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I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stori

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

geoka9 5y ago
Same, I don't know if it's true that they are marks for Russian air strikes. But I've just tried and it does look weird (farms in the middle of the city).
- trhway 5y ago
  beside the large painted marks on the roofs/etc., on Ukranian TV 10 minutes ago they shown some marks which are kind of plastic stick-on 1 inch square with the same cross-in-circle image. The stick-on are reflective and have numbers. Some people think it is a mark of the houses with police, military residents, etc...
  - kaetemi 5y ago
    Those plastic reflective stickers are supposedly local tools for land measurement.
  - donavanm 5y ago
    Do you mean survey markers/targets? Theyre used in civil construction etc to track changes relative to an established datum https://www.berntsen.com/Surveying/Smart-Targets-Datums-Reflectors/Reflective-Tape-Targets https://www.berntsen.com/Surveying/Smart-Targets-Datums-Refl...
    - trhway 5y ago
      looks like it. There had some time ago been warning that some civil markers may be mistaken for suspicious one, and looks like that is what happening in this case. Sent them email about these ones.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  It would be very suprising if those are marks for air raids. Most likely it is a troll doing it (proper troll, for "fun"). Or official psyops ofcourse to mess with peoples heads. Spotters might very well use Google map to get coordinates but to communicate that via Google Maps itself would be strange. I don't see how fire control would not want to know what they are marking for prioritisation.
wzyoi 5y ago
I’ve put some thoughts in edit on this. What do you think?
- squarefoot 5y ago
  You're probably right about undercover saboteurs; they don't want to be caught with military/unusual equipment, so the use of normal phones/tablets and related apps makes sense. In doubt, the harm done by deleting those and similar marks if they're innocuous is nothing compared to the benefits if they're really made by saboteurs. Better they remove them ASAP and keep the attention for other that might surface. I'd also alert other maps service providers. If Ukraine still has enough control over the cellular network data, and Google degraded connections to their maps service in the area to plain http (so no port 443), deep packet inspection from the Ukrainian govt could reveal if someone is adding marks and near which tower.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    > In doubt, the harm done by deleting those and similar marks if they're innocuous is nothing compared to the benefits if they're really made by saboteurs. You waste energy and time. There is an insane amount of paranoia in Ukraine (for good reasons ...) and it would not suprise me if the blue-on-blue events are a bigger problem than civilian sabouteurs themselves.
_trampeltier 5y ago
Since SE079 (cellphone) is was very common in swiss army when I was in service, I would not be surpriced, if they don't use google services and so on today too.
blitzar 5y ago
The rest of the world is using twitter & tiktok to get real time intelligence so why not. One could, for example, tell those sympathetic to you to use "hastag military installation blow it up" and tag it on social media and within a few hours the circling bomber get the coordinates and boom.
ArnoVW 5y ago
Actually, I have been trying to find some good in-depth sources. If you can share, I'd be much obliged.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Here why they are using civilian walkie talkies: https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529?t=cZPqTDg5GaoXwKmt0P3aoA&s=19 https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529?t=...
  - rocqua 5y ago
    If those comms are cleartext, that also means its possible to start sending disinformation. Start talking about hold-ups at cross-roads that are clear. Tell them about shortcuts that actually lead through marshes. Tell them "the attack we discussed earlier will actually happen 43 minutes earlier". Tell them, "hey we have run out of food here". Tell them, I heard that 10 miles back they are serving hot food, damn I wish I was there. Just fuck with their comms, making them either make wrong decisions, demoralize them, or make them abandon these comms for something even worse.
    - NicoJuicy 5y ago
      Well, the word was already out before I posted this ofc. But I would have hoped that this was kept a secret and that I didn't knew about this.
    - rkangel 5y ago
      > If those comms are cleartext, that also means its possible to start sending disinformation. This is a classic confusion of authentication and encryption. We can hear what they're saying (which is useful), but that doesn't mean we can pretend to be them.
      - rocqua 5y ago
        The comms have neither authentication nor encryption. So at least on a technology level it is very possible to transmit. I doubt they have robust enough authentication to determine whether you really are supposed to be speaking. Likely they won't believe you, but they will also start doubting, in general, messages sent over the channel. That means being less sure the actual authentic messages are to be believed. It's more about disrupting their faith in the comm system, rather than about having them believe your falsehoods.
Robin_Message 5y ago
C.f. the US military removing the degradation of the civilian GPS during the first gulf war due to a lack of military receivers.
kmlx 5y ago
> what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation. can we corroborate this with chinese and/or non-western media? it’s hard for me to believe anything at all during a war.
- TheAlchemist 5y ago
  I'm extremely sceptical too - but it's pretty much well known by now that they intended to do a 'special operation' - lasting 2-3 days and hoping for Ukraine to surrender. Didn't really happened that way. Also, Chinese media don't show any images of war as far as I know (just reading Global Times from time to time to have an opinion from 'the other side')
- trhway 5y ago
  Western media this time is pretty much on point. It doesn't mean that the media has become better. It is just that their standard narrative of bad Russia has this time really matched and even got exceeded by the reality as Russia is actually waging criminally atrocious and completely unprovoked and unjustified war while the Ukrainians are really fighting it tooth and nail. The Ukrainians' current most important victory is the failure of the Russian Blitzkrieg. While Russians are pressing and bringing a lot of hardware it is very clear that they don't get even one tenth of the expected bang for the buck while Ukrainians' resistance is growing. For people with Ukrainian and/or Russian language the raw sources like Telegram work nice. I initially used the sources very actively to cross-reference Ukrainian TV, and it was checking fine for me, so i mostly settled on the Ukrainian TV. Russian TV is even not in the ballpark of the truth, it is even not on the same planet.
  - kmlx 5y ago
    > Western media this time is pretty much on point. how do you know this? > so i mostly settled on the Ukrainian TV these the same guys that said the ghost of kiev is a real thing (it’s not)? or that the soldiers of snake island died (they didn’t)?
    - 5y ago
pjc50 5y ago
Today I ran across a tweet from before the war about corruption in Russian comms procurement: https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1184964805565792257 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1184964805565792257 Arsalov arrested: https://warsawinstitute.org/deputy-chief-russias-general-staff-arrested-fsb-hits-military/ https://warsawinstitute.org/deputy-chief-russias-general-sta... It seems likely that corruption has left them with a non-working system. It happens often enough even in Western procurement.
anentropic 5y ago
https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529 https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529 apparently some of Russian forces are using unencrypted civilian analog radio
wzyoi 5y ago
While I don't have more information and sources apart from an insta story from a smart girl from Dnipro, I don't see the appearance of 10 closed farms in the industrial city beliavable. I requested more info, but she is likely sleeping.
- curl-up 5y ago
  Check my other, more detailed comment - farm's address is rarely in a place where farm is actually located. Farm land is just an asset of a company, which is registered elsewhere. If this is a small, family owned business, it makes sense that they register it in their home (to simplify paperwork), while their farm land is somewhere outside of town. Checking the points I get on gmaps (following your instructions) and then googling these farms, they seem to be real businesses, and the address matches what gmaps give me. First point I get can be checked on [1]. [1] https://youcontrol-com-ua.translate.goog/catalog/company_details/21897611/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://youcontrol-com-ua.translate.goog/catalog/company_det...
alephxyz 5y ago
The BBC got access to a lost tablet used by some Wagner group mercenaries in Libya and the map they use doesn't seem to be Google maps : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/8iaz6xit26/the-lost-tablet-and-the-secret-documents https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/8iaz6xit26/the-lost-tablet-...

geoka9 5y ago

Same, I don't know if it's true that they are marks for Russian air strikes. But I've just tried and it does look weird (farms in the middle of the city).

trhway 5y ago
beside the large painted marks on the roofs/etc., on Ukranian TV 10 minutes ago they shown some marks which are kind of plastic stick-on 1 inch square with the same cross-in-circle image. The stick-on are reflective and have numbers. Some people think it is a mark of the houses with police, military residents, etc...
- kaetemi 5y ago
  Those plastic reflective stickers are supposedly local tools for land measurement.
- donavanm 5y ago
  Do you mean survey markers/targets? Theyre used in civil construction etc to track changes relative to an established datum https://www.berntsen.com/Surveying/Smart-Targets-Datums-Reflectors/Reflective-Tape-Targets https://www.berntsen.com/Surveying/Smart-Targets-Datums-Refl...
  - trhway 5y ago
    looks like it. There had some time ago been warning that some civil markers may be mistaken for suspicious one, and looks like that is what happening in this case. Sent them email about these ones.
rightbyte 5y ago
It would be very suprising if those are marks for air raids. Most likely it is a troll doing it (proper troll, for "fun"). Or official psyops ofcourse to mess with peoples heads. Spotters might very well use Google map to get coordinates but to communicate that via Google Maps itself would be strange. I don't see how fire control would not want to know what they are marking for prioritisation.

wzyoi 5y ago

I’ve put some thoughts in edit on this. What do you think?

squarefoot 5y ago
You're probably right about undercover saboteurs; they don't want to be caught with military/unusual equipment, so the use of normal phones/tablets and related apps makes sense. In doubt, the harm done by deleting those and similar marks if they're innocuous is nothing compared to the benefits if they're really made by saboteurs. Better they remove them ASAP and keep the attention for other that might surface. I'd also alert other maps service providers. If Ukraine still has enough control over the cellular network data, and Google degraded connections to their maps service in the area to plain http (so no port 443), deep packet inspection from the Ukrainian govt could reveal if someone is adding marks and near which tower.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  > In doubt, the harm done by deleting those and similar marks if they're innocuous is nothing compared to the benefits if they're really made by saboteurs. You waste energy and time. There is an insane amount of paranoia in Ukraine (for good reasons ...) and it would not suprise me if the blue-on-blue events are a bigger problem than civilian sabouteurs themselves.

_trampeltier 5y ago

Since SE079 (cellphone) is was very common in swiss army when I was in service, I would not be surpriced, if they don't use google services and so on today too.

blitzar 5y ago

The rest of the world is using twitter & tiktok to get real time intelligence so why not. One could, for example, tell those sympathetic to you to use "hastag military installation blow it up" and tag it on social media and within a few hours the circling bomber get the coordinates and boom.

ArnoVW 5y ago

Actually, I have been trying to find some good in-depth sources. If you can share, I'd be much obliged.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
Here why they are using civilian walkie talkies: https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529?t=cZPqTDg5GaoXwKmt0P3aoA&s=19 https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529?t=...
- rocqua 5y ago
  If those comms are cleartext, that also means its possible to start sending disinformation. Start talking about hold-ups at cross-roads that are clear. Tell them about shortcuts that actually lead through marshes. Tell them "the attack we discussed earlier will actually happen 43 minutes earlier". Tell them, "hey we have run out of food here". Tell them, I heard that 10 miles back they are serving hot food, damn I wish I was there. Just fuck with their comms, making them either make wrong decisions, demoralize them, or make them abandon these comms for something even worse.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    Well, the word was already out before I posted this ofc. But I would have hoped that this was kept a secret and that I didn't knew about this.
  - rkangel 5y ago
    > If those comms are cleartext, that also means its possible to start sending disinformation. This is a classic confusion of authentication and encryption. We can hear what they're saying (which is useful), but that doesn't mean we can pretend to be them.
    - rocqua 5y ago
      The comms have neither authentication nor encryption. So at least on a technology level it is very possible to transmit. I doubt they have robust enough authentication to determine whether you really are supposed to be speaking. Likely they won't believe you, but they will also start doubting, in general, messages sent over the channel. That means being less sure the actual authentic messages are to be believed. It's more about disrupting their faith in the comm system, rather than about having them believe your falsehoods.

Robin_Message 5y ago

C.f. the US military removing the degradation of the civilian GPS during the first gulf war due to a lack of military receivers.

kmlx 5y ago

> what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation. can we corroborate this with chinese and/or non-western media? it’s hard for me to believe anything at all during a war.

TheAlchemist 5y ago
I'm extremely sceptical too - but it's pretty much well known by now that they intended to do a 'special operation' - lasting 2-3 days and hoping for Ukraine to surrender. Didn't really happened that way. Also, Chinese media don't show any images of war as far as I know (just reading Global Times from time to time to have an opinion from 'the other side')
trhway 5y ago
Western media this time is pretty much on point. It doesn't mean that the media has become better. It is just that their standard narrative of bad Russia has this time really matched and even got exceeded by the reality as Russia is actually waging criminally atrocious and completely unprovoked and unjustified war while the Ukrainians are really fighting it tooth and nail. The Ukrainians' current most important victory is the failure of the Russian Blitzkrieg. While Russians are pressing and bringing a lot of hardware it is very clear that they don't get even one tenth of the expected bang for the buck while Ukrainians' resistance is growing. For people with Ukrainian and/or Russian language the raw sources like Telegram work nice. I initially used the sources very actively to cross-reference Ukrainian TV, and it was checking fine for me, so i mostly settled on the Ukrainian TV. Russian TV is even not in the ballpark of the truth, it is even not on the same planet.
- kmlx 5y ago
  > Western media this time is pretty much on point. how do you know this? > so i mostly settled on the Ukrainian TV these the same guys that said the ghost of kiev is a real thing (it’s not)? or that the soldiers of snake island died (they didn’t)?
  - 5y ago

pjc50 5y ago

Today I ran across a tweet from before the war about corruption in Russian comms procurement: https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1184964805565792257 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1184964805565792257 Arsalov arrested: https://warsawinstitute.org/deputy-chief-russias-general-staff-arrested-fsb-hits-military/ https://warsawinstitute.org/deputy-chief-russias-general-sta... It seems likely that corruption has left them with a non-working system. It happens often enough even in Western procurement.

anentropic 5y ago

https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529 https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529 apparently some of Russian forces are using unencrypted civilian analog radio

wzyoi 5y ago

While I don't have more information and sources apart from an insta story from a smart girl from Dnipro, I don't see the appearance of 10 closed farms in the industrial city beliavable. I requested more info, but she is likely sleeping.

curl-up 5y ago
Check my other, more detailed comment - farm's address is rarely in a place where farm is actually located. Farm land is just an asset of a company, which is registered elsewhere. If this is a small, family owned business, it makes sense that they register it in their home (to simplify paperwork), while their farm land is somewhere outside of town. Checking the points I get on gmaps (following your instructions) and then googling these farms, they seem to be real businesses, and the address matches what gmaps give me. First point I get can be checked on [1]. [1] https://youcontrol-com-ua.translate.goog/catalog/company_details/21897611/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://youcontrol-com-ua.translate.goog/catalog/company_det...

alephxyz 5y ago

The BBC got access to a lost tablet used by some Wagner group mercenaries in Libya and the map they use doesn't seem to be Google maps : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/8iaz6xit26/the-lost-tablet-and-the-secret-documents https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/8iaz6xit26/the-lost-tablet-...