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If You're a Foreigner Using GPS In China, You Could Be a Spy
tedlistens writes "China has accused Coca Cola of espionage for its 'illegal mapping,' allegedly with the use of GPS 'devices with ultra high sensitivity.' On its face the case looks like yet another example of China's aggressive sensitivity about its maps, no doubt heightened by its ongoing fracas with the U.S. over cyberwar. Li Pengde, deputy director of the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, said during a radio interview on Tuesday that the Coca Cola case was only one of 21 similar cases involving companies using GPS devices in Yunnan to 'illegally obtain classified information.' According to Chinese authorities, geographical data can be used by guided missiles to strike key military facilities — a concern that one GPS expert says is overblown at a time when the U.S. government already has high-precision satellite maps of China. Nevertheless, Chinese law dictates that foreigners, be they companies or individuals, are prohibited from using highly-sensitive GPS equipment in China."
Maybe they shouldn't have Coca-Cola deliver refreshments to their secret military installations? ;)
We should charge China with spying using all those GPS units they send here, not counting the cell phones that also have a GPS chip. Embargo all of them.
China makes almost everything you utilize on your daily life, directly or indirectly.
This is not by your choice but by the companies you buy utilities and electronics.
China also owns most of US foreign debt.
This is also by design since china has been buying it from the free markets.
Deal with it.
Coke got sensitive classified military information that their delivery vehicle that was three hours late was sitting in the parking lot of a local bar all that time.
(The corollary is that the driver they fired was a son of a local party official. Bad idea.)
There was a time when the US stood for individual freedom...
When?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you do a lot of travelling, you will find that GPS laws are different everywhere. Many countries won't even allow you to bring one across the border. Defense against enemies obtaining high quality maps is usually the reasoning. Sometimes, you can bribe a customs guy to let you bring it in. But you shouldn't be flaunting GPS when you're visiting a place like that. I think China should be more free, but I can't get too upset when they enforce their existing laws against visitors who break them, even when the laws are out of date or seem silly.
so the "fuck China" gets a 3 and "fuck USA" gets a -1? ./ for it turns it is just another China bashing web site.
Cybercrime: Styxnet most likely created by USA and Israel
civic unrest: for the last 3 days in Brooklyn blacks are rioting because yet another 16 black kid was shot to death by the Police
Human rights violations: Guantanamo.
Fuck
...I've got Apple Maps. Even if I geotagged one of your military sites, I'm just as likely to inadvertently order a missile strike on the Superdome.
A claim like that requires a citation.
This makes me think of the classic 1953 Billy Wilder comedy involving a Coca-Cola executive going to East Berlin to open up the iron curtain for Coke products.
Hilarious in a dated sort of way. Tremendous pacing, starring James Cagney.
A great way to pick up mid-century American culture.
You can still get there in Alaska.
Posted from China, Texas.
If it really is GPS then it's simply the local time, broadcast in the clear. How is that classified?
Just get out of China.
But keep sending your food.
And keep sending us your industry.
Oh, your tech too. Keep sending that.
Otherwise, just stay the hell out, round-eye.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Heh.
Actually seems like it could be a semi-legitimate complaint to me. Realistically what applications are there for a high-precision GPS outside of geological/territorial surveys and military intelligence? Sure we've got the satellite maps, but one of the nice things about those maps is the ability for someone with a GPS on the ground to make "X is here" annotations for important locations. For military purposes the ability to know within a few feet/yards where a strategic "soft spot" is could prove very valuable in terms of, say, disrupting infrastructure with a minimum of the sort of civilian collateral damage which could be used to sway international opinion against you.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
China also owns most of US foreign debt.
Actually, China owns about 8% of our national debt.
Even if you only consider debt own by foreign countries, China owns only 26% of that, about the same as Japan.
Before 1913.
In 1913 we had a president who openly advocated white supremacist policies and praised the KKK. Women were denied not only the vote, but many inheritance rights, right to serve on juries, and were openly discriminated against in education, financial services, and employment. The police regularly colluded in violently suppressing organized labor.
If you were a rich white guy, 1913 may have been the golden age. For everyone else, it wasn't so good.
Do they determine what constitutes "ties to Iran's government"? Does it mean Iranian diplomats, Iranian government ministers, vacationing bureaucrats from some government agency, vacationing postal workers, vacationing relatives of postal workers, students in the country on government loans, or just anyone Iranian since anyone from Iran has a "tie" to the Iranian government by virtue of being a citizen?
I mean, seriously, this is stupid. If someone wants to get clandestine pictures of things in plain view of the public, they will get them. There is no way to stop it from happening. Interviewing people conspicuously taking pictures in public places is absolutely useless.
Good or bad, decide for yourself, but it's good to be clear on what is actually going on.
Authorities are helpfully informing anyone who might be a foreign spy that they're being watched so that they can know, through process of elimination, which agents are _not_ being watched? Xenophobic people in positions of authority, trying to play hero, are participating in meaningless harassment that won't make a dent in any real intelligence-gathering operation?
It's the price they pay to deflate their currency.
What international treaties? And since China ignores all treaties, why would it matter now?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As someone who works for a company that does significant mapping business in China, I'm getting a kick out of these replies. It's funny how sensitive they are to GIS information and maps. The Chinese government has these silly rules about all maps having to show China's borders the way they imagine them to be, and you have to show certain islands and other sensitive areas as exaggerated in size. As long as you comply with their fairy tale, there's no problem. The GPS stuff is probably related. Anything that has the potential to show reality rather than the make-believe world is verboten.
and I live outside of America because my business is outside of the United States
And you know what ?
For the past decades I've been contacted by "someone" asking me for my "cooperation" so that they can use my company as a cover up to spy on the countries that my business has located branches and local contacts
When I told them that I do not want my company to be involved in some espionage activities "they" remind me of my "duty" to my country, that I should be "patriotic", that I should aid them in "defeating the enemies"
Of course, I can't tell you where my business branches are located - or they will know who I am
Just want you guys to know what is going on in the real world
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I've used GPS receivers many times in China, and even has friendly discussions with airport security about some of them. Never had any problem.
That said, I've also been followed during many (most?) of my trips to China, and for some reason they are always doing air duct work just before I get into my hotel rooms...
Look at how Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, and other critics of the US live and prosper in the US. Now, look at how their Chinese equivalents are dead, rotting away in jail, under house arrest, or in exile.
That's all you need know to understand that the statements "Fuck China" and "Fuck USA" are weighed differently.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Your post strikes me as strange and inconsistent.
If, as a Canadian who has been hassled for taking photos of US buildings, your response is to be reflective of the silliness of these laws which govern photo taking in the US, the so too should you be reflective of the silliness of these laws which govern GPS usage in China. It would make more sense for you to have a heightened awareness for such shenanigans due to your previous experience and to be doubly outraged, rather than excusing one while pointing out the other.
You say that "If you don't like China and its laws don't go there" yet you don't seem to apply the same kind of hand-waving to your experience in the US.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Look at how Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, and other critics of the US are marginalised into complete irrelevancy by the corporate-controlled mass media...
TFTFY.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
LEO satellites don't even have an absolute location. Geostationary ones do, but good luck taking pictures from *that* orbit.
A LEO spy satellite has its own orbital motion; then it has librations around its own center of inertia; then the camera positioner has errors in aligning the camera; then the lens distorts the image a little, especially if you consider that it takes a picture of a sphere, and often the area of interest is not right under the orbit. All these factors combine to give you a significant angular error in pointing the camera. None of this is rocket science, it's simple geometry. I don't know if math is cute or not, but that's what it is.
where in the name of national security your mineral water gets taken away from you at the airport which is making about the same sense.
I can only see one issue with high accuracy mapping of roads, it could be used as "ground control" for aerial photography. When you're flying aerial photography it is often highly desirable to have a number of "aerial visible" locations (often large white painted arrows) with high accuracy GPS coordinates distributed through the capture area. That way the images can be rubber sheeted using some pretty fancy algorithms to these points so you take an image with OK accuracy and turn it into one with high accuracy. But with modern tech this is probably not an issue at least from a military perspective, I don't know about satellites but at least with aircraft captures they can usually achieve 3' accuracy for 90% of surveyed points with no ground control. Even assuming for the sake of argument that satellite captures are less accurate (lets say 10') I highly doubt that is going to matter when your sending a several hundred lb warhead to a target, or guiding troops to a facility. Mostly this level of accuracy only comes into play when you're trying to locate underground pipelines/wiring, or mapping property lines in urban or suburban areas.
Popularity is NOT a measure of censorship. ONLY censorship is a measure of censorship. If they are not censored by the mass media then you have no comparison to China.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll