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US intelligence has determined that the Chinese spy balloon that made headlines during its journey across the United States earlier this year was using an American service provider to communicate.The balloon connected to a US network to both send and receive communications from China, NBC News reports. According to US officials familiar with the matter, the data connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions of data over short periods. NBC says it’s not naming the provider “to protect the identity of its sources.”The Biden administration reportedly sought a “highly secretive court order” from the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to collect intelligence about the balloon while it was over US soil. That order would have allowed US intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance on the balloon as it sent and received messages from China, including the contents of the communications.NORAD took precautions to hide anything that might have been problematic for the balloon to see while it traversed the United States. The US has assessed that the balloon was not able to transmit intelligence back to China while it was over the US.
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China has maintained that the balloon, which was shot down by the US on Feb. 4, was a weather balloon that accidentally drifted into American airspace due to its limited self-steering capabilities. However, after months of analysis, the FBI and several US defense and intelligence agencies concluded that the balloon was created as a covert surveillance tool.
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