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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.
Okay, opinions and feelings inside, the veteran in me demands to know: "WTF, have you idiots never heard of COMSEC/OPSEC?"
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
need to cite a new source
He was just going for a vacation.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Absence of OPSEC is counter-weighted with several hundred paid internet workers who do nothing else but work day and night to sway internet opinion.
As such, if there will be a report that there were dozens of Russians captured and hundreds of Russians killed, for each and every of the report there will be dozens of comment explaining that such findings are incorrect and fake. And that graves of the Russians are fake. And that Ukrainians are fascists and Nazis, from the failed state. Just read some of the comments for this article.
Regular reader of any news will be flooded with contradicting information and will choose to believe what he wanted to believe.
Just because we can easily track individual troops on Social Media, doesn't mean we don't have other ways of knowing what's going on. Of course it's nice to get independent confirmation of troop movements from external sources, but if the Russians really thought there was an operational risk here, they'd fix it. It's not like it's a hard problem to fix, just make your troops leave their personal devices at home. Further, The Russians are NOT stupid and obviously recognize this problem and have taken steps to keep their troops off of social media with information that really matters.
My guess (and yes, I'm only guessing) the Russian's fully understand what information they are allowing out though social media and they have decided that it's not worth the effort to stop the information leak more than they already have. Plus, I'm sure we know a whole lot more about what's really going on than the Russians would like us to know, even without the social media angle. Further, I wouldn't put it past the Russians to be using social media to pass misinformation too. After all, this is just a revamped cold war.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If anyone put the neofascists into power, it was Putin. His power grab enabled the neofascists to say "See? We we right about Russia all along!" And who can argue with them?
And his last name is actually "Dracul", but don't say it out loud or he will hear and visit you at night.
Do Russian soldiers often take their tanks on vacation with them? How stupid do you have to be to believe this?
I'm sure the US won't have a problem with Russian bases on Cuban soil. Or perhaps even Mexican soil.
What's that? It's been done? What was the US reaction? 50 years of petty isolationist aggression towards a state that didn't tow the line? Well, I'm sure that other South American countries were treated fairly, right?
What a fucking naked empire the US is. It's lost every moral position it once held. You think 300 million people are going to hold back 1 billion or more people who want it bad? Who are harder than you? Who want it more than you? Who will do it for less than you?
70 years on top is pretty good in terms of world history. OK - so you're no Great Britain, or Rome, or the Mongol Empire. But you had a good run, considering you had two seas to separate you from the wars of the twentieth century. You put a man on the moon. No one will forget that. All that history will applaud is whether you had the sanity to see the direction in which the world is moving. You can lose it the hard way like most empires do, or start adjusting like the Brits like had the sense to do.
The neo-Nazi Ukraine government has joined up with Islamic militants.
The Tatars of Ukraine are not particularly militant, and have good reasons to oppose Russia. Under Russian rule, more than 100k Tatars starved to death, and many more were deported to Siberia, where about half died.
Russia is on the right side of this conflict.
Partly. The people in Donbas speak Russian, and have closer economic and social ties to Russia than to Western Ukraine. It is reasonable to allow them to go their separate way. But that is not really Russia's objective, and they have sabotaged negotiations that could have led to that. Russia is more interesting in creating a festering drawn-out stalemate, dividing NATO, and spreading instability throughout Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe. So far they have been very successful.
You won't find many such comments here. Not that they don't exist - it's just that the Russian propaganda workers are focusing primarily on Russian-language media.
Do Russian soldiers often take their tanks on vacation with them? How stupid do you have to be to believe this?
You would be surprised at the vehicles people drive around in: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... British grant you but funny none the less. I specially like where he comments: "I don't like driving along in the tank with my head sticking out but the good thing about the tank is that you can always find a parking space" .. would you try to argue with him over a parking space?
There are no volunteers, or tanks or war in Free Russian republic of Ukraine. This report and all reports like it, and photos are evil conspiracy made by Mr President Obama to destroy Russia and kill her beautiful children. And I am not paid to make comments like these! I enjoy technology news for nerds very much.
Looks like Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf has a new job.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
If one looks at the streets and neighborhoods, then it is clear that there are very few cars in Donetsk and Luhansk and no traffic on the highways, while Mariupol to the south is active with trucks and cars everywhere. So in Eastern Ukraine, everybody just packed up and left it to the militants/terrorists/idiots whatever one can call them.
It is vehicle stories like that which just bring a smile to my face. Someone did it because they can, no other justification is needed. This is the same reason why I want to have my MG Midget be a supercharged alcohol burner with extensive additional modifications to the 1275cc A-series engine.
Time to offend someone
Well sure, and they even politely stop at the border to get their passports stamped and some vodka at the duty free store
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You won't find many such comments here. Not that they don't exist - it's just that the Russian propaganda workers are focusing primarily on Russian-language media.
Here in Norway I can assure you we have plenty Putin shills commenting on news stories, I assume it's the same for most NATO countries. Putin got Russia in his back pocket, it's the public opinion in the west and all the sanctions they're looking to sway.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Funny thing is, while you are completely right with what you write, these comments have indeed some truth in them.
There have been more than enough fake reports from Ukrainian government. For fuck's sake, they've once even claimed that they were attacked by Russian tactical nukes, which lead to facepalms even in their own parliament. I've been to Ukraine two months ago, their mass media really is crazy hysterical and lying. I thought that German mass media here is bad, but it is like BBC compared to Fox News.
And there are indeed neo-Nazis in Ukrainian national guard. I've seen them, too. Scary stuff. They are not a majority anymore, not since the draft has begun. But the volunteers in the beginning of the conflict were mostly the militant arm of Maidan - neo-Nazis.
It is also true that Ukraine is a failed state. Has been a failed state for 20 years.
Even so, it is not an excuse to send troops there to kill people and destabilise the situation even further.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
In Soviet Russia, you pay to make favorable comments!
That's really good. Just enough "you could be right" sentiment to make us believe you're expressing a real, valid, independant opinion, and not a paid post from the kremlin's trolling factories. Very well played indeed.
You won't find many such comments here. Not that they don't exist - it's just that the Russian propaganda workers are focusing primarily on Russian-language media.
I think there are plenty of such comments here, however, they do not have karma and are ACs.
Russia-the-state has a lot fewer objectives than Russia-the-people. If Russia was an anarchic state without a military and foreign relations ministry, your words might have weighed more.
Russia isn't the only one having issues with social media
ISIS had a little bit of kaboom come their way after an errant social-media posting as well.
Wonder if dude got a selfie of that?
The solution to cells in prisons is simple, deploy cell jamming technology on guard towers. The solution to cells in deployed platoons is throw the soldier disobeying solider into a prison where they have jamming technology on guard towers.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
According to the source I listen to, one set of the Islamists are Chechens, brought in to "protect" factories. There is another set coming from possibly Syria. These are not Tartars.
You should listen to more than one source. You might have then found out that Chechens and Dagestanis are among those fighting on the separatist side, too.
And yes, there are Chechens fighting on the Ukrainian side. Those are mostly Chechen nationalists from the 90s. They're Muslims (just as pro-separatist Chechens are), but they are not Islamists.
And then you have stuff like this, which is pure trolling (this particular picture is of separatists, but it happens on both sides).
Oh man, if they can take their T-72B3 tanks on vacation, that's so great. Where can I sign up? (and yes, T-72B3 has been sighted in Ukraine a year ago).
He seems to be one of those people who cannot distinguish a plausible lie from a wild fary-tale.
Work makes me take my laptop when I go on vacation.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Russia has Social Media, we have Edward Snowden. God bless him.
By the way, the Russians don't give a f*ck who thinks they have troops operating in the Ukraine. It is not an OpSec failure but a point of pride. The more people think so, the prouder the Russians are of it. Plus they have deniability: " We deny that we have Russian troops in the Ukraine". There you have it: the official denial.
The Russian Government is subcontracting many of it's army to Uber, on an hour by hour basis. Whenever they're in the Ukraine, they're actually touting for business to move Ukrainians westwards.
Their advertising tactics are a bit more dramatic than the average "chugger" though.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"