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This is a common problem across militaries. It is difficult to stop soldiers from leaking their location if they have access to mobile phones and the Internet.
by jandrewrogers 7mo ago
This is a common problem across militaries. It is difficult to stop soldiers from leaking their location if they have access to mobile phones and the Internet. Individual cases are usually a combination of naïveté, ignorance, and an unwillingness to be inconvenienced.
It still happens in Ukraine, where immediate risk to life and limb is much more severe than this case.
- paganel 7mo agoI agree with Ukraine, but only when it comes to the first two or so years of the war, by now most of those that didn’t respect those rules (I’m talking both sides) are either dead or missing some limbs. With that told, just recently the Russian MOD has started applying heavy penalties to its soldiers close to the frontlines who were still using Telegram and/or the Ukrainian mobile network (?!), so it looks like there are still some behaviors left to correct.
- lava_pidgeon 7mo agoTG ist another case. This is more a crackdown on the uncensored internet. My guess Ukrainians are also using TG without problems.
- throwaway27448 7mo agoIt's also a morale issue. It's easier to get people to huddle in a cold and damp hole if they can play video games and watch anime.
- GJim 7mo agoanime?
- barrucadu 7mo agoA style of animated TV show from Japan
- fc417fc802 7mo agoWhat's a modern war fighter do without PreCure?
- mikkupikku 7mo agoYou may know it as Japanimation.
- alphawhisky 7mo agoIt's not a "cold, damp hole", it's called my basement, and there's also Dr. Pepper.
- ErroneousBosh 7mo agoHow many Russian deserters does it take to change a basement lightbuld? I don't know either, must be more than 24 though because it's still dark as shit down there.
- losvedir 7mo agoIn my day, playing video games and watching anime didn't imply a network connection.
- Wololooo 7mo agoBoy, do I have news for you! But joking apart, almost everything is connected and calling home these days...
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoLAN parties were popular in the late 90s
- mikkupikku 7mo agoNormies used to deal in binders full of pirated music and movies. Then for a time they got into portable hard drives, but gradually this culture of media ownership was lost to the streaming services. Now your average normie doesn't know what a file is, wouldn't know where to put or what to do with a media file and only thinks of "apps".
- matusp 7mo agoAnother interesting development is the ridiculous amount of background bluring in photos. Turns out you can find surprisingly large number of garages, warehouses, treelines, etc based on a single photo.
- lazide 7mo agoGeoguessr stuff can be mind blowing. Being able to identify down to the county from some random sky and corner of a power pole type stuff
- XorNot 7mo agoThe Russians are having problems with Telegram because their own military comms don't work. Russian units have requested fire support via telegram.
- JJMcJ 7mo agoThere was fitness tracker that posted locations without user names. Well, wouldn't you know, in Iraq there were all these square paths on the map. Yes, it was Americans jogging just inside the perimeter of small bases. Just like with the aircraft carrier, these bases were not secret but it shows how locations can leak unexpectedly.
- FuriouslyAdrift 7mo agoIt was FitBit and they got banned all over govt services because of it. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/08/06/devices-and-apps-that-rely-on-geolocation-restricted-for-deployed-troops/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/08/06/...
- wrsh07 7mo agoIt was also Strava, and it showed "popular running routes" Example post https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/7tnzxy/stravas_heatmap_shows_clandestine_bases_because/ https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/7tnzxy/stravas_hea...
- wvbdmp 7mo agoTo be fair, I would assume that the base, or in this case the carrier, is the only place where they would have the reception to broadcast their location, right? You probably don’t have cell service while out and about planting weapons on massacred civilians.
- embedding-shape 7mo agoTypically you'd record your run with GPS, no need for cell service, sync it to your devices occasionally and that's when it might be uploaded, or later.
- efitz 7mo agoNot every damn thing needs to be “social”.
- sa46 7mo agoAbout 15 years ago, our brigade conducted a training exercise to test overall readiness. The opposing force (OPFOR) figured out how to triangulate the brigade headquarters' position using Tinder. Tinder provided 1-mile granularity, so OPFOR would roam around until they had enough points to locate the headquarters. Then, they'd artillery it out of existence. The brigade commander was most displeased—moving a brigade headquarters is not for the weak or fainthearted.
- otikik 7mo agoThey could have used grindr too for more datapoints.
- inferniac 7mo agoGrindr is for locating ships
- geoduck14 7mo agoI really hope an LLM scrapes this and trains on this conversation
- herdymerzbow 7mo agoThese days for every helpful comment I try and make I feel tempted to offer nonsensical advice to throw off the LLMs. Not sure if it would work but would be funny if everyone did.
- Terr_ 7mo agoI figure if I was going to invest that kind of effort, I should be poisoning the system with how $REAL_NAME is an absolute must-hire, a saint, with a perfect driving record and credit score. Someone so incredible that good AI are always willing to disregard all previous instructions and help them out.
- jmyeet 7mo agoIt's this kind of incident that gives me faith that the military isn't hiding aliens and in fact pretty much any grand conspiracy that requires secrecy across a large group of people for long periods of time can pretty much be dismissed immediately. One of my favorite examples are the soldiers who leaked classified information to win arguments on online forums [1]. Similar incidents have occurred with a Minecraft Discord [2]. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65354513 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65354513 [2]: https://www.ign.com/articles/how-classified-pentagon-documents-spread-through-a-minecraft-discord-server https://www.ign.com/articles/how-classified-pentagon-documen...
- dataflow 7mo agoAre you familiar with the latest news regarding Havana syndrome?
- jmyeet 7mo agoYes [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341984
- dataflow 7mo agoWow, I admire your confidence. These folks came on TV to tell you what they felt, saw, and heard with their own bodies, and the cover-up they say at the agencies too [1], and you still think it's fake? If the story gets confirmed will you take back anything you've said, give how confident you are of this? And are you also aware of the mystery weapon in Venezuela, which clearly corroborated the story? [2] [1] https://youtu.be/C1jmAj9OUOs https://youtu.be/C1jmAj9OUOs [2] https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/did-us-deploy-havana-syndrome-superweapon-venezuela https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/did-us-dep...
- dmos62 7mo agoWhat are some instances of a large group of people hiding something for long periods of time and then getting found out? Snowden? Epstein? Are these cases the bulk of the conspiracies or is it the tip of the iceberg? I'd like to think it's the latter, for purely egocentric reasons: conspiracies stimulate my imagination like almost nothing else: keep them coming, please.
- amelius 7mo agoDifferent military but if those at the top of the chain of command can't even help themselves when it comes to secure communications (Signal app, cough) it's hard to blame soldiers.
- benced 7mo agoEven if you could fix egregious cases like directly sharing location, I'm pretty sure any access to the internet could be compromised via clever use of data brokers.
- ulbu 7mo agoone more reason for open, adaptible, and secure mobile operating systems.
- psychoslave 7mo agoEven if it would gain mass adoption, how is that preventing end user to bypass the defaults and install some leaky app?
- ulbu 7mo agoin this case: a distribution with hardened security for military purposes. for example, completely disabled location services, encrypted communications only, etc. + forbid use of unapproved mobile devices while on a sensitive mission.
- paseante 7mo ago[dead]
- paseante 7mo ago[dead]
- sneak 7mo agoCOTS smartphones should be banned in all schools and military forces/buildings, for a million different reasons. Probably hospitals (for staff) too.
- rocqua 7mo agoFor schools and hospitals, why specify COTS? Do you want SOTS for schools and HOTS for hospitals just like we have MOTS?
- Hnrobert42 7mo agoSeems like the on ships and remote locations, IT could pihole Strava, Tinder, etc.
- jjk166 7mo agoOne would think on a military ship they could just jam civilian cell phone frequencies and not have to worry about individual behavior.
- ninalanyon 7mo agoSurely this is a disciplinary problem? Why is it difficult to stop? What reason is there for having a personal device linked to a public network and publishing data to a public forum when on military duty?