, Guerric (9 April 2013). "Wikipédia et DCRI : la chaîne locale "s'attend" à être censurée". Le Point (in French). Paris. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  13. ^ Kleinz, Torsten (6 April 2013). "Französischer Geheimdienst verlangt Löschung eines Wikipedia-Artikels". Heise Online (in German). Heise. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  14. ^ Willsher, Kim (7 April 2013). "French secret service accused of censorship over Wikipedia page". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  15. ^ a b “French homeland intelligence threatens a volunteer sysop to delete a Wikipedia Article”, Wikimédia France, 6 April 2013, retrieved 6 April 2013
  16. ^ "La DCRI accusée d'avoir illégalement forcé la suppression d'un article de Wikipédia". Le Monde. 6 April 2013. Retrieved 6 April 2013. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); no-break space character in |accessdate= at position 2 (help)
  17. ^ Koch, Simon (9 April 2013). "Une Suissesse empêche la censure de Wikipédia". Le Matin (in French). Lausanne. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  18. ^ a b Geuss, Megan (6 April 2013). "Wikipedia editor allegedly forced by French intelligence to delete "classified" entry". Arstechnica. Retrieved 7 April 2013. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); no-break space character in |accessdate= at position 2 (help)
  19. ^ "Wikipedia article traffic statistics for 'Station hertzienne militaire de Pierre-sur-Haute'". stats.grok.se.
  20. ^ List of translations on Wikidata
  21. ^ "La DCRI accusée d'avoir fait pression pour obtenir la suppression d'un article Wikipedia". 20 minutes (in French). 6 April 2013.
  22. ^ saibot834 (6 April 2013). "French intelligence agency forces removal of Wikipedia entry". Slashdot. Retrieved 7 April 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  23. ^ "La DCRI accusée d'avoir fait supprimer un article sur Wikipedia" (in French). Agence France-Presse. 6 April 2013.
  24. ^ CP; Huet, Anne-Claire (8 April 2013). "Le retrait de l'article Wikipedia demandé dans le cadre d'une enquête préliminaire". La Chaîne Info (in French). Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  25. ^ a b Poncet, Guerric (10 April 2013). "Un syndicat de police évoque le filtrage de Wikipédia". Le Point (in French). Retrieved 10 April 2013.
  26. ^ Poncet, Guerric (10 April 2013). "Wikipédia et DCRI : la chaîne locale "s'attend" à être censurée". Le Point (in French). Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  27. ^ Poncet, Guerric (10 April 2013). "RSF dénonce les "manoeuvres de la DCRI" contre Wikipédia". Le Point (in French). Retrieved 10 April 2013.
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