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US Wary of Allowing Russian Electronic Monitoring Stations Inside US
cold fjord writes "The New York Times reports, '... the next potential threat from Russia may not come from a nefarious cyberweapon or secrets gleaned from Snowden. Instead, this menace may come in the form of a ... dome-topped antenna perched atop an electronics-packed building surrounded by a security fence somewhere in the United States. ... the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have been quietly waging a campaign to stop the State Department from allowing ... the Russian space agency, to build about half a dozen ... monitor stations, on United States soil ... These monitor stations, the Russians contend, would significantly improve the accuracy and reliability of Moscow's version of the Global Positioning System ... The Russian effort is part of a larger global race by several countries ... to perfect their own global positioning systems and challenge the dominance of the American GPS. For the State Department, permitting Russia to build the stations would help mend the Obama administration's relationship with the government of President Vladimir V. Putin ... But the C.I.A. and other American spy agencies, as well as the Pentagon, suspect that the monitor stations would give the Russians a foothold on American territory that would sharpen the accuracy of Moscow's satellite-steered weapons. The stations, they believe, could also give the Russians an opening to snoop on the United States within its borders. ... administration officials have delayed a final decision until the Russians provide more information and until the American agencies sort out their differences.'"
It must be a doomsday device. There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.
Somewhere in the United States (dramatic pause)
the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon (dramatic pause)
have been quietly waging a campaign (dramatic pause)
to stop the State Department from allowing (dramatic pause)
I can't be the only person who is getting this out of the overuse of ... in the summary.
... If... you use an Ellipsis... frequently and... hastily people will think... you are William Shatner...
KAHN!
"But the C.I.A. and other American spy agencies, as well as the Pentagon, suspect that the monitor stations would give the Russians a foothold on American territory that would sharpen the accuracy of Moscow's satellite-steered weapons"
Begging the question "aren't current nukes sufficiently accurate"?
The smart countermeasure would be to monitor the monitoring stations and be ready to destroy them at no notice. Have both HERF/jamming and explosive capability available.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
We need the jobs assholes!
Our economy is in shambles and these morons are worried about the Russians listening in - on what? Talk Radio?!
Police chatter?
I think I read in the NY Times that the US does not have any GPS ground stations in Russia. If we did, it would be a hard thing to say no to.
No it doesn't. If you bother to read the story it states, "The United States has stations around the world, but none in Russia."
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
This was my reaction too. Allow you to monitor and refine your version of GPS so you can more easily and accurately target their weapons which may be pointed in my direction? Um.. No, not in my back yard. Also, I would fear that these systems would be used to collect intelligence. So, no again.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Or any of the former satellites of the CCCP for that matter. The authoritative list is here.
Here's the US ground station map. http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/control/ Nothing in Russia.
Can't the Russians just put theirs in Cuba?
One interesting thing I learned from the article is that many (?most) current smartphones use both Glonass and the US GPS system for position fixes.
One motivation for this is the Russian requirement which heavily taxes devices which don't support Glonass. Apparently the iPhone 4S started support and many others also added support.
I guess it's good to have two systems (with a possible third with the EU system). This can provide redundancy and improve reliability. Of course these are useful tools for warfare which is why we have several systems ("We've always been at war with Eastasia").
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
So, the Russians want to monitor stuff inside the US borders. Ok, so what?
To flip what we've heard from the NSA around, "If we're not doing anything wrong, we don't have to worry."
In point of fact, letting the Russians monitor internal military chatter sounds like a good idea to me. That way, they -know- we aren't planning on attacking them. And.. by the way, we -aren't- planning on attacking the Russians, are we? If we are, _I_ would like to know about it, forget what the Russians know.
The days of Red Baiting should be over. We should have an open society, and if the Russians want to eavesdrop, more power to them. Truthfully, I'm a lot more worried about what our own government wants to keep track of than I am about what any Russians (or Chinese) want to track. And if it improves the accuracy of their weapons, does that mean that they're more likely to blow up a military base than the local YMCA? That's good, isn't it?
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
What's the big deal? The Russians have had a monitoring station in the US for decades. Specifically, there's a spot in the middle of the US that has line-of-sight to all satellites that carry phone calls in/out of the US. And there are three trailers there, one run by the NSA (remember, it was clearly illegal until quite recently, for the US to tapping all calls into and out of the US, which is what they've been doing for decades, though a shell corporation), one that operates for the Russians, and the third a private US corporation that captures and sells data as a business. I've been told (can't say by who) that they know about each other, and aren't even located far from each other.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
He'll have more flexibility after the next election.
Putin and his nationalist thug buddies are just reaching for another opportunity to turkey-slap the West in the wake of the West's embarrassment after Ed Snowden's Guardian bum-buddies' appalling act of political sabotage. Putin has been handed a massive propaganda coup and is milking it for all its worth.
It's a deliberate, calculated insult, given that the US has no GPS ground stations on Russian soil, and have no prospect of building any.
The Kremlin will be quietly TTFO and that'll be the end of it. Hopefully a non-story.
But only countries like Russia and China spy on people and hack. American agencies would never ever do that.
Something new from cold fjord - a story/concern that most Slashdotters agree with. Cold (if I may presume to use your first name), I think this demonstrates that most Slashdotters are not naive fools who think we live in a completely friendly world. Rather, if I may speak for most others, we think many of the tactics used in fighting terrorism are overly intrusive (and sometimes downright un-Constitutional), dangerous to our freedom, and either marginally or completely ineffective. For example, 9/11 could have been prevented with old-fashioned police work. For example, FBI headquarters listening to a report from a field office, which in turn they were given by an astute flight instructor, of some gentlemen who wanted to learn to fly but didn't care about takeoffs and landings (at least not of the preferred variety).
Do we really need a Cuban Cartography Crisis?
Ezekiel 23:20
What prevents them from sticking 5 RF receivers in each of the russian consulates. Or indeed, paying for a couple of dozen boxes on roofs in the USA hooked to an internet connection.
Roofs (and even buildings, for that matter) are much too wobbly for reference-precision GPS
signal calibration. Stations like this are directly anchored to bedrock, preferably with minimal
seismic activity (that includes even not-so-nearby roads) and with a full-sky view.
I doubt that any of the official russian presences satisfies those constraints.
Note that I'm not saying clandestine (or rather "undeclared" - I don't see how anyone would need
permission to run a non-broadcasting monitoring station on private ground) are impossible or don't
exist, just that urban locations and building roofs wont work.
Hah, that graphics and typography reminded me of my favourite Linux game. ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
Or just found and fund a corporation and do it in the open.
It could even be a for-profit company run by American staff, charging the Russian
government for the data. Broadcasting needs a license, but I don't see how a
reception-only monitoring of signals on private ground run by a private company
would need any kind of official permission.
Receiving signals within some US government-run frequency bands might be
illegal (I didn't find any examples with a quick search though), but GLONASS
signals don't really fall in that category...
Besides, what does GPS need ground stations for?
You need ground stations for SBAS (WAAS is the GPS SBAS, not sure whether GLONASS currently has an equivalent and if so what it's called); there main function is to measure ionospheric delay characteristics, process the results, and upload it to the satellites so GPS/GLONASS devices with SBAS capability can receive it and use it to refine their position estimates.
Help the Russians set up a program that allows them to create a GPS system that will compete with the U.S.
or
Help the Russians set up a program that allows them to create a GPS system that will compete with the U.S........and which could be actively shut down / hacked/ sabatoged within U.S. borders if an "incident" ever arose. And which Russian "allies" are likely to sign on to use this alternative? Why China, North Korea, Iran, and Syria of course.
If all the revelations about the NSA show anything, it's that everyone is busy spying on everyone. Therefore the U.S. should presume that these stations will be used, at least tangentially, for that purpose. Note that that is not necessarily a reason to decline the request. If properly managed, it could be used by the U.S. security apparatus to better monitor and determine Russia's own capabilities. It could also be a useful way to "leak" sensitive sounding FUD back to the motherland.