6) RAF Menwith Hill, United Kingdom
Located in a picturesque part of the world on the outskirts of Harrogate in North Yorkshire, RAF Menwith Hill is a notorious British Royal Airforce Station that is controversially run by the U.S. National Security Agency. Reasonably secluded, RAF Menwith Hill covers an area of about one square mile of the Yorkshire Moors and is completely out of bounds to the public. The site is described as being home to the largest electronic monitoring station in the world and is dominated by an extensive satellite ground station, recognizable for its giant golf ball-like structures known as radomes. The U.S. National Security Agency took over Menwith Hill in 1958, establishing it as a high frequency radio monitoring centre to listen in on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Officially the NSA uses Menwith Hill for legal communications interception and missile warning but critics of the site claim it may be used to secretly monitor and intercept the public. Menwith Hill is believed to be an integral part of the ECHELON system, a massive and controversial surveillance system used by an alliance of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
