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Coast Guard to Track Ships Using Buoys
nomrniceguy writes "The Coast Guard plans to use dozens of buoys off the U.S. coast to extend the reach of a security system that monitors large vessels heading in and out of ports. The buoys are intended to extend the network's reach -- the Guard now receives the automated data only when a vessel is within about 25 miles of a port. The floating transmitters will relay the information from hundreds of miles off shore, from the middle of Lake Superior and off coastlines from Alaska to Maine."
If you like being fucked (I know you do), click here.
nothing for you to see here
Isn't there laws against that?
f00 b3r
b3r
b3r
Slashdot "editor" michael uses binoculars to track boys.
Are we talking about the carotid and the jugular, or pieces of pottery? I'm confused.
You are not the customer.
A large nuke can still reach 25 miles inland. Even worse if you drop it a few hundred feet, then you get a tsunami. That would suck, as we now see in southeast asia.
Good to hear, This may be one use of technology that I am actually happy to hear about.
It doesn't infringe on anyones privacy
It doesn't help fund lawsuits against children
It isn't a shitty use of the DMCA.
Good job U.S.A
ItWasFree.com - Take the mystery
What's the point of this? The folks they're afraid of either won't have the proper tracking equipment or they'll tell the Guard they're hauling bananas.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
I there. I hate Slashdot and I don't want to type "http://slashdot.org" in my browser anymore. My question is: are there any other alternatives? Can anyone, please, help me?
...train flocks of seagulls to crap all over the transmitters?
I love michael's idiotic sarcasm.
What exactly is so surprising about this? They're called the US Coast Guard!!! There job is to protect the US coastlines. You should be applauding them for actually doing the job instead of creating more bureaucracy in defending the homeland.
It seems slashdot has turned into some anarchist hangout where you guys wish the authorities have no tools to do their job right.
There's still a large window when tracking 25 miles out, almost an hour. Are they doing this so "terrorists" do not "attack" with large boats? Bad waste of money.
A blog like any other.
that was what i thought it said when i first read it...yuck! subliminal freudians..goatse..ew
I was under the impression that the US had spent billions of dollars seeding the north atlantic ocean with passive buoys and magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD) as a net to detect and triangulate soviet subs. This is cold war stuff that could perfectly be reused to counter new threats from terrorism, since it's been there and working for decades and, presumably, still in operation. So why deploy new ones?
Yeah, try Kuro5hin! It's this cool site filled with smart people discussing stuff. And no trolls, either! One day hanging out there and you'll throw in the /. towel for good! Sshhhh... keep it a secret, ok bud?
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how about you steal some other people's materials regarding the topic, package it all up, slap your name on it and put it on your "website"? You know, your usual routine.
From the article:
"To legally enter a U.S. port, each vessel must be equipped with a machine that automatically radios information -- its cargo, crew list, recent ports of call -- to the Coast Guard."
In other words, this system only works if the ship is equipped with a special transmitter. Great security.
This is great. I use buoy data all the time as it provides sea surface temperatures/ dewpoint information and is useful in meteorology.
This information can be found here
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Shipping (especially "supertankers" is a very attractive target for terrorists. The system is largely designed to protect the ships and their ports of call. It is an expensive proposition to install these bouys but it is far cheaper than what we did to protect shipping before. In WWII we used naval escorts to protect civilian shipping as it approached our ports. In today's money this would be prohibitivly expensive.
All it takes is a single terrorist with a small plane or a small boat laden with explosives. The USS Cole disaster would be a minor inconvenience in comparison to the economic and environmental disaster caused by a supertanker being blown apart in or near a U.S. port.
If the attack were cooridinated and a number of US ports were attacked in this manner at the same time, the consiquences to the American economy would be disasterous. It could make the importation of oil grind to a halt for long enough to cause oil prices to sky-rocket and our economy to suffer.
Roland Piquepaille and Slashdot: Is there a connection?
I think most of you are aware of the controversy surrounding regular Slashdot article submitter Roland Piquepaille. For those of you who don't know, please allow me to bring forth all the facts. Roland Piquepaille has an online journal (I refuse to use the word "blog") located at www.primidi.com [primidi.com] [primidi.com] . It is titled "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends". It consists almost entirely of content, both text and pictures, taken from reputable news websites and online technical journals. He does give credit to the other websites, but it wasn't always so. Only after many complaints were raised by the Slashdot readership did he start giving credit where credit was due. However, this is not what the controversy is about.
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends serves online advertisements through a service called Blogads, located at www.blogads.com [blogads.com] [blogads.com]. Blogads is not your traditional online advertiser; rather than base payments on click-throughs, Blogads pays a flat fee based on the level of traffic your online journal generates. This way Blogads can guarantee that an advertisement on a particular online journal will reach a particular number of users. So advertisements on high traffic online journals are appropriately more expensive to buy, but the advertisement is guaranteed to be seen by a large amount of people. This, in turn, encourages people like Roland Piquepaille to try their best to increase traffic to their journals in order to increase the going rates for advertisements on their web pages. But advertisers do have some flexibility. Blogads serves two classes of advertisements. The premium ad space that is seen at the top of the web page by all viewers is reserved for "Special Advertisers"; it holds only one advertisement. The secondary ad space is located near the bottom half of the page, so that the user must scroll down the window to see it. This space can contain up to four advertisements and is reserved for regular advertisers, or just "Advertisers". Visit Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends (www.primidi.com [primidi.com] [primidi.com]) to see it for yourself.
Before we talk about money, let's talk about the service that Roland Piquepaille provides in his journal. He goes out and looks for interesting articles about new and emerging technologies. He provides a very brief overview of the articles, then copies a few choice paragraphs and the occasional picture from each article and puts them up on his web page. Finally, he adds a minimal amount of original content between the copied-and-pasted text in an effort to make the journal entry coherent and appear to add value to the original articles. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now let's talk about money.
Visit http://www.blogads.com/order_html?adstrip_category =tech&politics= [blogads.com] [blogads.com] to check the following facts for yourself. As of today, December XX 2004, the going rate for the premium advertisement space on Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends is $375 for one month. One of the four standard advertisements costs $150 for one month. So, the maximum advertising space brings in $375 x 1 + $150 x 4 = $975 for one month. Obviously not all $975 will go directly to Roland Piquepaille, as Blogads gets a portion of that as a service fee, but he will receive the majority of it. According to the FAQ [blogads.com] [blogads.com], Blogads takes 20%. So Roland Piquepaille gets 80% of $975, a maximum of $780 each month. www.primidi.com is hosted by clara.net (look it up at http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index [networksolutions.com] [networks
Isn't 100 miles out considered 'international waters' ?
If it is the 100mil mark, that would mean its *none* of their damned business where my boat is..
Why keep up this slow encroachment in the name of 'security' and just tag everyone/everything and get it over with? This is getting out of hand.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
apprently, Having a lameness filter on slashdot is like having a shit filter on your ass. - seen on
We have a huge array of remote sensing satellites. Ships are big, they don't move very fast. They have a pretty big heat signature. Radar works at night and through clouds.
To cover the offshore area properly would require a huge numbers of bouys. Never mind dozens; try thousands.
As well, what is the purpose of just protecting the seas when our border with Mexico is completely unsecure? The Chinese have troops on the Mexican side of the border. Further Islamic thugs have made trips back and forth across that border.
LaRaza be damned. We should pull out troops out of South Korea and put them on the US-Mexican border.
Nope. I'm just a /. old-timer who thinks trolls suck-ass. You guys need some attrition in your ranks! You're the same sad old-timers who used to submit penis bird and crap-flooding posts. It's been six years or more now! Don't you have a job yet?
.. now I have to make my SHIP out of tin-foil!
As well, what is the purpose of just protecting the seas when our border with Mexico is completely unsecure? The Chinese have troops on the Mexican side of the border. Further Islamic thugs have made trips back and forth across that border.
LaRaza be damned. We should pull out troops out of South Korea and put them on the US-Mexican border.
That beyond 11 miles out is international waters, are they allowed to do this? I'm pretty sure it's 11 because that's how the Cruise ship casino's operate, by going into international waters.
Starting in 2000 all vessels over 300 tons were required to upgrade to Digital Selective Calling (DSC) radio equipment. This allows for better distress monitoring among other uses. At the same time all new marine VHF radio designs were required to be DSC enabled. There was a grandfather clause that allowed old designs to be produced until yesterday (Dec 31, 2004).
This means that when you go boating and (god forbid) something happens, very little knowhow is required to start an emergency response You just push a little button on your radio and your GPS coordinates are transmitted to all vessels around you, including the Coast Guard and all vessels over 300 tons.
You do need to register to obtain an MMSI number which will request your boat and personal information. This information is to be used in case of a Search and RESCUE which will hopefully not turn into a Search and RECOVERY. (the basic difference is if you need a medic or a coroner)
Yes there is a system that is similar using Emergency Position Indicating Radiobeacon or EPIRB
The use of weather monitoring buoys as transmition monitors is a logical step to help coordinate rescue efforts. Yes it is also "Big Brother" watching us. This does not mean that it will restrict the rights of how commerce occurs, and may even expedite trade by making customs less intense. The cargo will already be partially identified, so when the government officials show up they know what to expect.
As a final note, private not-for-hire vessels are not required to carry ANY electronic OR electrical devices by any government. Yes, running lights are required on most vessels at night, but oil lamps have worked for centuries.
Just my $.02
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
This information is already in the public domain because of a system known as AIS.
AIS consists of radio ID transponders which transmit the ID, status and destination of ocean going vessels.
A Google search will bring up much including sites which display the information graphically live for free.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Oh, Bouy.
Thank you!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Coast Guard to Track Ships Using Boys :X
if you can do what you want in international waters, why can't they?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
agree with putting troops on the border, but it would be for shooting the slow-motion invaders that are crossing now. glad to see you listen to late night am radio (ie chinese troops in mexico).
There is not fishing industry off Canada's east coast, so maybe the underwater nuke won't be as bad as all that...
:-)
Does the US still have fish out there? Can they herd some North please?
You Sad Bastard.
That's where they tell the real truth.
I hated the guy too when he the links first started appearing. This because the links always were like too much like advertisements for his blog.
But I've found that his blog is basically nice, although I don't read it myself. So please give the guy a break.
You know what also bothers me. It's Slashdot's "Read More". The whole story should be syndicated without having to go to Slashdot to read up anything else than comments! Likewise, from the front page you should not have to click on "Read More" unless you want to see the comments.
Let's not turn this into buoys vs. gulls.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
As far as I remember everything beyond 3 sea-miles form any landmass are international waters. Everybody can move in international waters as one pleases.
"What happens when our enemies...train flocks of seagulls to crap all over the transmitters?"
I've wondered what happened to that band.
Do you think Tears for Fears or George Michaels could be trained to poop on command as well?
He steals other people's works for his blog, then probably pays slashdot under the table for repeatedly posting his links. He offers nothing insightful (like Slashdot), yet gets paraded around the Slashdot front page like he's some sort of expert. He's a thief, plain and simple.
I thought that the coastline from Alaska to Maine was Canadian teritory, or do they mean going the long way around including South America (which would also be outside the US coast guard jurisdiction.)
This is going to make the US safer? How?
Let's think about this for a second.
The US imports a lot of goods, in fact a hell of a lot of goods. Most of these goods come in 40ft containers. These contianers can enter the shipping system at a number of points, very rarely are they opened during transit.
If I was of a certain mind and wanted to detontate my pet nuke how would I get it into position. I would not hijack a ship, to much effort and risk. I would load it into a container and hook up a pocket GPS to the trigger.
I sometimes wonder why we don't do something similar at our land borders? We are protecting our sea borders by detecting all ships. Why not create land buoys to detect illegal crossings.
Not one bit in the article discusses anything about the technical bit. There isn't even a mention of whether or not they would use systems already installed on on all cargo ships above a certain gross tonnage, such as AIS.
Simply using the buoys to extend the coverage of their AIS network would make a lot of sense, since the transmitters are already installed on all relevant vessels and do contain some form of voyage data. Requiring Vessels to retrofit YAMaritime Surveillance Transponder doesn't make any sense.
I wonder if there are enough safe guards to prevent someone from hacking the machine transmitting the ship data or accessing the network through the buoy transmitters. Electronic warfare is going to be a popular hacking sub-genre.
Who extended the marine rights of the US to two hundred miles off-shore for most purposes, including shipping and fishing. It was done in response to other countries who were extending marine boundaries for a variety of reasons.
Besides, it's not like the Navy doesn't know where you are. It's just that their equipment is better hidden. Oh, and as far as "rights" out on the open ocean go you don't have any, as opposed to the captain of an aircraft carrier, who obviously does...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Things collected locally and assembled locally will still be a big problem. The best way to protect the country is to have progressive policies that don't try and enslave other nations for the multinational cartels that think that they rule the world.
You make friends with people and then they don't want to kill you.
Bouys seem like a cheap way to go to survey ships at sea. But what about walruses and whales and sea birds? What about killer dolphins? (lol)
Ships without that device won't be allowed in ports, so the first thing terrorists do is to install such a device.
And no, they won't declare their nuke in the freight papers...
The same (non-)effect could be achieved practically for free using satellites, so IMHO this is another case of "Look how we spend your tax dollars to improve our security!".
The paranoia is terrorizing me.
I, for one, welcome our new bobbing, waterproof overlords.
As a sailor I always found this really cool: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ The NOAA has realtime data available from all its weather buoys in the oceans and great lakes; wave height, wind speed and direction, etc.
GHelm: A FOSS vector nautical chart
In Viet Nam, the CIA deployed sensors which looked like turds,
...
in order to detect VC and NVA troop movements.
It's difficult to imagine what sort of sensor tech is available now,
though there have been persistent rumors of "sniffers" around the places such as Area 51.
Despite this, technology will never render complete safety, because the mind of man is infinitely capable of coming up with "workarounds".
Just think back on how many times ONE man has taken action which changed the course of history, and you will get the idea
of what the morons at the Department of "Homeland Security"
are up against.
Me, I think it's funny
But Iran's so far away...
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
No one is required to report. But if you expect to enter the US territorial waters, ie, a port to unload your cargo, then you have to report. This report includes destination, ship name and registry, cargo, etc, not all of which is known to Navy surveillance planes.
That's a pretty hard concept to get a pea brain around, especially when it's wrapped in tinfoil.
Infuriate left and right
If I was of a certain mind and wanted to detontate my pet nuke how would I get it into position. I would not hijack a ship, to much effort and risk. I would load it into a container and hook up a pocket GPS to the trigger.
This is something that has concerned me for a while - starting when I was motoring past a port instalation with an enormous stack of COSCO containers during a period when the US and China were rattling sabers a bit.
In case you're not familiar with it, COSCO is the Chinese Overseas Shiping COrporation - which evolved out of the Chinese Red Army.
Even a small container can contain a BIG H-bomb. Most places such containers commonly go - ports, transportaion hubs, railroads, highways, population centers - qualify as targets.
They're big enough to contain a chemical device suitable for taking out a city. Biologicals take even less space, and could disperse an aerosol while in motion.
Or you chould ship whole divisions of soldiers and their equipment in such containers (with the ones containing people disguised as refrigerated food containers to keep them at the edges of stacks for access to air and get them delivered quickly) if you wanted to stage an invasion.
However, I hear that since 9/11 and the antiterrorist reaction, US customs is inspecting and sealing many of the containers at the ports of EMbarcation, and stopping and inspecting container ships about 25 miles offshore, once they're inside the "you can enforce your antismuggling laws" limit. (You can't open the containers on shipboard, of course. But you can detect radiologicals - especially neutron emitters - without unstacking them.)
I don't know how much they're covering. (It IS a government program, after all.) But at least they're aware of the issue and trying to do what they can about it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I was told by someone on a naval vessel that they came across an array of sensors in the middle of nowhere more than 200 miles from shore (wouldn't say which ocean) that weren't on their lists and had no markings, serial numbers, "made in ...", ownership info, "call X in case of emergency", etc. They said they dumped the things back into the drink and scooted out of there.
I think if anything requires another couple millions of our hard earned tax dollars it is monitoring tsunamis that pose a REAL threat to the coasts and not for IMAGINARY terrorists in order to divert public attention from our home-made political crisis.
Roland Piquepaille and /. editor Michael "Domain Squatter" Sims are longtime pals. It wouldn't surprise me if Michael gets $100 for every Roland Piquepaille article he posts on the front page.
The Navy has a complete offshore surveilance system already in place. It is sonar based, but can still monitor incoming traffic by sound and it is highly sophisticated. If ships are to be required to use a transponder, why not make it sonar-based instead of radio?
It is still WAY cheaper to do transponders from a satellite. Look at all the semi-trailer trucks with transponders. They can track these trucks quite cheaply. If you can convince all ship owners to equip their vessels with transponders, satellite is the obvious and cheap solution.
This thing smells like a boondogle. Maybe they are trying to pay for their scientific bouys by making them look like they are involved in national security. Just say that something is for homeland defense and you have an unlimited budget. I call government bullcrap.
The Vatican announced that rumours of misuse of the buoy database is totally without merit...
Oh well, what the hell...
As soon as he finishes the ski trip.
No more piracy for a while now. No more pirates.
How long until they are replaced by floating indian boys?
However shooting on the Coast Guard is an act of war under US law. So, you are free to fire on them, however you have to ask yourself if you like you are armed well enough to take on the US Navy who WILL come after you. I somehow doubt you'd have what it takes to fight off a 688 or 774 attack sub.
but once again, they can(will) retalliate.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I always pictured him as a double.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
it turns out the Soviet targeting wasn't as good as we thought.
Plus, you lay nukes in N.Dakota, I'm thinking S.Dakota won't be so pleasent...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
On a CSI: Miami episode, I saw that they can just pull up a computer screen of all GPS receivers in the area. They found the one receiver that was also transmitting and solved the crime. Wow, isn't network TV educational?
I for one welcome our sonar equipted Buuy masters...
Texas has a fairly heavily armed (and patriotic) populace. I'm not talking pea-shooters here, but military grade hardware. David Koresh stood out because he had a jesus complex and a family compound. Most people just have a gun safe and keep it quiet.
I suspect that it would take a lot more than 90,000 soldiers to take even Texas, especially considering Fort Hood.
It is not cool to call it IFF these days (identification friend or foe) - it's called SSR (secondary surveillance radar) - all aircraft, at and above the 'light' size, have them, as well as ships over a certain size. The only thing different between the military version and the civil version is a couple of pulses (when viewed on an oscilloscope) - it's really very basic. I rarely saw any Australian or NewZealand military aircraft ever use the military modes. More sophisticated technology exists anyway.
SOSUS is still used - but it is definitely not a bloody whapping big 'net' of sensors, just a scattering of them in key areas that triangulate fixes on anything making noise. Same as the HFDF network - used to be called bullseye, name was changed to crosshair, probably something else by now.
Hmmm.
The parent post is insightful! On 9/11, fewer than 4,000 people were killed. The tsunamis that hit this year have killed over 100,000. It shows just how impotent and insignificant the terrorists are.
I, for one, don't want to play into the hands of the terrorists by being afraid. It's asinine that senior citizens crippled from arthritus have to remove their shoes before boarding an airplane. It's disgraceful that U.S. citizens are being subjected to pat-down searches at airports with no probable cause. It's idiotic that we are giving up our essential liberties in the so-called "war on terror." Success to the terrorists wasn't measured in a body count. It's being measured every day in the way that America has become a frightened country.
Those who lost loved ones on 9/11 have my deepest sympathies, but we should not disgrace the memory of those who died by behaving like the terrified, paranoid people that the terrorists sought to make us.
Yet I still don't feel safe walking down many
streets in our cities.
At first glance I read buyos and wondered how that would track ships.
-silence
Dyslectics of the world, untie!