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France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

lemonde.fr

451–460 of 571 posts

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy to die because you used a jogging app. Really goes to show the value of privacy. And, you know, not committing war crimes that would make people want to hunt you down and kill you. Either or.

I have to call out this disingenuous mob like language which is basically saying "because this person served in the military of a UN Security Council member, it is justifiable to murder them in the street years into their retirement" how is a submarine commander committing war crimes? by the same way of thinking, it would be completely justified for people from many countries to show up at random US service members h…

You're so close to getting it! It turns out that terrorists don't hate Americans because they're jealous of the self-proclaimed greatest country in the world, they hate Americans because Americans commit crimes against their people.

I said nothing about whether it was justified, simply noted the state of reality in which you should probably avoid doing harmful things to others if you would like to not motivate them to harm you in return. Americans would absolutely benefit from doing fewer things to harm other countries if they would like to be targeted by fewer terrorists.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#452
post #108

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.

There 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.

The CdG incident is a little more serious given that about 90% of attacking a ship is figuring out where it is. Land bases don't move around and tend to be known already.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#453

About 3 years ago, a former russian submarine commander accused of a missile attack in Ukraine that killed 23 civilians, was shot and killed, apparently after his route was tracked via Strava https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/11/europe/russian-submarine-... https://gijn.org/stories/investigations-using-strava-fitness...

Crazy to die because you used a jogging app. Really goes to show the value of privacy. And, you know, not committing war crimes that would make people want to hunt you down and kill you. Either or.

> not committing war crimes that would make people want to hunt you down and kill you

People may want to kill you for different reasons though. No need to commit any crimes.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#454
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy to die because you used a jogging app. Really goes to show the value of privacy. And, you know, not committing war crimes that would make people want to hunt you down and kill you. Either or.

> not committing war crimes that would make people want to hunt you down and kill you People may want to kill you for different reasons though. No need to commit any crimes.

Indeed. Everyone should value their privacy seriously, much more than the general population currently does.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not hidden from nation states with access to real-time satellite imagery, but more rustic guerilla operations usually don't have such sophisticated access

Just poor ones - how much could it cost to get a scan of the oceans once weekly or daily? 10 million dollars?

Actually probably even cheaper, a generic scan to spot all the ships, and when it's done, just need to get images around the last location. Probably can use something like the Planet API

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy to die because you used a jogging app. Really goes to show the value of privacy. And, you know, not committing war crimes that would make people want to hunt you down and kill you. Either or.

I have to call out this disingenuous mob like language which is basically saying "because this person served in the military of a UN Security Council member, it is justifiable to murder them in the street years into their retirement" how is a submarine commander committing war crimes? by the same way of thinking, it would be completely justified for people from many countries to show up at random US service members h…

No, personal responsibility for war crimes with double digit casualties is not the same as just being in the same military force in any capacity.

Though if your local UN security council member is known for committing war crimes then you probably shouldn't serve in its military.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#457
post #417

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.

COTS smartphones should be banned in all schools and military forces/buildings, for a million different reasons. Probably hospitals (for staff) too.

For schools and hospitals, why specify COTS? Do you want SOTS for schools and HOTS for hospitals just like we have MOTS?

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#458
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not committing war crimes that would make people want to hunt you down and kill you People may want to kill you for different reasons though. No need to commit any crimes.

Indeed. Everyone should value their privacy seriously, much more than the general population currently does.

Location data is arguably more important than financial or medical data. Atleast in a context where someone is after you. Thanks to bribery and data brokers, it doesnt have to be anyone in Govt or LE tracking you. Collect certain identifiers from a device or account and you can track almost anyone. Financial and medical data access is certainly bad, but your location data can be used to orchestrate a stalking campaign or a murder in a deniable way.

It is why after the U.S. kills or captures some foreign leader, they brag about figuring out their routes and daily habits. It is not a stretch to say that it could also be done, and probably has before, in the U.S.

Extreme penalities should be put in place for any location data access without a court order... And your location should never be allowed to be sold or shared with any non court approved third party. It really is that serious and if the public had the bandwidth to be concerned over another issue, maybe something would change.

Who knows, maybe all the public needs to take it seriously are some real life examples of location data being used illegally...

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#459
post #425
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't need to be anything nearly that dramatic as assassins, because economies of scale both lower the bar and make most attacks impersonal . Consider how odd it would be for someone in 2025 to say: "Computer security?I haven't done anything to personally offend a genius hacker." Imagine this data going to a burglar, who has a digital dashboard of nearby one-person properties and when the owner is likely to be o…

What a weird comment. The type of low-end criminal who commits home burglaries aren't sophisticated enough to do that level of research.

With the new crop of agentic coding tools, you can whip up such an app in a few hours for all burglar buddies to use.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#460

About 3 years ago, a former russian submarine commander accused of a missile attack in Ukraine that killed 23 civilians, was shot and killed, apparently after his route was tracked via Strava https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/11/europe/russian-submarine-... https://gijn.org/stories/investigations-using-strava-fitness...

This provides a great cover for intelligence agencies to avoid disclosing their actual data source. Just point to Strava and hand-wave a little. Nobody will suspect that you actually had an in via a close associate of the target.
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