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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.

6 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe they don't care... by wadetemp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... because they're bogus feeds designed to throw someone off?

  2. Re:IF YOU TAKE DRUGS, YOU'RE SUPPORTING TERRORISM! by speedfreak_5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you paid taxes during the cold war, you ended up supporting terrorism. What's your point?

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    Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
  3. Could it be... by Mhrmnhrm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    that because the Balkans are relatively "stable" now, that NATO just doesn't care if someone's watching? Milosevic is on trial in the Netherlands, there aren't mass riots against right-wing government candidtates (eg. LePen in France), and while their economy isn't anything near that of mainstream Europe, they're not starving in lines or causing problems, either (Even Quaddafi learned to keep quiet back in '86). Granted, this whole Afghanistan thing has got to be chewing up a lot of satellite space, but I really doubt it's eating *all* of it. Especially when you think about how many satellites are up there (Take the ones we know about, then double or triple to taste to count for the ones we don't)

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    I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
  4. Watch it on our daily news by sh0rtie · · Score: 3, Insightful


    The BBC is broadcasting the report on BBC News24

    Live news stream hereThe report is being shown approx every hour

    I think someone is going to be in trouble

  5. Maybe it really is not a problem by Adam+J.+Richter · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Maybe it is to NATO's advantage that this information is public. NATO countries often disagree on Balkan politicies and try to put different political spins on the reliability of information driving these decisions. Plus, others may believe that the information that they're getting about the Balkans is being filtered in some politically-oriented way. By being public about this relatively innocuous data, it makes NATO come off as presenting "just the facts", avoid creating some other little opportunities for member countries to argue about what the facts are, and eliminates some politics about which photos to release.

    Of course, if it started to look like fighting was imminent, and the short term knowledge of what NATO saw or missed during yesterday's flight becomes dangerous information, then I would expect then I would expect NATO to secure the video feed, or perhaps even at any point when a few more fighting words than usual were emerging from Serbia.

  6. It's A Honey Pot by Lethyos · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They are letting us see the Balkans so that people are less interested in seeing what's going on in Afghanistan. They've set up a honey pot. Or at the very least, they really want to hide what's going on in Afghanistan. I wonder what they consider the security threat model to be from a bunch of desert nomads with a lot of plastique and too much time on their hands?

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    Why bother.