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I wonder what the Russian military has to say about publicly available map data while they are at war. Like, I wonder if it's hard to keep the data set accurate
by gleenn 3y ago
I wonder what the Russian military has to say about publicly available map data while they are at war. Like, I wonder if it's hard to keep the data set accurate if there are military interests to have that exact type of data hidden especially for instance near the border with Ukraine. OSM allows community editing right, so how does OSM deal with that too?
- SahAssar 3y agoI don't think this is anything novel about the ukraine conflict. Any conflict within the last decade or so would have dealt with the same issues.
- fbdab103 3y agoMilitary assets are so large and populated, it seems incredibly challenging to not leak this level of information. There was a story[0] about a military base that was revealed because soldiers would track their runs/workouts with GPS watches. Which is completely ignoring the resources available to nation states (satellites, hacked telecom infrastructure, or just bribes for data). [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
- somat 3y agoTo clarify a bit. The worry was not so much it was showing where a military base was as it was reveling details interior to a base that are intentionally not on a map and leaking details on where people moved and concentrated. Honestly, like the parent said, probably harmless info for the most part. But it is an additional set of data points that could be useful to an attacker.
- realusername 3y agoI don't think it's indeed possible to hide a military base in the modern world anymore. Even a sufficiently motivated citizen can track them with the various public channels so for nation states it's even easier. On the subject of Russia, it's such a studied country that I'm convinced there's intelligence actors which have a better view on the exact state of their own military than themselves.
- heavenlyblue 3y agoSince you're not calling Russia a nation state, does it mean it can't track various public channels?
- realusername 3y agoThey can but I doubt it's any useful when the almighty dictator won't ever listen any bad news on the state of their own army. Getting the data isn't the issue here, we're on a dictatorship paradox.
- somat 3y agoAnybody involved with OSM? Just the other day I was wondering if there were any deceptive information campaigns targeting the map. It would make a good article if there were.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]