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Russian Troops Traced To Ukrainian Battlefields Through Social Media
New submitter wienerschnizzel writes: Vice News has released a report on how they were able to trace a member of the regular Russian army from his base near the Ukrainian border toward the battlefields in the contested territory in eastern Ukraine, then back to his home in Siberia using the pictures he uploaded on his social media profile.
The methodology used is based on a report by the Atlantic Council think tank released earlier this year, which asserts that information on the movement and operations of the regular Russian troops can be easily gathered from publicly available sources (such as the social media). The Russian government still denies any involvement of Russian troops in the fights in Ukraine.
The methodology used is based on a report by the Atlantic Council think tank released earlier this year, which asserts that information on the movement and operations of the regular Russian troops can be easily gathered from publicly available sources (such as the social media). The Russian government still denies any involvement of Russian troops in the fights in Ukraine.
I'm a veteran too. I'm coming to the conclusion that OPSEC is dead, because social media guarantees the loosest lips in history.
The only way to "fix" this is either submitting social media participation of military personnel to military censorship, or a strongly enforced ban on military member participation in social media.
Which, I suspect, wouldn't work.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
US forces have had problems with this too, and not just the Geraldo Rivera incident. If I remember right there was a soldier or airman that took a selfie with some cool helicopters or something that had landed at his Iraqi base, and insurgents started shelling when they realized what was there. Admittedly these aircraft were out in the open exposed so it's still possible that they'd have been seen and targeted anyway, but the particular method through which their presence was initially identified was the photo.
Mind you, I don't think that the US has very many instances of this happening, but it's not without precedent. I'd argue it's just another form of, "loose lips sink ships."
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Why should they lose convenience from and waste time/money on OPSEC/COMSEC when there are no broadly imposed consequences as long as they simply lie about it?
See also: ISIS man posts selfie (or some other vapidity) to Twitter. Guy at US CentCom sees it, within 20 hours they match the background to where it was taken from, verify it, and drop a bomb on an ISIS command center.
There's always going to be SOME idiot who just can't resist posting a selfie of him in his T-72 cupola with something that's verifiably Ukraine in the background. Who remembers Ric Romero's brilliant "Draw a plot of where we're coming from in the sand on international TV" incident from 2003? Not that it mattered since we were converging on Baghdad from literally every direction - but suppose Ric's dad had been embedded with the 101 and radioed out "Now Wolf, here we are at Saint Marie-du-mont..." in the clear.
This is basically a human version of why the IoT terrifies me. Now when every stupid device that has no reason to contain so much as a transistor contains a processor, a writeable memory, and a wifi stack, there's always going to be SOME dee-dee-dee device that compromises the network and you'll (a) never figure out which one until it happens and (b) haha, the manufacturer wrote the 'blow jtag fuses' bits so good luck applying a patch
Putin will still keep insisting that the soldiers are on their vacation or have been honourably discharged shortly before.
It is seriously not news, not since the photos of a disabled T72B3 have been published. Russia actively helps separatists in the region and will continue doing so in the foreseeable future.
I'd also like to point out the Americal military "advisors" helping the Ukrainian army. This conflict has long passed the threshold of regional proxy war.
This is not an entirely new problem. During the Falklands war, the BBC reported that several British ships had been hit by bombs, but luckily casualties were minimal because the fuses on the bombs were defective and they didn't explode. The next day, Argentina swapped out the bad fuses, and had much better results.
Oh, there are real separatists there. Ukraine has been running on separatism for centuries.
You can say that the conflict is between western and eastern Ukraine, but this oversimplifies things too much. Historically western Ukraine belonged to Poland, thus many in the west are catholic and speak a language that is more Polish than Ukrainian. Moreso, parts of western Ukraine used to belong to Poland before WW2. Then there is central Ukraine which is Ukraine proper and where people speak actual Ukrainian. Eastern Ukraine is more or less an artificial construct. Parts of it were transferred from Russia to Ukraine in the early 1920ies, Crimea was given to Ukraine in 1954. People on Crimea mostly consider themselves Russian, many of them hate Ukrainians. Other eastern Ukrainians have obvious Russian roots, most of them speak Russian in their daily lives but it is not nearly as clear cut as in Crimea. They are also mostly orthodox, not catholic. Then there is southern Ukraine, which is like a different country altogether and Transnistria, which de-jure belongs to Moldavia, but has been a part of Ukraine once and is de-facto independent.
Anyway, a huge problem is that despite this inner conflict Ukraine is not a federation, but a centralist state and when nationalists push west Ukrainian values to east Ukrainians, they are understandably unhappy and vice versa. After the previous president - from east Ukraine - was removed by a mob, the provisional government grossly overstepped their mandate by trying to introduce language laws, coercing members of parliament and banning the largest oppositional party. Several prominent neo-Nazi party members rose to power then and this, obviously, pissed off enough people in Donbass to start a civil war. By bombing civilians, Ukrainian government has helped the separatists recruiting more people. Unfortunately, people weren't enough and as soon as separatists were starting to lose the civil war, Russia stepped in with their military aid. Mind you, there are still real honest-to-god separatists, but by now there are probably just as many Russian soldiers there.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap