Mapping Service Blurs Out Military Bases, But Accidentally Locates Secret Ones

schwit1 shares a report from Popular Mechanics: A Russian online mapping company was trying to obscure foreign military bases. But in doing so, it accidentally confirmed their locations -- many of which were secret. Yandex Maps, Russia's leading online map service, blurred the precise locations of Turkish and Israeli military bases, pinpointing their location. The bases host sensitive surface-to-air missile sites and facilities housing nuclear weapons. The Federation of American Scientists reports that Yandex Maps blurred out "over 300 distinct buildings, airfields, ports, bunkers, storage sites, bases, barracks, nuclear facilities, and random buildings" in the two countries. Some of these facilities were well known, but some of them were not. Not only has Yandex confirmed their locations, the scope of blurring reveals their exact size and shape.

Comments

They were not secret

[mapkinase]

No military installation in the world of the size of the large university campus is secret.

The secret could be details within that location, that's what map service provides by blurring.

Stop posting idiotic articles.

Re:They were not secret

[Misagon]

BTW, it is not only military installations that get blurred out. Critical infrastructure installations often also gets blurred out on maps. For example power grid stations, nuclear power plants and radar installations used by commercial air traffic.

Re:They were not secret

[mrbester]

Depends on the definition of "secret". If the location is classified as "secret" by US, there's no onus on a foreign entity abiding by that classification, if they are even aware of it.

Google (US, and probably others) has to but Yandex (RU) doesn't unless there is some agreement in place. Even then, what's the blowback if they don't?

Re:They were not secret

[Vanyle]

The funny thing is, Google is not blurring anything about this base, but Yandex is.

Here is the base on google maps: https://www.google.com/maps/se...

Blurring Out is for the average people

[hcs_$reboot]

Browser exercise:

var a = ['US','Europe','Russia','China'];
a.forEach(function(b) {
a.forEach(function(c) {
console.log( b+' knows well '+c+' secret locations');
});
});

Streisand

[Calydor]

I suppose this is the Streisand effect of the cartography world.

Re:Streisand

[Calydor]

Don't you mean occlusion?

Re:OSINT

[Zocalo]

That's not the point. Take Incirlik; it's a nuclear bomber capable airbase (e.g. it's *big*) that frequently features in news reports during the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, so there's no way that any foreign intel agencies/terrorists/interested third parties were not aware of it, what it is/was used for, what was stationed there, etc. regardless of whether they are reliant on OSInt or have their own satellites. Likewise the Israeli SAM/Ironshield sites; they pinpoint themselves everytime someone lobs rockets at Tel Aviv or wherever, so there's no way the PLO/Hamas/Iran/etc. don't already know where they are. Ditto the Whitehouse; terrorists locating 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue isn't the issue; it's having them find out where security check points, snipers, and other defenses are to help plan and facilitate an attack. Knowing the location is one thing, but knowing the detail is something else entirely. What makes this a clickbait story is that it makes it seem like the former that matters when it's really the latter that Yandex (and Google, Bing, and every other mapping agency that uses satellite imagery) are succesfully trying to obfuscate.

Use Walmart

[Dan East]

Instead of blurring they should just stamp down a Walmart and its parking lot, plus maybe a Dollar Tree plaza along with it. They can just scale the whole thing as needed - it's not like most people have any idea what they are looking at anyway. :)

Re:Use Walmart

[PPH]

Paste empty clearings in the forest with some logging equipment parked. Maybe a few piles of cut trees.

They use this for some of the wealthy people's vacation homes and hunting lodges in closed (purportedly a watershed) public area near where I live. The area access is secured with CCTV and automated gates. These aren't unimproved logging/maintenance roads. They are very nicely maintained and, if you are nearby at the right time, you can see the occasional Mercedes or BMW coming or going. But Google maps shows nothing other than logging roads and large, stump-covered clearings in the woods.

Re:OSINT

[Zocalo]

Don't know if it's still the case, or how that might play out between jurisdictions, but I had to become SC to handle raw satellite imagery on the off-chance they might contain imagery of the type being blurred out here around 20 years ago. (We were leasing use of a former Soviet spy-sat to do large-scale ground surveys of Western Europe for agricultural applications. The resolution we were getting wasn't as good as today's publically accessible imagery, but the mono resolution was still high enough to get a feel for the size and shape of buildings, and I could tell my car was on my driveway when I pulled up the relevent image for a poster sized printout - and yes, I still have it.) If that is still the case, I'd assume that the satellite operators - e.g. DigitalGlobe for many of Google's images - have a team of SC cleared people that do the initial processing of raw images, then those images are passed on to customers like Google to use as they see fit.

Secret for whom?

[rkordmaa]

If a mapping service knows that a site is of "secret" nature, then so does everyone who's actual job is to know such things in foreign countries. All this blurring does is prevent general public from peeking in, it does squat against state players.

Re:Secret for whom?

[PPH]

Domestic terrorism is a much bigger concern

Domestic terrorism is directed at 'soft' targets (usually civilian). The few strikes against military bases have been by insiders. Who already know where the bases are and what is inside them.

Waze shortcut

[jfdavis668]

Since they are blurred out, Waze will now direct people through them as shortcuts around traffic jams.

French Embassy

[sjbe]

What's your source on this "long history"?

Well I can think of one example. In 1986 the US bombed Libya. One building that was hit was the French Embassy in Tripoli. The French had refused to allow US bombers to traverse their airspace from bases in England that forced the US planes to fly an additional 2600 nautical miles around France to get to Libya. It was understood/suspected right at the time that this was an "accident" with plausible deniability.

From the big-blurry-blocks dept.

[DontBeAMoran]

So they partnered with Japan for the blurring technology?

Re: The military IT team could just tell people

[PPH]

They should probably be fired for gross misconduct.

Like that's ever going to happen.

I have a friend who used to run a photo processing lab (when film was still a thing). One of his techs told him to come and take a look at one of the rolls coming off their machine. Pictures of the family and kids on the front lawn, with license plates and house number visible. And then pictures of the control room of a modern submarine. Having served in military intelligence (back in Vietnam), he knew this was a no-no. So he called the FBI, who came and took the film,saying that they would 'take care' of the problem. Nothing ever happened to the person (an exec at a local defense contractor) but he lost all the photo business (unclassified) from them and a few other DoD contractors.

The DoD isn't going to lean on the big shots in private industry. Or the next war they fight, they will have to do so with sharpened sticks.

Re:interesting

[Krishnoid]

Because all of them are belonged to, er, them.