In December, anti-secrecy campaigner Alan Turnbull discovered photographs from his ‘Secret Bases’ website had been stolen by an engineering firm and architects working on an expansion of the spybase at USAF Croughton in Northamptonshire.
Contractors Mott MacDonald and HLM Architects put a planning application in to South Northamptonshire council in 2016, showing a new windowless mission building and an antenna field with six new ‘golf ball’ radomes.
They illustrated their proposal with an aerial image of the existing radomes at Croughton, with Turnbull’s protective watermarking, taken ‘without prior permission, payment or even any accreditation!’