Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station
The Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station is a site used for French military communications. It has been used in the service of France since 1913. It is in the Sauvain and Job communes, with the boundary between the Rhône-Alpes and Auvergne regions passing through the site. There are three towers at the site. The tallest one is a 55-metre-high civilian telecommunication tower owned by . The facility is at the summit of Pierre-sur-Haute at an elevation of , about from the village of Chalmazel. There is a small ski resort  near the radio station, with the top of the quad lift sitting less than from the station fence. In April 2013, the French-language Wikipedia article about the station attracted attention from the French interior intelligence agency DCRI, which pressured the president of Wikimedia France into deleting the article. It was promptly restored by another Wikipedia contributor living in Switzerland. Publicity about the affair resulted in the Streisand effect and many thousands of page views. History. In 1913, a semaphore telegraph () was built where the military radio station is now. At the time, it was a small stone building, with  the semaphore on top. 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. 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. 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. The French Air Force took  control of the station in 1974. In the late 1980s, the system was gradually replaced by a combination of national defense systems and some NATO-owned subsystems. The large parabolic antennas, known locally as "Mickey's ears", were replaced with the current two-antenna setup in 1991. Role. The Pierre-sur-Haute station is controlled by the French Air Force and is a subsidiary of the Lyon – Mont Verdun Air Base, 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. The station is mainly used for transmissions relating to the command of operational units. If French nuclear weapons () were used, the fire order might pass through this relay. The station has been part of the (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 (Joint Directorate of Infrastructure Networks and Information Systems). About 20 personnel are stationed on-site, including electricians, mechanics, and cooks. Infrastructure. The station is situated on a site between the communes of Sauvain and Job, straddling the border  between the two departments of Loire and . 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. Though access is difficult, the facility is not isolated: the Chalmazel ski slopes are adjacent to the site. Buildings. There are three towers at the site. The tallest one is a high civilian telecommunication tower, owned by Télédiffusion de France. 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 but has experienced malfunctions due to heavy snowfall in the area. The two remaining concrete towers are owned by the military. The high structures have been used since 1991 for radio transmission and reception. These are built to withstand the blast of a nuclear explosion. Some buildings are used as garages and living quarters, complete with kitchen, dining room and bedrooms. They are linked together by tunnels, in total length, so as to avoid walking through thick snow in winter when moving from one building to the  other. Underground facilities. The most important part of the site is the underground section, used for transmissions dispatch: at a speed of 2 Mb/s, communications from the towers are analysed, then redirected to be transmitted. This part of the facility is supplied with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defences. It defends against electromagnetic pulses using a Faraday cage. Positively pressured rooms help prevent contaminants from entering the facility. The facility has independent water and power supplies.<onlyinclude> Controversy over Wikipedia article. In April 2013, the French-language Wikipedia article attracted attention from the French interior intelligence agency DCRI. The  agency attempted to have the article about the facility removed from the French-language Wikipedia. After a request for deletion in March 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation had asked the DCRI which parts of the article were causing a problem, noting that the article closely reflected information in a 2004 documentary made by , a French local television station, which is freely available online and had been made with the cooperation of the French Air Force.</onlyinclude> <onlyinclude>The DCRI then forced Rémi Mathis, a volunteer administrator of the French-language Wikipedia, and president of Wikimedia France, under threat of  detention and arrest, into deleting the article. The article was promptly restored by another Wikipedia contributor living in Switzerland.</onlyinclude> <onlyinclude>As a result of the controversy, the article temporarily became the most read page on the French Wikipedia, with more than 120,000 page views during the weekend of 6/7 April 2013, and has since been translated to many other languages. For his role in the controversy, Mathis was named Wikipedian of the Year by Jimmy Wales at Wikimania 2013.</onlyinclude>