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Internet Giving Rise To "Citizen Spies"
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun May 24, 2009 09:22 AM
from the bond-dot-jamesbond-dot-com dept.
from the bond-dot-jamesbond-dot-com dept.
reporter writes "According to a startling report by the Wall Street Journal, the Internet has empowered ordinary people to be part-time intelligence officers, uncovering secrets like military facilities and prison camps across the landscape of North Korea. The report states, '[Curtis] Melvin is at the center of a dozen or so citizen snoops who have spent the past two years filling in the blanks on the map of one of the world's most secretive countries. Seeking clues in photos, news reports and eyewitness accounts, they affix labels to North Korean structures and landscapes captured by Google Earth, an online service that stitches satellite pictures into a virtual globe. The result is an annotated North Korea of rocket-launch sites, prison camps and elite palaces on white-sand beaches. "It's democratized intelligence," says Mr. Melvin. More than 35,000 people have downloaded Mr. Melvin's file, North Korea Uncovered. It has grown to include thousands of tags in categories such as "nuclear issues" (alleged reactors, missile storage), dams (more than 1,200 countrywide) and restaurants (47). Its Wikipedia approach to spying shows how Soviet-style secrecy is facing a new challenge from the Internet's power to unite a disparate community of busybodies.'"
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In Soviet Internet (Score:5, Funny)
Citizens spy on you?
*ducks*
Re: (Score:2)
Citizens spy on you?
Ah, just like old times. Since there's absolutely no way to stop the phenomenon, why don't we balance things out? Let the citizens spy on the government as well.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So what? Security through obscurity has pretty well been written off. We used to identify Russian special-nuclear-material sites by looking for the buildings with 3-layer fences and sniper towers. Our sites are identifiable the same way. Solution? 3-layer fences, sniper towers, and undisclosed underground protection. You can no longer hide your facilities, you just protect them and keep anything super-sensitive under a closed roof in a building with no open windows.
Re:In Soviet Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
The UK (and no doubt the US and similar) government employs researchers with the sole task of poring over satellite pictures to determine the capacity of power plants, populations of regions and in general "what things are and what they can do". They also have far more high resolution satellite images than Google is allowed to produce.
We've been doing this kind of thing for years and still are. The only difference now is that the public can give it a go.
Reminds me of the famous incident concerning one of the first Nuclear tests when a university professor used dimensional analysis to calculate what the detonation payload was (a classified figure at the time) based on a photo that was published in the papers (that was the last time the US Military put scales on their photos
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
> You are a paranoid tin-foil hatter.
You say that like its a bad thing....
Re: (Score:2)
They don't have agents in Google faking the maps (or launching the spy satellites).
Or do they?
Oh Boy (Score:5, Funny)
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the one who speaks that foreigner lingo in with his so call family?
Depends on it being more or less foreign than your "lingo". :P
yeahhh, how that'd go down for you... (Score:2)
Setting: front lawn. Neighbor is watering his lawn and CBS is coming home from work.
Neighbor: Hello CBS, good evening!
*cbs jumps over fence and grabs Neighbor, dragging him to the closed garage door, and and slams him against it
cbs: Where are the weapons?! WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS?!
Neighbor (flabbergasted): weapons? What are you talking about?
*neighbor starts to fall down the garage door as Bauer^Wcbs pulls him back up and slams him against it, pulling a USP and pressing it into Neighbor's nose
CBS: The weapons
Not _SPIES_, intel analysts (Score:5, Insightful)
For one thing, analysts aren't in hostile territory and subject to arrest.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, my initial thought was, aren't there LOTS of people who work for our intelligence agencies doing this with much better imagery and expertise, augmented by feet on the ground?
Re:Not _SPIES_, intel analysts (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be a fun project, launch it from Russia or South Korea - not China because NK & China are good communist brothers. You can have it connect to the interwebs using Thuraya, Inmarsat and maybe use an Orbcomm transceiver as backup. I suppose ideally you'd want a dirigible or something that can stay in the air for extended periods without producing much heat that missiles would pick up on. Once in the country's interior you could lower its altitude and get some nice detailed shots. You could control it directly by radio but this makes you far too easy to trace - internet connectivity allows you to GTFO once the thing is launched.
The problem would be getting something to power the thing - microjets pump out too much heat, solar power alone probably won't give you the required amount of oomph to fly the thing. You could go unpowered, launch when there is a good breeze blowing into North Korea and deflate once it reaches another country. There was a slashdot story about a bunch of students who made something similar but I don't think they ever flew it over North Korea
Parent
AI glider? (Score:2)
Or you could make a glider with AI or remote control. Perhaps an infrared camera on a glider would help it find thermal columns? Gliders piloted by humans have flown over 3000 km, I wonder how much a remote control glider could do.
Re: (Score:2)
Modern missiles use imaging-based terminal guidance, not heat seeking. The imagers often work into the infrared spectrum, but that is primarily to give better all-weather performance. If they can pick up your dirigible on radar, they can put a missile in your area that can find you.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, you're not a real spy until you actually become a part of the North Korean military in order to report on what it's up to and what kind of orders you're getting.
Our intelligence agencies have lost their edge precisely because they don't want to do that kind of thing. But that's what real spies do and where useful intelligence comes from.
And citizens could get involved in this if there were people who lived in North Korea wanted to do something horribly risky because they wanted to make their government
Re: (Score:2)
A helium balloon with control valves and maybe directional sails, or some such thing would do the job nicely. IE, a 'weather balloon'. Depending on air currents you could launch it quite a far ways off.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Does it count if the enemy recoils in fear after feeling your metallic handshake?
You too can be James Bond (Score:2)
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best definition yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia: a disparate community of busybodies. Yep, pretty much the best definition I've heard.
But lets hope the quality of these citizen intelligence officers is vastly superior to the average wikipedian. Using wikipedia-based information might get you a fail mark, a libel suit, minor injuries, or a variety of other personal problems. However, using poor intelligence information might get us all nuked, or start a major war. (citation: see Iran, Weapons of Mass destruction, intelligence failure thereof)
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I think Iraq rather than Iran.
We still don't really know what Iran are up to. Or is that what you meant?
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with Wikipedia isn't badly edited content. It's poorly informed readers.
A Wikipedia article is only as good as the sources it cites, and anyone intending to do anything important according to information in a Wikipedia article should be aware of that.
Some books on the subject (Score:5, Informative)
Some books on the subject:
Re: (Score:2)
The Light of Other Days, by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter [wikipedia.org] would make a good addition to that list. It's a worthwhile read; the summary on Wikipedia really doesn't do it justice, IMO (and I'm too lazy to change it right now).
Re: (Score:2)
I see what you did there.
And what of other "open" countries? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what kind of trouble you'd get in if you made a similarly detailed map of all military installations (secret or otherwise) in the US or the UK.
Considering the oproar over showing where schools, churches and Cheney's residence are, I wouldn't be surprised if it was more difficult to get it done for the US than for North Korea ...
Re:And what of other "open" countries? (Score:5, Informative)
None? At least in the U.S.
Head on over to Google Maps and start looking up things like Bangor, WA, which is a major Trident Nuclear Sub base. Feel free to explore both the street map and the satellite view to compare.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=bangor,+wa&sll=44.662793,-68.720169&sspn=0.363355,0.892639&ie=UTF8&ll=47.715537,-122.739601&spn=0.085929,0.22316&t=h&z=13 [google.com]
Notice what Microsoft's mapping gathered from there? Oopsie!
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/09/04/microsofts-mapping-service-uncovers-top-secret-us-submarine/ [blorge.com]
Maybe browse a website dedicated to secret U.S. military bases?
http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Bases.html [anomalies-unlimited.com]
The U.S. and the rest of the world, especially the major powers, have dealt with satellite overviews since the 1960s. Anything real interesting is underground and out of view.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Having spent a lot of time at Bangor, I can say with confidence that being able to see the base, and knowing in any kind of detail what goes on there are two very different things.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah. The real interesting stuff takes place in banal looking buildings that don't appear any different from the ones around them. The most interesting building at Bangor looks like a warehouse - one of several in the complex.
But the same thing holds true for other countries as well. And in a closed country like N. Korea, it'll be much more difficult to separate sensitive facilities from the others. Everything is 'sensitive'. Nobody can get in on the ground to take a look around easily.
Re:And what of other "open" countries? (Score:5, Informative)
Granted, but it's not like we've never heard or seen Bangor naval base before. Or Area 51. Or any of the other major military installations.
But what exactly is being hidden here?
A ~25 x 3 mile black strip in Canada and Alaska ... [google.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And what of other "open" countries? (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing. It was a camera glitch. Notice, because Alaska isn't high priority, that all levels of zoom are from the same photo set? Watch the clouds, they never move.
Then check other sources like Microsoft's Virtual Earth and see what is "hidden".
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=62.244908~-141.222382&style=h&lvl=12&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1 [live.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Try zooming in - you see a swamp. So, if something is hidden there,
it must have been very temporary...
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing. Here [google.com] and here [google.com] are two different areas in the black rectangle at highers levels of zoom, plainly showing the terrain.
Nothing to see, move along, just another of Google Map's many glitches.
Keep this story in mind (Score:5, Insightful)
And keep this story in mind the next time an "American" (they always turn out to be dual citizens) is arrested for spying in Iran or China - we don't know whether a US citizen has been doing some un-sanctioned spying on another country. Even if they're not on the CIA payroll, it could be business interests, it could be family ties, it could be a grudge, and after reading this story I realize it could just be flat out idle curiosity?
Re: (Score:2)
Or they could just be an innocent citizen arrested by the secret police of a totalitarian state that denies freedom to its own people?
Just a thought.
The death of newspapers (Score:3, Interesting)
Every time I hear about the death of newspapers, I wonder how the efforts of a small number of full time reporters would match up to the lackadaisical efforts of a million maternal basement dwellers with Internet connections.
Re: (Score:2)
A missed chance to effectively use the tubes ... (Score:2)
I'm not sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure that I want the same pool of people that believe in faces on Mars, and other hoaxes, interpreting photos of North Korea.
Wikileaks (Score:4, Interesting)
Plus, every time I visit a web site for information, I save it, because I never know if that information will disappear or change. When I go back, I save another copy so I can compare, and also so I can retain information in previous copies should I need to reference it.
When everyone is a suspected spy (Score:2)
You might as well be in Nazi Germany, or old school Russia.
Time to put that tinfoil on the windows too.
Citizen spying == Neighborhood Watch? (Score:2)
We had this before the Internet: it's called Neighborhood Watch programs. My extension of it, and a solution to the fears of emergence of Big Brother with the advent of cameras on every street corner, is to wire those cameras up to either the global 'Net or a local WAN and let anyone monitor those cameras and report suspicious activity. The police would merely act on reports from citizens; police would not monitor the cameras directly except perhaps with the express request and consent of a citizen. If t
35,000 idiots, eh? (Score:2)
Got nothing better to do? Of all the threats to the world order, I think North Korea sits pretty close to the bottom. How about we uncover some of the hundreds of secret & illegal US & Israeli prisons, nuclear sites, etc? Sure, I know the answer already ... because these are 35,000 idiots we're talking about, and they all believe that North Korea is out to get them, and that the US and Israel are bastions of peace and democracy. Of course, in our secret prisons, no-one is tortured to death. And our
Re: (Score:2)
I get the point you're trying to make here and more or less agree with it. But I think the fact that news outlets in the west always show footage of military parades when discussing North Korea has less to do with conspiracy than it does with that country being so tightly controlled that there really isn't anything else for them to show.
It's case of not attributing to malice that wit
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However - it's true as said above there's not really much film of things happening in North Korea anyway. Not even the Chinese just over the border know much about what is going on apart from what they hear from refugees - and th
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I agree, that was a pretty egregious case of manipulation on the part of the network involved (Fox, probably, but I could be wrong). But I don't think the same situation exists with television news organizations re: the PRK. That's due more to a lack of creativity than bias.
Re: (Score:2)