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Dutch Radio Geek Tracking Libyan Airstrikes
jfruhlinger writes "The days when citizens could only learn about a distant war from the government or the institutional press are long over. A Dutch ex-military geek exemplifies the new way information comes out, tracking attack flights on Libya, and even tweeting messages to the US command responsible for the strikes."
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
@USAfricaCommand be advised, one of your WEASEL's F-16CJ from 23th FS Spangdahlem Germany has his transponder Mode-S on! NOT secure!
That means the F-16 in question was transmitting both its altitude and GPS position for all to see. Then again, if its truly a wild weasel platform, that may be entirely its intent.
Some bastard could come along and accuse him of unauthorized "retransmission" of "illegally" intercepted signals
Extremely doubtful since the ATC frequencies he's listening to are specifically intended to be heard by public facilities. Anything heard on these frequencies are transmitted with the full intent and knowledge anyone and everyone can hear. Anything which is not intended for public consumption is transmitted over military frequencies and encrypted. The former is what he's listening to. The later would be completely unintelligible for anyone whos receivers have not been pre-programmed with the decryption keys. Programming with the proper keys is part of pre-flight procedures and handed out during the pre-mission briefing.
Absolutely nothing he's doing is secret or hard and is extremely unlikely to be illegal in any free country.
Hope that was a joke, because the US gov't doesn't get to copyright anything -- it's all public domain.
Works by the US government are only non-copyrightable domestically. They can certainly hold foreign copyright on them, which would apply to a Dutch radio geek.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
why ALL aircraft transmissions (civilian or otherwise) aren't encrypted. ... we're only talking about a few hundred tons of metal flying through the air with thousands of gallons of jet fuel. What could possibly go wrong?
WHAT could go wrong? Let me tell you what could go wrong. There's a hundred tons of metal flying around. Its position is *secret* because some dumbfuck thought it would be better to encrypt all its transmissions.
Then comes uncle Bill in his Cessna. He doesn't know where the big passenger aircraft is, because its position is *secret*, since some dumbfuck though it necessary to encrypt all transmissions from the aircraft.
Do you begin to see now why aircraft transmissions *cannot* be encrypted?!!!
OK, I know your next argument; Imagine all aircraft transmissions are encrypted and all aircraft must have a receiver able to decode those transmissions. Only registered aircraft owners have access to the receivers, so what could possibly go wrong?
Think of the thousands of small airfields all over the world. Climb a fence, cut a padlock at night, pick a receiver. Or buy it from a salvage firm, grease some hands, whatever. It wouldn't stay secret very long (ask Sony about that).
The news media wasn't particularly helpful with geographic details either before the airstrikes or after. Their maps are very generalized and sometimes erroneous or omit important sites. The media would say "battles in Ras Lanuf in eastern Libya", and there was a poor sense of where exactly that was or how far it was from Benghazi (how long would it take Ghaddafi's forces to drive from there to Benghazi, for example?). And where exactly are the airfields and military bases that were either the source of Ghaddafi's attacks or the places being attacked by the local people?
So, in frustration, I spent a weekend finding all the visible airfields, military bases, surface-to-air missile, oil pipeline/storage tank/refinery/oil port infrastructure, etc. that I could spot in the Google Earth imagery. The Google Earth program is best for hunting, but Google Maps can show some of the results. For example, here's a SAM site to the south of Tripoli airport, here's a SAM site in Tripoli itself. These seem to be two different types of missile setups, with missiles visible on the second one, but hidden in sheds in the first picture. Here's Mitiga air base in Tripoli. If you look in the SE corner you can see MIGs parked on the ground. There are also some helicopters, including some big, twin-blade Chinooks. Here's a big ammo/weapons dump in the SE of the city. Here's the ammo/weapons dump south of Adjdabiya that the Ghaddafi forces bombed a few times to try to prevent the rebels from getting the stores there. Notice the difference in color of the ground -- the security fences keep the grazing wildlife out, so there are more plants inside the fence == darker. An easy way to spot the secure fenced-in areas even if you can't see the fence itself. Practically every major city has military bases of some size (usually high security fences with guard towers) where you can see APCs parked, or occasionally tanks and tank transporters and other heavy weapons. Even if you can't see them out in the open air you can often recognize the warehouses that have this sort of equipment because of the security fences and the very WIDE turns in the roads around the buildings. The various military airbases around the country (at least 8 or 10 of them) often have the planes hidden in earth-covered bunkers, but this centrally-located base near Hun has plenty of visible aircraft, including ones recognizable as Tu-22 bombers and MiG-25 fighters. This large airbase south of Sirte has quite a few small fighters visible in addition to transport aircraft on the big tarmacs.
Besides military assets, there are other types of infrastructure that are important, such as this large storage tank area to the SW of the Ras Lanuf oil port/refinery, where several pipelines converge. There are several storage/port areas like this at coastal points along the southern end of the Bay of Sirte. The oil fields them
He did the same thing on forums during the '98 raids on Iraq, '99 in Serbia/Kosovo, some of 2001 in Afghanistan, IOF in '03, etc.
If the US military wanted to "talk to him" they would have before.
Some of the stuff he passes on is helpful, like identifying a plane that has a transponder set to the wrong setting, and passing it on to Africa Command.