There are pirates (thieves, but I like Pirate better?) whom were renting luxury boats in the Mediterranean, and stealing them. They would fly to Europe, and dress like rich fancy boys. They would then rent the ships for vacation. They would take the transponder off the luxury vessel, and put it on a toy boat. The owner would check on his vessel, and it all looked fine. Meanwhile, the thieves would have the boat in Ru…
ShipMap
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Re: ShipMap
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, this seems almost like the perfect crime - easy to pull off, and difficult to get caught. I wonder what protections can be made against this? Tamper-proofing the transponders might go some way, but a bullet-proof solution likely isn't possible.
Deposits, ID checks, regular checks, mandatory security guards?
ID checks: presumably they must already do that - I mean, they check your ID for hiring a car/van. I wonder if the criminals used stolen ID to get around this?
Regular checks: on what?
Security guards: you mean when you hire a boat, a security guard comes along for the ride? I can't see many genuine clients being happy about that
Re: ShipMap
#73Re: ShipMap
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not going to lie but this sounds far more entertaining than sitting at my dining room all day making computer programs.
I lol'd. Sometimes when I read these kind of stories, including phishing and hacking ones, there's this tiny inner evil in me that wants to do bad things, but then I remember consequences and that being good usually pays off.
Re: ShipMap
#75Re: ShipMap
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ports of call https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ports_of_Call_(video_game)
That revives memories :) I used to play it alot on the Amiga. Interesting to see, that the game is still alive. Unfortunately currently not avialable on iOS or the Mac :(
Re: ShipMap
#77Great live / interactive data visualization. Great voiceover narration. Weird, weird choice of pondering, melancholy rainy-day ballerina-dance music. Is it a British thing?
I think the point is that we're supposed to feel sad about this economic activity because it's emitting tons of CO2.
Re: ShipMap
#78Great live / interactive data visualization. Great voiceover narration. Weird, weird choice of pondering, melancholy rainy-day ballerina-dance music. Is it a British thing?
Re: ShipMap
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do they sail into Russia? They would need their own AIS transponder and a valid ship registration, the Greek/Turkish maritime zone and the Black Sea has a tone of coast guard and military activity and you need to Lee-register/declare traversal. Going into Russia through the northern sea doesn’t seem to be viable either.
In a past life I used to take (smaller) boats from Miami into the Bahamas and back. Everyone always warned me that the US coast guard would stop any boat entering US waters but I couldn’t tell you a single time it happened. Grant it I wasn’t traveling on multi million dollar yachts, but sometimes what you expect to happen and what actually happens are two different things when it comes to enforcing laws.
The US has a much larger coast line and even then you usually have to communicate with someone if you don’t want to get a visit from the coast guard.
Also I haven’t seen a single luxury yacht you can rent without a crew, this isn’t any different than chartering a private jet you get a pilot, co-pilot and a flight attendant as part of the package. A yacht isn’t a small boat you need a proper captain, an engineer and a service crew.
A boat that can sail form anywhere in the med to Russia needs to be quite big and have quite a bit of fuel and supplies.
This doesn’t seem to be an operation that can be executed so simply you need to make sure there is enough fuel/supplies which may raise flags on shore when you book it, you need to find a way to deal with the crew, you need to be able to replace the AIS and have a valid ship registration to pass through the Dardanelles into the Black Sea.
While I’m sure an organized crime cartel might be able to pull this off but the resources and planning this job would require would be quite insane.
Re: ShipMap
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or they could just turn off AIS broadcasts?
Try doing that in the Aegean not to mention the Sea of Marmara / Dardanelles and lets see how that works out. They might be able to sail into North Africa and then arrange for fake papers and ownership transfer but I would really like to know how they would sail into Russia without raising any alarms.
Be curious no more