Who Is Planting Weird Antennas within the Foothills of Salt Lake City?

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Photo: Michael Smith/Newsmakers (Getty Images)

Try to determine this one out: it could seem that anyone is putting in antenna-equipped rigs everywhere in the foothills of Salt Lake City. Local authorities officers are stumped as to who’s accountable or what the rigs are for. They additionally appear to be fairly aggravated to need to hold taking the shit down.

“We just don’t know enough at this point to speculate what they are,” Tyler Fonarow, town’s leisure trails supervisor, told native information outlet KSL-5.

According to Fonarow, the primary rigs confirmed up a few yr in the past, however a half dozen extra have popped up since then, and officers imagine there are extra they haven’t found. From photos shared by officers, the rigs appear like odd beaconing towers, usually consisting of a photo voltaic panel, an antenna, and a locked battery field. They are being left in mountainous areas which can be tough to get to.

“These towers have been bolted into different peaks and summits and ridges around the foothills,” Fonarow instructed the outlet. “It started with one or two, and now it might be as much as a dozen,” he defined. Video shared by the native information outlet reveals Fonarow and different officers dismantling one of many rigs that had been left on Twin Peaks, an space situated alongside the native Wasatch Range foothills.

Fonarow stated the method of dismantling and eradicating the rig took hours. “Once we get up to the Twin Peaks, it gets real steep, so we were up there. There were five of us, and then we took some kids’ sleds to bring the equipment down to make it a little bit easier on us,” he stated.

Even extra intriguingly, Fonarow commented throughout the identical interview that the weird setups “might be related to cryptocurrency.” He stated:

“It might be related to cryptocurrency and relaying networks and being able to make money off that…so that’s another reason we want to stop it now before it becomes a dumping ground for dozens and dozens of more antennas.”

Huh? What? Are shitcoin schemers establishing a secret sun-pilfering system to mine Utah’s bountiful photo voltaic rays for crypto-mining energy?

Fonarow didn’t elaborate on the crypto angle in his interview, so we reached out to town’s trails division for extra data. The division’s neighborhood outreach supervisor, Luke Allen, stated that the crypto thought had truly come from locals speaking on social media.

“When we posted on our social media accounts asking if anyone in the community had information about the towers, several commenters theorized that the towers could be set up to mine cryptocurrency,” stated Allen, in an electronic mail. “However, we don’t have the experts on staff to verify this, nor to we want to spend additional staff time trying to find out exactly what they are for. Our main priority is to remove the items from public property.”

How lots of this stuff has the federal government uprooted? “Our staff has removed two towers so far, and we are aware of four or five more, some of which are on adjacent jurisdictions,” Allen stated. He added that it could have been “a good workout to lug the equipment up to those remote areas, but it’s something that someone who’s in good shape could have easily done.” It’s unclear simply how costly the gear is, he stated.

Honestly, this one has us completely stumped, so be at liberty to spout off within the remark part as to what the hell you suppose is occurring right here.

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https://gizmodo.com/salt-lake-city-antennas-solar-panels-who-did-it-1849957067