Re "Any evidence of when this started?"
Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA. By this time, Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies."...
"The organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA's views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Modern art was CIA 'weapon'" (22 October 1995)
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
"...The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organisations Division (IOD) was set up"
"... the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years."
I would suggest over decades with older press staff and now the next web 2.0 generations too.
Beyond that is the useful sockpuppet and other personas to push out policy or distract.

Make sure you have a clear path to the full resolution of your Day/Night capable IP camera with the firmware as sold.
A few brands have passwords, ports and software issues that take some research and can really slow an easy install down. Look up other peoples experiences with what your looking to buy and see if they had any issues.
Other brands, products just work with Linux, Windows, Mac, NAS, a dedicated PC without any issues over a variety of quality free open and closed source software.

Or Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The mystery of flight 870 (22 July 2006)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
It seems strange this story was just 'found' now... with a mention of the "Kola Peninsula or a submarine in the Barents Sea"...

Re: 'Why authorities allowed that drug house to operate in plain sight I do not know but if they arrested everyone that purchased drugs in that drive through it might have bankrupted the city. What will happen when the slumbering public becomes aware that society gives some criminals a free pass?"
Options: see where the cash goes and follow it up to the 'top' by offering all the lower people found "informant" status.
This builds insiders and providers open court parallel construction cover to hide mention of the telco 'tech' - eg an insider was used to bring a case to court vs the tame US phone system, tame OS and junk encryption software tracked people of interest 24/7 for years.
Add in voice prints, gps, tracking, new calls connecting to known cell numbers... its just waiting for the press friendly raid to get another federal grant.
The other aspect is the funding for the mil/gov bureaucrats and their private sector contractor friends. The conditions allow for huge buy ins of telco tech, training, support and upgrades via ex gov staff who entered the private sector.
Everybody is winning via the gov spending on gov telco signals systems. The gov may not even need to pay the telcos for some tech and might just go tap direct into the private sector telco networks as the encryption is so poor and needed hardware so cheap. That also cuts out the private staff talking to the press risk.
As for the drug deals tracked by signals intelligence: the producers just want to ship product, the shipment networks are tracked, the sellers move/launder/divert their massive cash profits via friendly Western banks, the Western banks look after their long term shareholders... the police get federal budgets/grants to raid low end users.... everybody of importance is winning.
The gov tells itself it does not want to endanger "parallel construction". The private sector just wants to keep the gov upgrading and in need of complex generational maintenance contracts.

Re 'Or were all of these in unlicensed spectrum ?"
"Phone Firewall Identifies Rogue Cell Towers Trying to Intercept Your Calls" (09.03.14)
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/c...
Seems to offer a hint via "But the [FCC] task force will only examine the use of the devices by hackers and criminals—and possibly foreign intelligence agencies—not their warrantless use by law enforcement agencies bent on deceiving judges about their deployment of the powerful surveillance technology."
Seems to hint at a few known/listed devices getting a free gov/telco pass re frequency allocations when discovered in the wild.
The good news is a "... envision a consumer-level app in the future that could be installed on phones by individuals." :)

Cell towers are usually owned or shared by telco firms, brands, providers that try to encrypt their users and are kind of easy to spot with hardware.
The "Phony" cell towers do not respond or act in the same way. They are fake but still fool a users phone into making a network connection.
Tame consumer grade hardware is fooled into seeing just another cell tower.

The other question is then what where telco teams and gov teams doing when they scan for allocated spectrum issues? Own tower, competitor networks, new interfering hardware to be located and that local 'fake' mobile tower should kind of show up on normal regional cell maintenance work. What do telco staff do? Just let the 'fake' mobile devices work alongside their own expensive networks 24/7 over years? Thats their brands network thats been used by some fake device...
Are new staff instructed only to worry about hardware and consumer grade issues? Fake networks are to be left alone and not explored?

Small cell hardware can be offered some concealment as signs, trees, big cactus, wider flag poles, bell towers, thin onto brick walls or fake wood sidings, water towers, added rooftop enclosures, fake tinted glass, in a new chimney box, fake dormers, cupola.
It just depends on who is paying and what fits in with the surrounding area.

Good for tracking protesters in any city :)

The price has dropped to city, state and federal budget level for some of the tower like products.
The problem is more people now understand just how their low cost cell phone works as a gps becon, text, photo, calls list and voice, voice print collector.
The costs for voice systems like this in Ireland, South America where mil only historically. Now any regional, city, gov with funding can have a go at years of "warrantless surveillance".
The only issue is the upgrade to next gen costs and keeping details away from press with local FOIA like requests for city and state budgets.
Forcing 2g only signal use was the old news, now the next gen is ready for todays cell users in real time (beyond location tracking).
As 2g is removed in a few years, the new warrantless cell surveillance products are been made ready.

A few news sites and tech sites have:
"Android security mystery 'fake' cellphone towers found in U.S." (28 AUG 2014)
http://www.welivesecurity.com/...
Fake, phone-attacking cell-towers are all across America (Sep 1, 2014)
http://boingboing.net/2014/09/...
"The fake "interceptor" towers force your phone to back \\down to an easy-to-break 2G connection, then goes to work"
"..the baseband firewall on the Cryptophone set off alerts showing that the phones encryption had been turned off, and that the cell tower had no name a telltale sign of a rogue base station."
Fake cell phone towers may be spying on Americans calls, texts (September 03, 2014)
http://rt.com/usa/184636-fake-...

It ensures a calm national press event. Lots of nice trusted people from the press interviewing trusted experts, some in trusted national uniforms offering details about the ip, time zones and code style all pointing to the bad nation and only the bad nation.
Everybody is on message and on the same page, the press, sockpuppets and web 2.0 then carry the message out to the wider local community.
At some later date real work is done on the code, ip's, origins, destination and the reality sets in that its just another well crafted global network doing what it was coded for.
The blame is still with the original nation, reality months later gets a mention in the international tech press.

Re 'So what constitutes an attack or an aggressor?"
Its just about spending, integration with US products and services. A new market place to ensure NATO buys up big on cyber products. Jets and rockets in the cold war past, digital services and long term contracts now.
With the internet any outside party can make sure it is seen during and after an event as to have moved via any network it wants.
Lots of nice ip numbers and perfect working hours in time zones, the use of a language and style, hints to the press.
Even working out who paid for, made, networked and got results takes months. Whats at the end of all the hard work? Some bot network around the world that might have CCTV near them that was kept for months over a few random nations with cheap optical?
A nation state who worked with other friendly nation states? Or an easy find days later code that 100% points to just one nation?
Most smart nations will just go internal and buy/find real people to help locally. Other nations will just spin a random global network and try and shift the blame onto some 'expected' nation.
The only winner is the sale and years of rent seeking maintenance contracts to NATO members. The rest is just networks that start and stop in random nations over hours, days, months that all seem to be coded by some really skilled county. Like other skilled experts cant offer the same code thats a bit too easy to find... as bait or a press event.
All the good data would be air gapped after how many years of networking issues?