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How Canada's military reacted to seeing Pokemon Go players trespassing

248 points by planetjones 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
andybak 7y ago
Ex-Ingress player here (Pokemon Go precursor). I could you tell some stories... There's several recorded deaths (the one I can recall without looking it up involved drowning trying to reach a lighthouse). Players play whilst driving regularly. Several local disagreements almost progressed to physical fights. There's a global network of data-scrapers on both teams that log all player activity for strategic reasons. Or maybe "just because they can". That's timestamped location data for every interaction with the game. (as far as I know this isn't possible with Pokemon Go. Being aimed at kids it's much more locked down and safe-guarding aware) On the plus side - many healthy friendships were formed and even a couple of long-term relationships. I still occasionally meet up with my old chums.
- rhokstar 7y ago
  Yes, I've experienced everything you've mentioned since the beta days of Ingress. On a more positive note... after finally hiring data scientists and mobile device hackers, Niantic have been progressively banning Ingress accounts suspected of scraping and/or automating the gathering of resources and recharging of portals. The impact in my area, southern California, changed longstanding faction dominated territories into fragmented pockets that either faction can now control. Suspected "automated" supply chains are now broken and rule changes to Quantum capsules resulted in the slowing down of attacks and lowered volume/frequency of those beneficiaries.
  - johannes1234321 7y ago
    How much of that fragmentation simply come from legit players stop playing Ingress? Over here the community notably shrank and people don't defend their home base anymore as strong (even in legit ways)
- otec 7y ago
  Do you have any idea data to understand how many friendships were formed exactly ? I'm curious to compare vs. daily encounters of people.
- hylaride 7y ago
  Ah, I do miss the community of Ingress. It's such a shame the game was ruined with Ingress Prime, which is a lesson in bad usability. I don't miss the "cheating" griefers, though.
- core-questions 7y ago
  Gotta tell you, this whole thing reads as seriously creepy. Who's to say that intelligence orgs or other interested parties wouldn't create or piggyback on things like this for a source of high granularity location data? Even just to resell? In the case of games where you use the camera, wouldn't someone maybe also want to use (at least snapshots of) the video feed? Like, on the benign side you could use it to update Google Street View, but on the more malicious side it's easy to imagine putting some rare Pokemon down somewhere and baiting someone off in order to get them to take pictures of specific things for you without needing an agent on the ground to go and do it. I can't imagine running a game like this on my hardware or allowing my kids to do so. You've gotta be a bit naive to just assume it's completely innocent.
  - parliament32 7y ago
    >Who's to say that intelligence orgs or other interested parties wouldn't create or piggyback on things like this for a source of high granularity location data? How is this sort of location data useful? Sure, my day to day walking around is useful, but like parent said above, data is only recorded when you're actively playing the game. So you'd get a bunch of location data of... people going to the places the game wants them to go. You can't really do anything with that.
    - kkarakk 7y ago
      Yeah but a phone is also a device collecting tons of useful metadata - nearby towers,wifi routers, bt devices and even the most secured iPhones can be turned leaky with enough access. Simply get into an iPhone of a known location based app gamer and then add a pokestop to a location. Even if the gamer gets picked up it won't be too suspicious since they'll have a history of going to lots of random locations. Even if the hack is detected by a suspicious organization, the phone will have transmitted the info out by the time they detect the hack. This is just one poorly thought out scenario, there are lots of things you can do with phones nowadays - use them as collection tools, relays etc
    - in_cahoots 7y ago
      Pokémon go has an option to track your location when the app is in the background, even though that location is almost never useful. This is actually a regression from a previous version, which synced with Apple’s health APIs to track steps without tracking location. It’s not hard to guess why they removed that feature.
- belril 7y ago
  As a fellow ex-Ingresser, I think there are some truly fascinating stories that will eventually be lost about all the effort that has gone into that game globally. I’ve seen heroic feats of software engineering, physical effort and project management, all in the name of some mobile game that’s a much bigger game of capture the flag.
  - nneonneo 7y ago
    I mean, almost any game that’s popular enough ends up having these kinds of crazy stories. If you think what Ingress players do is crazy, you should see what EVE Online players get up to...
    - Arbalest 7y ago
      Are we talking IRL interactions with EVE here, because the game certainly isn't.
  - BryantD 7y ago
    Losing G+ really hurt here, since that was the primary community tool. I didn't save as much as I wanted to. Luckily there are some epic stories in Google Docs. Actually... https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-1 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-1 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-2 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-2 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-3 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-3
- Pigo 7y ago
  It's been so long since I played, obviously, I can't remember all the terminology. I had another green player destroy my base link (whatever it was called - my oldest link) because it was in his way. He could have reached out to me and I might have given him the okay. So I was real mature about it, I caused a scene in the world chat and rage-quit.
Camillo 7y ago
> It took more than three years for the Department of National Defence (DND) to provide the documents requested by CBC News. > [...] "Recognizing that backlog files require more attention, DND recently created a new team in the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) Directorate as part of a Backlog Reduction Initiative. This team has been assigned the task of working solely on backlog files so that the other processing teams can concentrate on ensuring newer files do not go late," she said. LOL, what a waste of resources. Edit: I don't get why I'm being downvoted. These things do have a cost. FOIA requests are not free. FOIA requests can be frivolous. Here we have one branch of the Canadian government (the CBC) getting another branch of the Canadian government (the military) to spend time collecting information, scanning documents, reviewing everything for security... all so that Brett can write a lame "quirky" story about a video game that's three years old at this point. For what? Clicks? Ad revenue? It's obviously pure waste. No wonder they had to create a special team to deal with the backlog, when the government itself files bullshit requests against itself. I don't know, maybe the Canadian military has nothing better to do. Maybe Canada's government journalists have nothing more pressing to look into with respect to the military. I guess it's possible. It still leaves you wondering what the Canadian public is paying them for. BTW, just a few days ago there was an article about how America used to be able to complete large engineering projects quickly and cheaply, and now they can't. Some were pointing out that perhaps the cumulative cost of all the new systems we built on top since then has something to do with it (whether they are public systems due to regulation or private systems due to litigation). Well, maybe it's because our governments keep making laws that say "do this within 60 days or else", and the cost remains forever unexamined. Then let me at least point out that this is a clear instance of pure waste. And yes, a certain level of frivolous requests probably needs to be tolerated for the system to work at all. But when it's the _government_ creating waste _for itself_ to write a Buzzfeed-tier piece of shit article because it's all magic free government money, all I can say is: dear Brett, you're not a stalwart guard-dog of democracy just because your job title has "journalist" in it. You need to actually think about what you're doing and try to do something useful with your government paycheck.
- alias_neo 7y ago
  Perhaps one small point; how Canada handled this differently to say, perhaps the US might, makes this worth something. Also FOIA requests are generally processed only when the cost and resource required are "reasonable". At least here in the UK that's the case.
imvetri 7y ago
Security breaches using civilians
- pvaldes 7y ago
  Mapping of roads and paths in areas of interest at least as a collateral effect. Maybe including some features that a satellite can't see well (tunnels, paths on forested areas, ect).
itcrowd 7y ago
It's cool to see how the game took the world by storm in such a short time. The "out-group" - including military personnel - was left completely in the dark as to what all kids seemed to know about: Pokemon, Gyms and Stops. > "Plse advise the Commissionaires that apparently Fort Frontenac is both a PokeGym and a PokeStop. I will be completely honest in that I have not idea what that is," wrote Maj. Jeff Monaghan at CFB Kingston.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  Also > The game's premise seems to be going to the 'PokeStops/Gyms' to collect 'Pokemon's' (we should almost hire a 12-year-old to help us out with this) And I loved how the CFB Halifax made a recommendation that apparently (from my very limited understanding of Pokémon GO) requires getting some of their people to play the game to upgrade the stops at the museum :D
  - masklinn 7y ago
    I’m pretty sure you can’t upgrade locations from within the game (or at least could not at the time the locations were landmarks seeded from Ingress), I’d guess the recommendations were for contact to niantic.
- VLM 7y ago
  From what I remember of age distribution of players, at least the ones I knew at work, the Major quoted in the article is on the cusp of being too old to have experienced pokemon as a kid whereas the front line personnel are in the target age for the game and app. I'm far too old for pokemon; the concept was invented right about the time I graduated college. The Major is probably about a decade younger than I am, plus or minus speed of promotion in the Canadian forces. I suspect there was a lot of trolling the upper echelons by lower level personnel claiming they've never heard of any pokey-man and similar. That's how it would have rolled when I was in the Army. Privates always create their own fun. The military guy who convinced his boss to let him explore the base to find more pokemon for himself, err, I mean, strictly for research purposes, is a truly epic stereotypical military story.
- 7y ago
hydgv 7y ago
Where's the entire text of this? https://i.cbc.ca/1.5397449.1576501622!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_1180/pokemon-criminal-intelligence-advisory.jpg https://i.cbc.ca/1.5397449.1576501622!/fileImage/httpImage/i...
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Only the requester got it. You could go the government’s list of Completed Access to Information Requests page, find Canadian Forces and ask for an informal copy. They may send you a copy. There may be a lot of rédactions though. It may not be up yet, might be a few months.
walrus01 7y ago
Imagine if Pokemon go used the elevation data from gps. It's just lat long. People would be climbing trees, using prybars to open the locked roof access doors of tall office buildings, etc.
- tristanperry 7y ago
  ... which seems like a good premise for a Black Mirror episode!
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    /u/cstross's Halting State features people in an ARG being used for cover for attacks. Well worth a read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State
- m4rtink 7y ago
  GPS provided elevation data is bad, like really really bad. Often tens of meters out of sync. Unlikely this would work well in practice without additional location data sources (barometer, camera based tracking, etc.).
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    I was intrigued by this, so here's a quick explanation by Garmin: https://support.garmin.com/en-CA/?faq=QPc5x3ZFUv1QyoxITW2vZ6 https://support.garmin.com/en-CA/?faq=QPc5x3ZFUv1QyoxITW2vZ6 Important quote: "It is not uncommon for satellite heights to be off from map elevations by +/- 400 ft." Wow.
    - eigenvector 7y ago
      Yes, this is why most backcountry navigation apps don't display GPS elevation to the user, instead they use the lat/long to look up the position on a topographical map and report that elevation instead. In very steep terrain, it's always a good idea to employ a conventional (barometric) altimeter.
OJFord 7y ago
Seems like a fairly straightforward, good, solution would be for countries to update legislation such that restricted airspaces apply to augmented reality too. Then it would be required of Niantic (rather than its cooperation hoped for) to ensure none were in such areas.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  You've just made it really easy to get a complete map of all sensitive locations... one hopes the nation's enemies aren't clever enough to publish an app.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    How? Restricted air space already exists, I'm just saying 'extend that to digital world'.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      First, I'm assuming there is actually a reason to limit the public's wandering through military bases. If that's the case, ISTM that safety only requires the public stay out of probably-already-fenced actually-dangerous areas. Keeping the public out of all lands must be for some less tangible reason like "national security". People can walk on unfenced land whether or not they have an AR app. If it's important that they not walk there, put up some signs or increase patrols or whatever. Those are local solutions that aren't easily aggregated by a single app developer seeking all locations with "national security" connections. Airspace may be restricted for any number of reasons, especially safety. Also, we can't build fences in the air. So, airspace restriction for reasons of "national security" can hide among all the other airspace restrictions. On the ground, that isn't the case.
      - OJFord 7y ago
        My suggestion was to make all airspace restriction apply to AR, so I don't understand why you think airspace restrictions are fine, but my suggestion leaks information compromising national security?
wheybags 7y ago
I dont really get how people were able to just walk into military bases. Shouldn't they have fences? And if there's no fence, isn't it just public land that it's OK to walk on?
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  Shouldn't they have fences? In the western US, you will find several remote military bases that include ground and air live-fire ranges that are un-fenced. There are usually signs though. (Some) military bases are very large, making it impractical to maintain complete fencing around them. >And if there's no fence, isn't it just public land that it's OK to walk on? Why would it be?
  - archview 7y ago
    Exactly. The US uses shear size as a boundary to entry into the bases. I learned this after reading about the German family who perished in Death Valley and their perilous walk to find help at the nearby military base which proved fruitless. They were looking for a fence and guard towers not realizing they were walking further from help.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    > > And if there's no fence, isn't it just public land that it's OK to walk on? > Why would it be? This isn't the culture in the US, but in some parts of the world, the default assumption is that land is accessible unless it's fenced or otherwise marked. There are some politeness norms like not walking right up to someone's house in the woods, but generally in i.e. Norway, if it's outside, you're probably allowed to be there. The culture in the US seems to come from capitalism being such a part of our culture. Every resource, including land, is viewed as a commodity. Even many of our publicly-owned land which is ostensibly intended for public use, such as state and national parks, has entry fees.
    - wcarron 7y ago
      > The culture in the US seems to come from capitalism being such a part of our culture. Every resource, including land, is viewed as a commodity. Even many of our publicly-owned land which is ostensibly intended for public use, such as state and national parks, has entry fees. It costs money to maintain public lands like national parks. The neanderthals who don't understand Leave No Trace principles cause massive amounts of damage that needs to be prevented, policed, and repaired. Chores like trail maintenance, habitat restoration, wildlife studies, trash removal, toilet upkeep, etc. etc, all need to be done to keep the parks as close as possible to wild, so that the next generation can enjoy it. Entry fees fund the conservation of these public lands.
darkhorn 7y ago
https://sociable.co/technology/cia-backed-pokemon-go-privacy/ https://sociable.co/technology/cia-backed-pokemon-go-privacy... > Prior to founding Niantic Labs, Hanke was the CEO of mapping company Keyhole, Inc. through funding from the CIA’s venture capital branch, In-Q-Tel in 2001. Keyhole was later bought by Google in 2004. > The In-Q-Tel website clearly states its mission on the front page, so there is no doubt as to what interests the company serves: > IQT identifies, adapts, and delivers innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency and broader U.S. Intelligence Community.
bonestamp2 7y ago
The way the base in Halifax handled it is a perfect example for how these types of things should be approached: 1. Remove the threat (PokeStop) where it is a security risk. 2. Harness the attention for organizational benefit where possible (Add PokeStop to increase museum attendance) Best of all, this approach stems from some good life/business advice from Rear Admiral Newton, "Life and work are best accomplished if there is good fun, health and friendship."
- cpeterso 7y ago
  Are the PokeStop locations random? I would have expected to Niantic block certain locations, like government property.
  - BryantD 7y ago
    No, they're (mostly) user-submitted and user-approved. In theory new locations on military bases aren't allowed as of a couple of years ago, but a few slip through the process. And, inconsistently, old ones aren't removed.
  - f2f 7y ago
    the locations are identical to the ones users submitted for ingress, the previous game niantic did. for that you didn't need much vetting and because the popularity was low nobody cared so much. most likely some servicemen (servicepersons?) submitted the spots.
  - dx87 7y ago
    Some categories are blocked, like daycare and schools. They'll also prevent anything from showing up, pokemon included, from areas that don't have recognized roads or paths. There is a park near my house that has a paved path through the woods that doesn't show up in the pokemon go app, so nothing appears there because the game doesn't want to encourage you to wander through the woods.
    - he0001 7y ago
      Not sure about schools and daycares. My children’s school and daycare is a gym and a poke stop respectively. And there are several other daycares here in the area which are gyms.
trhway 7y ago
>At least three military police officers (at CFB Comox in British Columbia, CFB Petawawa and CFB Kingston) were assigned an unusual task: wander around their bases, smartphones and notepads in hand, searching for virtual Pokemon infrastructure. there is a comedy gold here. Cleaning the base from Pokemon infestation before an inspecting visit by General. The Major pondering whether he should salute to the Pokemon in General insignia. Soldiers getting to/from AWOL presenting themselves as undercover secret Pokemons to the drunk clueless Major on duty (my imagination naturally drifts to the specifics of the military i'd known from my childhood, ie. USSR/Russia) - they disappear AR-style when the Major looks at them through the phone.
ixtli 7y ago
I hope these games increase people's awareness of property ownership (both public and private) and make them pause to give thought to the question of how and why things are and what normal people are allowed and disallowed from doing and why.
- uhhhhhhh 7y ago
  It hopefully raises conversation on the value of property ownership generally in society and the benefits of communal/public property.
  - ixtli 7y ago
    Fingers definitely crossed.
  - MeltySmelty 7y ago
    f off
ChuckMcM 7y ago
I reminds me a bit of Ingress players who created portals at secure facilities so that the other faction could not capture them. I do wonder though if someone might weaponize this. Being able to "generate a crowd" at a particular location all with a plausible excuse for being there would make accessing some places surreptitiously much easier.
sandworm101 7y ago
Lol. This sort of thing is nothing new. Canada, and many other countries, don't operate their bases like the US. There isn't razorwire and men patrolling the perimeter with guns. Often, if you don't notice the signs, you can drive directly onto a base unchallenged. Only the areas with sensitive stuff are behind 24/7 guards. Usually the first thing a wayward driver notices are the signs saying 'marching troops have right of way'. What is funny is seeing people who have made that wrong turn freak out thinking they have done something wrong. Admittedly, sharing the road with an armed platoon can be a bit intimidating but at most you will get an escort back to the public road. So it is no surprise that pokemon classified such bases as public areas. The upside of this security posture is that to get eyes on the guarded perimeter you have to first enter the open area of the base, somewhere where unusual activity will be noticed.
haecceity 7y ago
Don't they have fences gates?

248 points by planetjones 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Ex-Ingress player here (Pokemon Go precursor). I could you tell some stories... There's several recorded deaths (the one I can recall without looking it up involved drowning trying to reach a lighthouse). Players play whilst driving regularly. Several local disagreements almost progressed to physical fights. There's a global network of data-scrapers on both teams that log all player activity for strategic reasons. Or maybe "just because they can". That's timestamped location data for every interaction with the game. (as far as I know this isn't possible with Pokemon Go. Being aimed at kids it's much more locked down and safe-guarding aware) On the plus side - many healthy friendships were formed and even a couple of long-term relationships. I still occasionally meet up with my old chums.

rhokstar 7y ago
Yes, I've experienced everything you've mentioned since the beta days of Ingress. On a more positive note... after finally hiring data scientists and mobile device hackers, Niantic have been progressively banning Ingress accounts suspected of scraping and/or automating the gathering of resources and recharging of portals. The impact in my area, southern California, changed longstanding faction dominated territories into fragmented pockets that either faction can now control. Suspected "automated" supply chains are now broken and rule changes to Quantum capsules resulted in the slowing down of attacks and lowered volume/frequency of those beneficiaries.
- johannes1234321 7y ago
  How much of that fragmentation simply come from legit players stop playing Ingress? Over here the community notably shrank and people don't defend their home base anymore as strong (even in legit ways)
otec 7y ago
Do you have any idea data to understand how many friendships were formed exactly ? I'm curious to compare vs. daily encounters of people.
hylaride 7y ago
Ah, I do miss the community of Ingress. It's such a shame the game was ruined with Ingress Prime, which is a lesson in bad usability. I don't miss the "cheating" griefers, though.
core-questions 7y ago
Gotta tell you, this whole thing reads as seriously creepy. Who's to say that intelligence orgs or other interested parties wouldn't create or piggyback on things like this for a source of high granularity location data? Even just to resell? In the case of games where you use the camera, wouldn't someone maybe also want to use (at least snapshots of) the video feed? Like, on the benign side you could use it to update Google Street View, but on the more malicious side it's easy to imagine putting some rare Pokemon down somewhere and baiting someone off in order to get them to take pictures of specific things for you without needing an agent on the ground to go and do it. I can't imagine running a game like this on my hardware or allowing my kids to do so. You've gotta be a bit naive to just assume it's completely innocent.
- parliament32 7y ago
  >Who's to say that intelligence orgs or other interested parties wouldn't create or piggyback on things like this for a source of high granularity location data? How is this sort of location data useful? Sure, my day to day walking around is useful, but like parent said above, data is only recorded when you're actively playing the game. So you'd get a bunch of location data of... people going to the places the game wants them to go. You can't really do anything with that.
  - kkarakk 7y ago
    Yeah but a phone is also a device collecting tons of useful metadata - nearby towers,wifi routers, bt devices and even the most secured iPhones can be turned leaky with enough access. Simply get into an iPhone of a known location based app gamer and then add a pokestop to a location. Even if the gamer gets picked up it won't be too suspicious since they'll have a history of going to lots of random locations. Even if the hack is detected by a suspicious organization, the phone will have transmitted the info out by the time they detect the hack. This is just one poorly thought out scenario, there are lots of things you can do with phones nowadays - use them as collection tools, relays etc
  - in_cahoots 7y ago
    Pokémon go has an option to track your location when the app is in the background, even though that location is almost never useful. This is actually a regression from a previous version, which synced with Apple’s health APIs to track steps without tracking location. It’s not hard to guess why they removed that feature.
belril 7y ago
As a fellow ex-Ingresser, I think there are some truly fascinating stories that will eventually be lost about all the effort that has gone into that game globally. I’ve seen heroic feats of software engineering, physical effort and project management, all in the name of some mobile game that’s a much bigger game of capture the flag.
- nneonneo 7y ago
  I mean, almost any game that’s popular enough ends up having these kinds of crazy stories. If you think what Ingress players do is crazy, you should see what EVE Online players get up to...
  - Arbalest 7y ago
    Are we talking IRL interactions with EVE here, because the game certainly isn't.
- BryantD 7y ago
  Losing G+ really hurt here, since that was the primary community tool. I didn't save as much as I wanted to. Luckily there are some epic stories in Google Docs. Actually... https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-1 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-1 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-2 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-2 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-3 https://bit.ly/ingress-sitrep-homecoming-3
Pigo 7y ago
It's been so long since I played, obviously, I can't remember all the terminology. I had another green player destroy my base link (whatever it was called - my oldest link) because it was in his way. He could have reached out to me and I might have given him the okay. So I was real mature about it, I caused a scene in the world chat and rage-quit.

Camillo 7y ago

> It took more than three years for the Department of National Defence (DND) to provide the documents requested by CBC News. > [...] "Recognizing that backlog files require more attention, DND recently created a new team in the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) Directorate as part of a Backlog Reduction Initiative. This team has been assigned the task of working solely on backlog files so that the other processing teams can concentrate on ensuring newer files do not go late," she said. LOL, what a waste of resources. Edit: I don't get why I'm being downvoted. These things do have a cost. FOIA requests are not free. FOIA requests can be frivolous. Here we have one branch of the Canadian government (the CBC) getting another branch of the Canadian government (the military) to spend time collecting information, scanning documents, reviewing everything for security... all so that Brett can write a lame "quirky" story about a video game that's three years old at this point. For what? Clicks? Ad revenue? It's obviously pure waste. No wonder they had to create a special team to deal with the backlog, when the government itself files bullshit requests against itself. I don't know, maybe the Canadian military has nothing better to do. Maybe Canada's government journalists have nothing more pressing to look into with respect to the military. I guess it's possible. It still leaves you wondering what the Canadian public is paying them for. BTW, just a few days ago there was an article about how America used to be able to complete large engineering projects quickly and cheaply, and now they can't. Some were pointing out that perhaps the cumulative cost of all the new systems we built on top since then has something to do with it (whether they are public systems due to regulation or private systems due to litigation). Well, maybe it's because our governments keep making laws that say "do this within 60 days or else", and the cost remains forever unexamined. Then let me at least point out that this is a clear instance of pure waste. And yes, a certain level of frivolous requests probably needs to be tolerated for the system to work at all. But when it's the _government_ creating waste _for itself_ to write a Buzzfeed-tier piece of shit article because it's all magic free government money, all I can say is: dear Brett, you're not a stalwart guard-dog of democracy just because your job title has "journalist" in it. You need to actually think about what you're doing and try to do something useful with your government paycheck.

alias_neo 7y ago
Perhaps one small point; how Canada handled this differently to say, perhaps the US might, makes this worth something. Also FOIA requests are generally processed only when the cost and resource required are "reasonable". At least here in the UK that's the case.

imvetri 7y ago

Security breaches using civilians

pvaldes 7y ago
Mapping of roads and paths in areas of interest at least as a collateral effect. Maybe including some features that a satellite can't see well (tunnels, paths on forested areas, ect).

itcrowd 7y ago

It's cool to see how the game took the world by storm in such a short time. The "out-group" - including military personnel - was left completely in the dark as to what all kids seemed to know about: Pokemon, Gyms and Stops. > "Plse advise the Commissionaires that apparently Fort Frontenac is both a PokeGym and a PokeStop. I will be completely honest in that I have not idea what that is," wrote Maj. Jeff Monaghan at CFB Kingston.

Semaphor 7y ago
Also > The game's premise seems to be going to the 'PokeStops/Gyms' to collect 'Pokemon's' (we should almost hire a 12-year-old to help us out with this) And I loved how the CFB Halifax made a recommendation that apparently (from my very limited understanding of Pokémon GO) requires getting some of their people to play the game to upgrade the stops at the museum :D
- masklinn 7y ago
  I’m pretty sure you can’t upgrade locations from within the game (or at least could not at the time the locations were landmarks seeded from Ingress), I’d guess the recommendations were for contact to niantic.
VLM 7y ago
From what I remember of age distribution of players, at least the ones I knew at work, the Major quoted in the article is on the cusp of being too old to have experienced pokemon as a kid whereas the front line personnel are in the target age for the game and app. I'm far too old for pokemon; the concept was invented right about the time I graduated college. The Major is probably about a decade younger than I am, plus or minus speed of promotion in the Canadian forces. I suspect there was a lot of trolling the upper echelons by lower level personnel claiming they've never heard of any pokey-man and similar. That's how it would have rolled when I was in the Army. Privates always create their own fun. The military guy who convinced his boss to let him explore the base to find more pokemon for himself, err, I mean, strictly for research purposes, is a truly epic stereotypical military story.
7y ago

hydgv 7y ago

Where's the entire text of this? https://i.cbc.ca/1.5397449.1576501622!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_1180/pokemon-criminal-intelligence-advisory.jpg https://i.cbc.ca/1.5397449.1576501622!/fileImage/httpImage/i...

Scoundreller 7y ago
Only the requester got it. You could go the government’s list of Completed Access to Information Requests page, find Canadian Forces and ask for an informal copy. They may send you a copy. There may be a lot of rédactions though. It may not be up yet, might be a few months.

walrus01 7y ago

Imagine if Pokemon go used the elevation data from gps. It's just lat long. People would be climbing trees, using prybars to open the locked roof access doors of tall office buildings, etc.

tristanperry 7y ago
... which seems like a good premise for a Black Mirror episode!
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  /u/cstross's Halting State features people in an ARG being used for cover for attacks. Well worth a read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State
m4rtink 7y ago
GPS provided elevation data is bad, like really really bad. Often tens of meters out of sync. Unlikely this would work well in practice without additional location data sources (barometer, camera based tracking, etc.).
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  I was intrigued by this, so here's a quick explanation by Garmin: https://support.garmin.com/en-CA/?faq=QPc5x3ZFUv1QyoxITW2vZ6 https://support.garmin.com/en-CA/?faq=QPc5x3ZFUv1QyoxITW2vZ6 Important quote: "It is not uncommon for satellite heights to be off from map elevations by +/- 400 ft." Wow.
  - eigenvector 7y ago
    Yes, this is why most backcountry navigation apps don't display GPS elevation to the user, instead they use the lat/long to look up the position on a topographical map and report that elevation instead. In very steep terrain, it's always a good idea to employ a conventional (barometric) altimeter.

OJFord 7y ago

Seems like a fairly straightforward, good, solution would be for countries to update legislation such that restricted airspaces apply to augmented reality too. Then it would be required of Niantic (rather than its cooperation hoped for) to ensure none were in such areas.

jessaustin 7y ago
You've just made it really easy to get a complete map of all sensitive locations... one hopes the nation's enemies aren't clever enough to publish an app.
- OJFord 7y ago
  How? Restricted air space already exists, I'm just saying 'extend that to digital world'.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    First, I'm assuming there is actually a reason to limit the public's wandering through military bases. If that's the case, ISTM that safety only requires the public stay out of probably-already-fenced actually-dangerous areas. Keeping the public out of all lands must be for some less tangible reason like "national security". People can walk on unfenced land whether or not they have an AR app. If it's important that they not walk there, put up some signs or increase patrols or whatever. Those are local solutions that aren't easily aggregated by a single app developer seeking all locations with "national security" connections. Airspace may be restricted for any number of reasons, especially safety. Also, we can't build fences in the air. So, airspace restriction for reasons of "national security" can hide among all the other airspace restrictions. On the ground, that isn't the case.
    - OJFord 7y ago
      My suggestion was to make all airspace restriction apply to AR, so I don't understand why you think airspace restrictions are fine, but my suggestion leaks information compromising national security?

wheybags 7y ago

I dont really get how people were able to just walk into military bases. Shouldn't they have fences? And if there's no fence, isn't it just public land that it's OK to walk on?

0xffff2 7y ago
Shouldn't they have fences? In the western US, you will find several remote military bases that include ground and air live-fire ranges that are un-fenced. There are usually signs though. (Some) military bases are very large, making it impractical to maintain complete fencing around them. >And if there's no fence, isn't it just public land that it's OK to walk on? Why would it be?
- archview 7y ago
  Exactly. The US uses shear size as a boundary to entry into the bases. I learned this after reading about the German family who perished in Death Valley and their perilous walk to find help at the nearby military base which proved fruitless. They were looking for a fence and guard towers not realizing they were walking further from help.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  > > And if there's no fence, isn't it just public land that it's OK to walk on? > Why would it be? This isn't the culture in the US, but in some parts of the world, the default assumption is that land is accessible unless it's fenced or otherwise marked. There are some politeness norms like not walking right up to someone's house in the woods, but generally in i.e. Norway, if it's outside, you're probably allowed to be there. The culture in the US seems to come from capitalism being such a part of our culture. Every resource, including land, is viewed as a commodity. Even many of our publicly-owned land which is ostensibly intended for public use, such as state and national parks, has entry fees.
  - wcarron 7y ago
    > The culture in the US seems to come from capitalism being such a part of our culture. Every resource, including land, is viewed as a commodity. Even many of our publicly-owned land which is ostensibly intended for public use, such as state and national parks, has entry fees. It costs money to maintain public lands like national parks. The neanderthals who don't understand Leave No Trace principles cause massive amounts of damage that needs to be prevented, policed, and repaired. Chores like trail maintenance, habitat restoration, wildlife studies, trash removal, toilet upkeep, etc. etc, all need to be done to keep the parks as close as possible to wild, so that the next generation can enjoy it. Entry fees fund the conservation of these public lands.

darkhorn 7y ago

https://sociable.co/technology/cia-backed-pokemon-go-privacy/ https://sociable.co/technology/cia-backed-pokemon-go-privacy... > Prior to founding Niantic Labs, Hanke was the CEO of mapping company Keyhole, Inc. through funding from the CIA’s venture capital branch, In-Q-Tel in 2001. Keyhole was later bought by Google in 2004. > The In-Q-Tel website clearly states its mission on the front page, so there is no doubt as to what interests the company serves: > IQT identifies, adapts, and delivers innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency and broader U.S. Intelligence Community.

bonestamp2 7y ago

The way the base in Halifax handled it is a perfect example for how these types of things should be approached: 1. Remove the threat (PokeStop) where it is a security risk. 2. Harness the attention for organizational benefit where possible (Add PokeStop to increase museum attendance) Best of all, this approach stems from some good life/business advice from Rear Admiral Newton, "Life and work are best accomplished if there is good fun, health and friendship."

cpeterso 7y ago
Are the PokeStop locations random? I would have expected to Niantic block certain locations, like government property.
- BryantD 7y ago
  No, they're (mostly) user-submitted and user-approved. In theory new locations on military bases aren't allowed as of a couple of years ago, but a few slip through the process. And, inconsistently, old ones aren't removed.
- f2f 7y ago
  the locations are identical to the ones users submitted for ingress, the previous game niantic did. for that you didn't need much vetting and because the popularity was low nobody cared so much. most likely some servicemen (servicepersons?) submitted the spots.
- dx87 7y ago
  Some categories are blocked, like daycare and schools. They'll also prevent anything from showing up, pokemon included, from areas that don't have recognized roads or paths. There is a park near my house that has a paved path through the woods that doesn't show up in the pokemon go app, so nothing appears there because the game doesn't want to encourage you to wander through the woods.
  - he0001 7y ago
    Not sure about schools and daycares. My children’s school and daycare is a gym and a poke stop respectively. And there are several other daycares here in the area which are gyms.

trhway 7y ago

>At least three military police officers (at CFB Comox in British Columbia, CFB Petawawa and CFB Kingston) were assigned an unusual task: wander around their bases, smartphones and notepads in hand, searching for virtual Pokemon infrastructure. there is a comedy gold here. Cleaning the base from Pokemon infestation before an inspecting visit by General. The Major pondering whether he should salute to the Pokemon in General insignia. Soldiers getting to/from AWOL presenting themselves as undercover secret Pokemons to the drunk clueless Major on duty (my imagination naturally drifts to the specifics of the military i'd known from my childhood, ie. USSR/Russia) - they disappear AR-style when the Major looks at them through the phone.

ixtli 7y ago

I hope these games increase people's awareness of property ownership (both public and private) and make them pause to give thought to the question of how and why things are and what normal people are allowed and disallowed from doing and why.

uhhhhhhh 7y ago
It hopefully raises conversation on the value of property ownership generally in society and the benefits of communal/public property.
- ixtli 7y ago
  Fingers definitely crossed.
- MeltySmelty 7y ago
  f off

ChuckMcM 7y ago

I reminds me a bit of Ingress players who created portals at secure facilities so that the other faction could not capture them. I do wonder though if someone might weaponize this. Being able to "generate a crowd" at a particular location all with a plausible excuse for being there would make accessing some places surreptitiously much easier.

sandworm101 7y ago

Lol. This sort of thing is nothing new. Canada, and many other countries, don't operate their bases like the US. There isn't razorwire and men patrolling the perimeter with guns. Often, if you don't notice the signs, you can drive directly onto a base unchallenged. Only the areas with sensitive stuff are behind 24/7 guards. Usually the first thing a wayward driver notices are the signs saying 'marching troops have right of way'. What is funny is seeing people who have made that wrong turn freak out thinking they have done something wrong. Admittedly, sharing the road with an armed platoon can be a bit intimidating but at most you will get an escort back to the public road. So it is no surprise that pokemon classified such bases as public areas. The upside of this security posture is that to get eyes on the guarded perimeter you have to first enter the open area of the base, somewhere where unusual activity will be noticed.

haecceity 7y ago

Don't they have fences gates?