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Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

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Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#2

Post by tablespoon »

The area where the video was taken looks like it was from a construction site (trenches, rebar, and 2x4s visible). Was it taken by a contractor that was part of a crew pouring concrete and saw something cool?

Also, given it was out in the open in broad daylight, I'm assuming a spy satellite could have gotten a picture.

I wonder if one way to deal with this is just make a lot of plausible cool-looking decoys.

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#3

Post by Barrin92 »

it's kind of funny how concerned people are about secrecy and data storage when people just pull out their phones and put that stuff out in the open. Reminds me of the military base that was exposed through strava heatmap data a few years ago. One really has to wonder how far OSINT can go.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#5

Post by tw04 »

tablespoon wrote: post #2

The area where the video was taken looks like it was from a construction site (trenches, rebar, and 2x4s visible). Was it taken by a contractor that was part of a crew pouring concrete and saw something cool? Also, given it was out in the open in broad daylight, I'm assuming a spy satellite could have gotten a picture. I wonder if one way to deal with this is just make a lot of plausible cool-looking decoys.

I may be underestimating our adversaries but I’d imagine we know exactly where all of their satellites are at all times and could just wait to pull it out until a window of clear skies (I don’t think they have 24/7 coverage of the entire United States)

There are already restrictions on our civilian satellites taking high res pictures of our military installations.

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#8

Post by aeturnum »

The open source arms control people over at arms control wonk[1] regularly talk about using Russian social media as a place to learn about base layout, details, etc. It's very hard to check that every person within vision range isn't going to snap a photo.

[1] https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#9

Post by 908B64B197 »

Reminds me of the American's reaction to Soviets spies stealing shuttle plans to copy it with the Buran.

Long story short, they made sure the soviets found "updated schematics" with hidden flaws and design defects. [0]

Maybe someone is playing the same game here...

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna18686550#.WFF7CqIrKuU

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#10

Post by colechristensen »

Barrin92 wrote: post #3

it's kind of funny how concerned people are about secrecy and data storage when people just pull out their phones and put that stuff out in the open. Reminds me of the military base that was exposed through strava heatmap data a few years ago. One really has to wonder how far OSINT can go. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072

It is not so unlikely that the person responsible will be going to prison... if this wasn't an intentional leak. People with access to classified information, even just present in places where classified things happen have security clearances and are very well informed about what they can and can't do and the consequences of such. Low grade accidental leaks happen all the time and often result in huge fines to employers or employees. Posting pictures of things though... is an entirely different matter than accidentally sending something to the wrong entity or mislabeling classified information.

Though it might not actually be anything particularly secret after all, the fact that somebody was hanging around taking phone pictures attests to this.

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