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Pentagon Restricts Use of Fitness Trackers, Other Devices (apnews.com)
Military troops and other defense personnel at sensitive bases or certain high-risk warzone areas won't be allowed to use fitness tracker or cellphone applications that can reveal their location, according to a new Pentagon order. From a report: The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, stops short of banning the fitness trackers or other electronic devices, which are often linked to cellphone applications or smart watches and can provide the users' GPS and exercise details to social media. It says the applications on personal or government-issued devices present a "significant risk" to military personnel so those capabilities must be turned off in certain operational areas. Under the new order, military leaders will be able to determine whether troops under their command can use the GPS function on their devices, based on the security threat in that area or on that base. "These geolocation capabilities can expose personal information, locations, routines, and numbers of DOD personnel, and potentially create unintended security consequences and increased risk to the joint force and mission," the memo said. Zack Whittaker, a security reporter at TechCrunch, said, DoD's statement today appears to be a response to the revelation that fitness tracker app Polar was exposing locations of spies and military personnel.
I understand fitness trackers (app and/or device) are too happy to share your location with friends and strangers. However, Google Maps probably uses your data for some function of Google Maps. I know it can record where your workplace is and where you last parked your car. So, why do Pentagon workers are allowed to bring mobile phones is my guess.
Except these bases are typically in remote areas where the only fitness tracker activity is from military personnel.
how will the spies know if they are healthy or not... when they compare their data with the other spies of the world. How will will know whose spies are the best of the best.
i mean if i couldn't look at the weather data with location activated how ill i know if its raining outside or not...
Took them a while. The problem's been known for years — even in peaceful Finland... And Russians have used malware to get location-data to target Ukrainian forces. And, of course, the NATO.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's not just a problem with bases and exact positions. It's a problem that individuals can be tracked over time. If you see someone one week do runs in Langley, and the next week do runs in a remote location in Nicaragua, you may have a diplomatic crisis on your hands.
they could determine those individuals who worked in the CIA. And by backtracking the location of those individuals to where they were early in the morning, their home address could be determined
Shoot.. this could probably done without an app just by triangulating IMEIs as multiple cellular stations detect the same IMEI; I imagine the carriers could already easily do this --- monitor what IMEIs are frequently detected near a known CIA location, and where that same IMEI is during the early morning, late nights, and weekends...
Perhaps employees should be encouraged to leave their smartphone at home and never take it on the commute --- give them throwaway feature phones to be stored powered off in their vehicle, in case of emergencies, and issue them a work phone for use during the day after they enter the building, that can't be traced to them or their home, And they can use all the fitness trackers they want, provided none of the fitness trackers people use require that they register with identifying information.....