Fitbit and OpSec
Chief Tango sends us links to the story from the Washington Post about a map which highlights the routes that users of fitness trackers are treading upon. Apparently, because the Pentagon issued a few hundred of the devices to troops, the map also highlights where the troops are using them in their secret bases around the world.
The Global Heat Map was posted online in November 2017, but the information it contains was only publicized on Saturday after a 20-year-old Australian student stumbled across it. Nathan Ruser, who is studying international security and the Middle East, found out about the map’s existence from a mapping blog and was inspired to look more closely, he said, after a throwaway comment by his father, who observed that the map offered a snapshot of “where rich, white people are” in the world.
“I wondered, does it show U.S. soldiers?” he said, and immediately zoomed in on Syria. “It sort of lit up like a Christmas tree.”
He started tweeting about his discovery, and the internet also lit up, as data analysts, military experts and former soldiers began scouring the map for evidence of activity in their areas of interest.
Andrew Rawnsley, a Daily Beast journalist, noticed a lot of jogging activity on the beach near a suspected CIA base in Mogadishu.
Another Twitter user said he’d located a Patriot site in Yemen.
Ben Taub, a journalist with the New Yorker, homed in on the location of U.S. special operations bases in the Sahel.
Of course knowing where the troops are is only one small part of the problem their enemies face. It’s not like US forces are facing an enemy with a large air force which can call in air strikes in minutes. I’m pretty sure that they already know where our troops are anyway.
I hear that there is a way to off the GPS function on the devices, do that so that the Washington Post reporters can get some sleep tonight and stop worrying about the troops suddenly.
Category: Big Pentagon
“But the Pentagon has encouraged the use of Fitbits among military personnel and in 2013 distributed 2,500 of them as part of a pilot program to battle obesity.” Whoops. May I suggest they recall the devices and place them on 4-legged animals the world over for the trackers to follow. That should be fun.
The U.S. Govt should not be responsible for getting hadji’s dates. They should have to catch em on their own.
Pretty much needs said now days, but turn those accursed tracking applications off on everything you have.
Google will still track you if you have an Android phone, and I am not convinced that other “smart phone” types do not also track you.
A Ford executive once bragged that they can track every Ford vehicle on the road (at least, the modern ones with computers). The OnStar system will do the same.
All that stuff is contrary to any good OpSec for anyone, and can be used by all sorts of ill-wishers.
Apparently someone in the government didn’t think this through. Surprise, surprise…
Someone in the government recommended that such devices be banned entirely, but it was not “politically acceptable” in 2011 to be so forthright and honest. After all, it is “cooooooooooool” to be tracked in all things now…
When Google Earth first came out they had a big
fuzzy blob over the building I worked in.
So I checked a few other places and sure enough, a big fuzzy blob.
Apparently they don’t do that anymore as all the blobs I knew about are gone.
And a few of the buildings also.
You can run but you can’t hide?
They still do in some places…like a certain nuclear facility at which I was employed.
NHSparky,
Google Earth Pro: The Hanford Site in all its former glory. I haven’t checked the other former or current DOE sites out yet, one would hope that those that are still “live” are fuzzy blobbed!
Made invisible on GOOGLE earth like my wife’s top secret facility…..The chook’n coop.
I have a few suggestions about where those FitBit tracker thingies can be put.
For example:
Prairie dogs
Gophers
Blue whales
Sesame Street puppets
Any so-called reporter,
Owls of all kinds
Governor Moonbeam (need six for this one)
Nanny Pelosi
DiFi Feinstein (she’s nearly senile and needs one)
The bags of chocolate chips in my cupboard, which keep disappearing
The list is endless, y’know.
Think I’ll put one on my wife’s keys… she can’t seem to find ’em any other way.
Yours too? My wife never met a set of keys she couldn’t lose within minutes of returning home. I have tried everything, from colorful lanyards to designating a key basket. Nothing has worked.
I should add that she can find money in milliseconds. Put a bill down anywhere in our home and, I swear, it’s as good as in her purse.
I can’t get a cell signal from my house with the cell tower half a mile away direct line of sight and these fitness device can track to the meter in the middle of freaking nowhere…
They record the track from GPS signals, then upload your route through a wifi or direct connection to a ‘puter to the map.
I see no need for fitbits – other than for Google et al to gather information on their users that they can then monetize in some form or fashion.
I refuse to become a tool of the Machine.
“… the Pentagon has encouraged the use of Fitbits among military personnel and in 2013 distributed 2,500 of them as part of a pilot program to battle obesity.”
While at the same time whining about how critical needs are going unmet due to lack of funding.
If there is an obesity problem among active duty personnel it is a leadership problem, not a lack-of-gadget problem. It also seems to be a problem of the volunteer military (as opposed to the bad old draftee military), so why not solve it the same way they solve the recruitment/retention problem; a fitness bonus and/or a fitness medal.
This is going to sound harsh, but my sympathy meter for this stuff failed a long time ago. Left to their own devices, people like Zuckerberg at Facebook, Sundar Pichai at Google, or the fucktards at FitBit would be following everybody around with a proctoscope if they thought they could get away with it. And it’s all about the money, and selling personal information.
It’s almost as if we’ve reached the point where most of the world is split into two kinds of people: predatory voyeurs and narcissistic prey. Personally, I share private information almost never, and have been known to lie about what’s requested on a regular basis.
If you’ve ever provided the email address of, say, bullwinkle.moose@frostbitefalls.org then you know what I’m talking about. If not, good luck letting FitBit tag your sorry ass with a homing device.
My go-to phone number is and always will be 281-867-5309.
you and Jenny huh? lol
As a staff officer, I have a Sit-Bit.
It measures slides per hour and records my trips to the Green Bean (and that track looks like the flight path of an ICBM).