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Live via Satellite: NATO Aerial Surveillance Video

Posted by michael on from the run-another-T-1 dept.

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.

3 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. whahaa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  2. ObMonty Python by Throatwarbler+Mangro · · Score: 5, Funny
    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..."

  3. Re:no, it is by bigsteve@dstc · · Score: 4, Funny
    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...