Mapping Service Blurs Out Military Bases, But Accidentally Locates Secret Ones 129
schwit1 shares a report from Popular Mechanics: A Russian online mapping company was trying to obscure foreign military bases. But in doing so, it accidentally confirmed their locations -- many of which were secret. Yandex Maps, Russia's leading online map service, blurred the precise locations of Turkish and Israeli military bases, pinpointing their location. The bases host sensitive surface-to-air missile sites and facilities housing nuclear weapons. The Federation of American Scientists reports that Yandex Maps blurred out "over 300 distinct buildings, airfields, ports, bunkers, storage sites, bases, barracks, nuclear facilities, and random buildings" in the two countries. Some of these facilities were well known, but some of them were not. Not only has Yandex confirmed their locations, the scope of blurring reveals their exact size and shape.
They were not secret (Score:5, Insightful)
No military installation in the world of the size of the large university campus is secret.
The secret could be details within that location, that's what map service provides by blurring.
Stop posting idiotic articles.
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No military installation in the world of the size of the large university campus is secret.
The secret could be details within that location, that's what map service provides by blurring.
Stop posting idiotic articles.
It's BeauHD.
It's a stupid article about RUSSIA.
It's like chumming for sharks - and the sharks are smarter.
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It's sometimes a gray area if a place is secret or not. But using the map would also be a good way to reveal what's supposed to be secret but isn't known that it's revealed.
If you as a map provider want to play it nice then you just replace items that are specific for that location with generic vehicles or generic trees copied from another part of the same area. Just keep the roads and buildings as is and nobody would be wiser.
Re:They were not secret (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on the definition of "secret". If the location is classified as "secret" by US, there's no onus on a foreign entity abiding by that classification, if they are even aware of it.
Google (US, and probably others) has to but Yandex (RU) doesn't unless there is some agreement in place. Even then, what's the blowback if they don't?
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Even then, what's the blowback if they don't?
The US Air Force has a long history of "accidentally dropping a bomb" on someone who pissed them off. So sorry, tragic accident. While it's unlikely that either of the offended countries would ever by flying over Russian airspace, who knows where Yandex may have an office in the next 10 years.
French Embassy (Score:5, Interesting)
What's your source on this "long history"?
Well I can think of one example. In 1986 the US bombed Libya [history.com]. One building that was hit was the French Embassy in Tripoli. The French had refused to allow US bombers to traverse their airspace from bases in England that forced the US planes to fly an additional 2600 nautical miles around France to get to Libya. It was understood/suspected right at the time that this was an "accident" with plausible deniability.
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That's the best example in recent times. There were some shenanigans in our recent tangle with Russia over Syria, though I'm not sure an actual bomb was ever involved. There were of course hundreds of "accidents" during Vietnam. Dropping an "improvised incendiary device" on a village they didn't like happened a lot.
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Didn't they also hit the Chinese embassy during NATO bombings of Belgrade in 1999?
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The funny thing is, Google is not blurring anything about this base, but Yandex is.
Here is the base on google maps: https://www.google.com/maps/se... [google.com]
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Re:They were not secret (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, it is not only military installations that get blurred out. Critical infrastructure installations often also gets blurred out on maps. For example power grid stations, nuclear power plants and radar installations used by commercial air traffic.
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You are right. I should have used the word "strategic"
Secrecy isn't binary (Score:2)
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LOL @ your secrets. In a few years there'll be a constellation of powerful and small citizen satellites in orbit. Every "wahoo" will be able to watch full spectrum, high resolution imagery of everything, from radio to gamma, like they watch local aircraft, pollution and weather data today.
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"There's a difference between "foreign intelligence services know where your military base is" and "every wahoo with an internet connection knows where your military base is."
So if foreign secret service know it bit's OK but if Bubba from Idaho knows it it's a problem?
"Secrecy comes in degrees."
Stupidity too.
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And the danger is?
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LAWL.
It's not like you pay to access this website. Until you do, you have no say nor do you have the right to demand to have any say in the day-to-day operations of slashdot.
You egotistical shit.
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And yet, they didn't reveal any of their own country's installations thus...
While I don't disagree with you regarding the positions being known already anyway, this action may still have been part of Putin's desperate bullying: "We know, where you are, ha-ha, let us rape Ukraine if you want peace".
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correct. How secret were they that somebody could be tasked with blurring them out? "here comrade - make these spots disappear from map"
I remember that the US White House used to be blurred out (actually it was a white rectangle drawn over the roof). But Security Through Obscurity is a poor choice -- so they rebuilt the roof in order to hide their secrets from overhead cameras.
Obvious those that live near the base know about it. But it was those who use the internet that they are hiding from. "gee wh
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How difficult is actually to find these smudges?
I have never found a single smudge myself, only by reference
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In the case of the White House and GE Global Research -- they were obvious flat White rectangles that blotted out lawns and the building etc.. There were no features at all. While one couldn't see the rooftops it was obvious that something important was there.
As for the smudges - I haven't seen the ones referred to in the article. But I have seen others through time and they are mildly obvious. In this case I'll bet they were little ripples that somebody with Software could find. To our eye it probabl
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Another feature is the absence of 3D. Try White House on Google Maps in 3D. The background highrises will be 3D and the whole Mall area is flat. Even the tall Washington Monument and prominent Lincoln Memorial.
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Wow. Even the Washington Post news building is available only in 2-D. :-P
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Secret from whom?
Given that Russia is working hard on developing proxies in the Middle East, and given those proxies dislike both Israel and Turkey, it's possible that this was an easy (and deniable) way of publishing information to those proxies.
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The secret can also be that the location is used for natsec purposes. Blurring out such location gives that fact out.
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This isn't really about installations the size of large university campuses. It's also about installations the size of a city block (sometimes even within urban areas). It's about installations that aren't really visible from the road, and which weren't (until now) easily identifiable from the air as to owner and function. Etc... etc...
To me it makes more sense for the idiots t
How secret were they? (Score:2)
I can't imagine any intelligence agency on the planet was ignorant of the same information that Yandex had to blur their maps.
Re:OSINT (Score:5, Insightful)
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And it means that there is less plausible deniability for the location and even some details of said facilities. Lets say there is some accident, and the victims of the accidents point to a military facility as the cause. Until now, the responsible government could simply say:
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But Yandex, Bing, Google and everyone else blurring out the images means there are non-military, non-intelligence-agent people having access to the clear images they later blurr. So you don't know who else has access to those images.
Oh... my... God. So you mean that the taxpayers whose money bought all those ridiculously expensive weapons might learn where they are deployed? My, that is really awful.
And even foreigners!
Re:OSINT (Score:5, Interesting)
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But you could actually go and explore the maps, and maybe you find that the block where the Mom&Pop Meat Processing Plant should be located, and it is also blurred out. So you start to wonder if behind the gates of the Mom&Pop Meat Processing Plant something else than meat gets processed.
Blurring Out is for the average people (Score:3)
Streisand (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose this is the Streisand effect of the cartography world.
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Rumor has it Streisand's house was also blurred out. Collusion!
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Don't you mean occlusion?
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Is that a fat joke?
The military IT team could just tell people (Score:1)
Last week I was on a civilian international flight and there there were a bunch of American IT guys sitting behind me. They were on their way to work on a network in a US military base in a different country and chatting about their mission loudly enough that I could hear them clearly. They must have assumed that nobody on the plane spoke English, but by the end of the flight I knew all the details about their mission, the network infrastructure, their software software and even which types of ransomware t
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They must have assumed that nobody on the plane spoke English.
That's always a safe bet anywhere in the world nowadays. Especially on airliners. After all, English is just a hole-in-corner minority language of no interest to most people.
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I think that deserves a whooooosh.
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They should probably be fired for gross misconduct.
Like that's ever going to happen.
I have a friend who used to run a photo processing lab (when film was still a thing). One of his techs told him to come and take a look at one of the rolls coming off their machine. Pictures of the family and kids on the front lawn, with license plates and house number visible. And then pictures of the control room of a modern submarine. Having served in military intelligence (back in Vietnam), he knew this was a no-no. So he called the FBI, who came and took the film,sayin
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ICBM finds you!
Actually, that should read "In continental USA... Russian ICBM finds YOU".
Especially if you are a member of the political elite who believes they can safely start wars in faraway places and never suffer the consequences themselves.
Use Walmart (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of blurring they should just stamp down a Walmart and its parking lot, plus maybe a Dollar Tree plaza along with it. They can just scale the whole thing as needed - it's not like most people have any idea what they are looking at anyway. :)
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I saw one country's map where they copy/pasted parks over all the military institutions. You would see it and then think "Wait a second, if there's a park there why have I never seen or visited it?" and walk away a bit confused.
Re:Use Walmart (Score:4, Insightful)
Paste empty clearings in the forest with some logging equipment parked. Maybe a few piles of cut trees.
They use this for some of the wealthy people's vacation homes and hunting lodges in closed (purportedly a watershed) public area near where I live. The area access is secured with CCTV and automated gates. These aren't unimproved logging/maintenance roads. They are very nicely maintained and, if you are nearby at the right time, you can see the occasional Mercedes or BMW coming or going. But Google maps shows nothing other than logging roads and large, stump-covered clearings in the woods.
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They use this for some of the wealthy people's vacation homes and hunting lodges in closed (purportedly a watershed) public area near where I live.
"closed" "public area". Wat? What's that? 'cause it sounds illegal.
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Public as in not owned by any private individual (but rather by a government), closed as in set aside not to be used for anything. If it is a watershed, like he says it purportedly is, then it's a big open field somewhere meant to collect rainwater, that then goes into the municipal water supply, which is set aside from use for the sake of water quality. Aside from watersheds, there are also nature preserves and so on (e.g. a habitat for an endangered species) where the land is public (government owned) but
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Aside from watersheds, there are also nature preserves and so on (e.g. a habitat for an endangered species) where the land is public (government owned) but closed to human use.
Closed to human use except for those humans who drive Mercedes and BMWs?
It's sounding like this purported watershed... isn't. The whole thing is a scam to hide rich people's houses, from the tampering in Google Maps to the alleged designation as a protected watershed.
Is it just me, or are the assholes starting to realize they're fucking the general population over just a little bit TOO hard if they think they have to resort to measures like this to hide where they live?
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If the shenanigans PPH describes are going on then yeah, that's bad and probably technically illegal (though obviously being done with government assistance, so...).
I was just commenting that the concept of a closed public space is not in itself a weird thing to say.
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--Dude, you don't really want people showing up at the front door of your secret military facility looking for cheap goods and sales at the "new store"...
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--Dude, you don't really want people showing up at the front door of your secret military facility looking for cheap goods and sales at the "new store"...
I think the barbed wire, "Last Exit Before Checkpoint" signs, barricades, and the whir of an autocannon spinning up might clue them in.
Secret for whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Domestic terrorism is a much bigger concern
Domestic terrorism is directed at 'soft' targets (usually civilian). The few strikes against military bases have been by insiders. Who already know where the bases are and what is inside them.
Waze shortcut (Score:3)
Symington amendment (Score:1)
If Israel has nuclear facilities and refuse to sign non-proliferation treaties, then it is a violation of federal law to send them foreign aid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 was amended by the Symington Amendment (Section 669 of the FAA) in 1976. It banned U.S. economic, and military assistance, and export credits to countries that deliver or receive, acquire or transfer nuclear enrichment technology when they do not comply with IAEA regulations and inspections. This pro
From the big-blurry-blocks dept. (Score:5, Funny)
So they partnered with Japan for the blurring technology?
It's happened before (Score:2)
I remember buying the USGS 15-minute (that's distance, not time) series of maps around Durham, NH when I lived there in the 60s. Because Pease Airbase was a military base at that time, no buildings or elevation information was allowed to be plotted on the map. However, it apparently was ok to plot vegetation (green) vs. non-vegetation (off-white, applies to roads, buildings, etc) over the whole airbase. Didn't take a genius to find the airstrips, the main control buildings, the family housing development
interesting (Score:2)
If the mapping company blurred out secret bases, how did they know those bases were there if they were a secret???
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Because all of them are belonged to, er, them.
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Thats the easy part when trying to map and sell maps. Governments allow what was once "spy" maps to be created by anyone who can afford such collection methods from space.
But for that global collection ability the gov/mil still has some power to regulate.
The gov buys an image of a part of the world first and says its not be published. No extra/new copy of that data set/map/image can be sold.
The media can ask to "buy" an image of a base but will be told t