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New Satellites Will Hunt Pirates, and Maybe Terrorists
- shawn 8y agoCould a directional radio still be detected? It seems like smugglers might be able to keep track of where they are relative to each other, then point antennas.
- yholio 8y ago> The company he formed in 2015 had a simple pitch to government agencies: “We convert a capital expense to an operation expense.” Raytheon Co., the giant defense contractor, was an early investor and customer. It has engineers working with Hawkeye’s 31-person team and, in turn, will sell some of the company’s findings to its own government customers. Essentially, open market spooks for hire, selling limited space intelligence to countries that can't afford their own space programs.
- madengr 8y agoIt’s been done with optical imagery for a while, but this is probably the first SIGINT.
- offmycloud 8y agoSo ... SIGINTaaS ?
- madengr 8y agoExactly. They have given talks at the last few GRCon. They were initially geolocating AIS traffic.
- someguydave 8y agoThe quote says more about Congressional incompetence than fancy innovation in technology.
- crooked-v 8y agoPirates, and maybe terrorists, and definitely lots of ordinary people spuriously prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws.
- maxxxxx 8y agoOr just people they don't like and eventually everybody. I think in a few decades the surveillance infrastructure of 1984 will look benign and quaint. Winston Smith actually could hide for a while.
- liftbigweights 8y ago> Winston Smith actually could hide for a while. Actually, he couldn't. He thought he could hide. But we find out in the ministry of truth and room 101 that everything he did "secretly", like writing in his diary or his rendezvous with julia, were known to the authorities. But I agree, unless we wake up, I think a mix of 1984 and Minority Report style of dystopian future awaits us.
- ggm 8y agoNot disputing this outcome, but what is your solution for violent piracy and it's effect on shipping?
- mschuster91 8y agoEasy one: stop fucking up Africa. Everyone wonders why piracy is so prevalent there and why it rose when the fish reserves dried up to a point that they were only fishable with giant trawler ships... surprise, European (and iirc also occasional Russian) fish factory ships vastly overfished African seas, the states either did not (due to diplomatic pressure e.g. to cut assistance) or could not (Failed State Somalia) do anything against what essentially is sea piracy. Europe now finally gets back what it created... same with refugees driven into desperation by European agriculture and textile exports under the guise of "donations" which essentially wiped out the local industry. Hard to compete with "free".
- closeparen 8y agoThe intelligence community was hunting RF emissions with trucks during WWII. Three quarters of a century of top-dollar aerospace and electronic warfare R&D later... I’d be surprised if they didn’t have this capability by the 70s. What do you think the National Reconaissance Office is?
- jhayward 8y agoYou probably mean the National Reconaissance Office [1] [1] http://www.nro.gov/ http://www.nro.gov/
- closeparen 8y agoThanks, updated.
- daviddumenil 8y agoRF tracking was even more sophisticated in WWII. The Gestapo developed a man-portable set worn under a trenchcoat: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/df/gurtelpeiler/index.htm https://www.cryptomuseum.com/df/gurtelpeiler/index.htm
- greglindahl 8y agoI don't think the NRO puts much effort into finding illegal fishing, or other kinds of activity that don't impact US national security.
- ggm 8y agoHaving a capability and chosing what you use it for are different things. I also believe that the life of RF detection by third parties, and radio between parties has been entirely parallel. For every signal, there is a device hunting that signal in amongst the noise.
- ImprovedSilence 8y agoI think the point here is that the satellites are not owned by the gov, but by a contractor, hence the quote about capital expense to operational expense. Everyone wants to be a service these days, you don't own it, you borrow it, etc...
- Bucephalus355 8y agoTracking / Signal Hunting technology for planes and boats has always seemed to generate the most fantastical ideas. There has been a good amount of progress, but it really stalled for a while when ICBMs seemed to negate the importance of aircraft. The US had the quite sophisticated Northern Early Warning Line at one time to monitor all airspace in the North Pole. It’s very hard, even today, to get good satellite tracking there because it is a Pole. The craziest thing I’ve heard is what the British tried before radar was invented. A Hoover Dam like wall 200 feet high that was supposed to amplify the sounds of planes approaching from Germany that would alert a human operator. http://www.andrewgrantham.co.uk/soundmirrors/locations/denge/ http://www.andrewgrantham.co.uk/soundmirrors/locations/denge...
- FlyMoreRockets 8y agoRF snooping has traditionally been done by "fishing trawlers".
- clubm8 8y agoSo basically in 5-10 years they'll be using satellites for domestic surveillance? After all, pretty much every other "anti-terror" measure seems to "trickle down" to local LEOs
- ridgeguy 8y agoThese may not work well for low frequency sources. The satellites are above the ionosphere, which reflects/absorbs low freq RF. Comm signals at, for example, 3.5MHz wouldn't get through the ionosphere.