Live via Satellite: NATO Aerial Surveillance Video

Factomatic writes "The BBC is reporting 'NATO surveillance flights in the Balkans are beaming their pictures over an insecure satellite link - and anyone can tune in and watch their operations live.' All you need is a satellite dish. John Locker tapped into the NATO aerial surveillance feed over the Balkans from England and has been e-mailing, faxing and calling NATO since November to get them to fix the problem. NATO denies it is a problem at all. I wonder if this would work in Afghanistan, too?" No, the article notes that Afghanistan is taking up all the secure communications bandwidth, and operations in the Balkans are getting kicked over to unencrypted channels. We ran an older story about the military's growing bandwidth crunch.

Comments

whahaa

[Anonymous Coward]

how long until somebody starts a webstream of this stuff? that'll beat webcams any day of the week.

Re:whahaa

[zh3n]

Now if they could just stream the audio from the special forces in the caves, we would be set. G.I. Joe - Hello arabs, all your cave are belong to us! Amir - What you say?
G.I. Joe - Launch zig!

Re:whahaa

[Procrasturbator]

Damn, it's JennyCam all over again. TAKE YOUR TOP OFF, OSAMA!

So?

[NickRob]

It won't be on for long. It's ratings are horrible.

At last, some real competition

[NewtonsLaw]

At last, some real competition to Rupert Murdoch's crappy satellite-based PayTV service!

Now if they can just get a good looking weather-babe the military might be on a winner here!

ObMonty Python

[Throatwarbler Mangro]

Remember the Monty Python sketch with the television program that would show blackmail videos and only stop when the person in question called in and made a payment? Maybe something similar could work with love bomb feeds?

"Ah, here's an interesting little number... This is a live feed from a 'bunker buster' bomb. If there's a Mr. S.H. of Baghdad listening, call now to pledge $50 million or this little beauty will turn up on the front steps of your presidential palace..."

dan

Of course, this could all be avoided if he knew "how not to be seen..."

Re:IF YOU TAKE DRUGS, YOU'RE SUPPORTING TERRORISM!

[HFXPro]

You: Senator, why did my tax money support terrorism?
Senator: I have no knowledge of that fact.
You: Is it not true that currently TV shows are running commercials claiming that drugs support terrorism?
Senator: That would be true.
You: Well, says that my taxes, taxes which you helped passed went to support Afgan freedom fighters who later became terrorist to us.
Senator: Umm.
You: Therefore if this is true, should I not stop paying taxes since they went to support terrorist?
Senator: umm... umm.. umm. Your un American!

Re:Maybe they don't care...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, truth is somebody in the military suddenly had to suddenly find a semi-plausible use for all those X10 spy cams he bought, since they were discovered before he managed to install them in the women's barracks.

Re:no, it is

[bigsteve@dstc]

OK, so it is not as hard as I thought.

But, even the "simple" case may not be as simple as you think. It depends on how hard-wired their comms centres are, and how inventive the tech support people are. We can only speculate ...

And don't forget the "organizational" issues. I can imagine conversations like this.

SigInt guy: I need to run crypto XYZ over this unencrypted link.
Crypto guy: We cannot allow that.
SigInt guy: Why not??
Crypto guy: You don't have "need to know".
SigInt guy: ...sigh... How do I solve my problem then?
Crypto guy: ...click...