Fitness Tracking App Accidentally Reveals Secret US Military Bases, CIA "Black" Sites

[FunkyMike]

An interactive online fitness tracking map published in November of 2017 which compiles a running history of the location and routes of 27 million fitness-device users has unwittingly revealed the location, staffing, patrol routes and layout of U.S. and foreign military bases around the world.  

 

San Francisco based fitness company Strava posted their "global heatmap" to their website, containing two years worth of fitness data across several fitness devices such as Jawbone and Fitbit. The map is not live, rather, it is a composite of overlapping routes. 

 

In most urban areas such as major cities such as New York, Strava's map appears as solid neon lights following just about every road on which one might exercise. 

 

Remote locations, however, such as deserts in places like Syria and Iraq are almost entirely dark - aside from clandestine locations where military personnel using fitness trackers are stationed.  Personnel in some of the US government's most sensitive facilities have been unwittingly been broadcasting sensitive information up to and including underground tunnels. 

 

 

Quote

At a site in northern Syria near a dam, where analysts have suspected the U.S. military is building a base, the map shows a small blob of activity accompanied by an intense line along the nearby dam, suggesting that the personnel at the site jog regularly along the dam, Schneider said.

“This is a clear security threat,” he said. “You can see a pattern of life. You can see where a person who lives on a compound runs down a street to exercise. In one of the U.S. bases at Tanf, you can see people running round in circles.” -WaPo

Air Force Col. John Thomas, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said Sunday that the U.S. military is looking into the issue.

FBI Academy:

FBI Academy, Stafford, VA

 

NSA Headquarters:

NSA Headquarters, Fort Meade, MD

 

(more on that one here)

 

The man who discovered the phenomenon is Nathan Ruser, who is studying international security and the Middle East. 

“I wondered, does it show U.S. soldiers?” Ruser said, before zooming in on Syria. “It sort of lit up like a Christmas tree.”

 

 

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https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-29/fitness-tracking-app-accidentally-reveals-secret-us-military-bases-cia-black-sites

 

[Steven P. Administrators]

Sounds like:

 

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

I heard this on my drive to the airport this morning and do these people not think that I should disable sharing my location whilst I'm on base

 

Edit - Blame is 100% with the folks sharing their location. I thought I read/heard a few people blaming Strava, definitely not their fault.

[exotoxic]

“This is a clear security threat,” he said. “You can see a pattern of life. You can see where a person who lives on a compound runs down a street to exercise.

 

Maybe they should take the same attitude when regular peoples movements are being tracked.

[Xahid]

I don't understand, how do they manage to identify the location, staffing, patrol routes and layout of U.S. and foreign military bases around the world?

just using those pictures?

[Mando]

41 minutes ago, dipsylalapo said:

I heard this on my drive to the airport this morning and do these people not think that I should disable sharing my location whilst I'm on base

 

Edit - Blame is 100% with the folks sharing their location. I thought I read/heard a few people blaming Strava, definitely not their fault.

this plus 1000! 

 

WTH how daft are the personel??

[Slugsie]

10 minutes ago, Xahid said:

I don't understand, how do they manage to identify the location, staffing, patrol routes and layout of U.S. and foreign military bases around the world?

just using those pictures?

Because in somewhere like Syria or Afghanistan the only people going out for a jog with a fitness tracker in large numbers (the brightness of the glow is an indication of numbers) are US military personnel.

[FunkyMike]

Quote

 

 

It turned out that Brugioni was one of the founders of a very secretive agency known as NPIC (National Photo Interpretation Center) – NPIC was created, like NRO, to handle the increased amount of technical intelligence (NSA still owns comms intelligence) when the U2 and CORONA program began to generate huge amounts of data. There was a certain understandable fear that if CIA was allowed to be the primary collector of all the data, nobody else would ever get to look at it and CIA would become like a camera-driven version of the NSA, only with a license to kill.

 

Anyhow, Brugioni writes in his excellent book Photo Fakery [amzn] about how they were able to determine which Soviet missile platforms in Siberia had working missiles: they were the guarded ones, and guards make tracks in the snow. He used a similar technique to analyze Soviet missile batteries in Cuba during the missile crisis – you can see who is going where and how often by the tracks in the dirt.

 

As David Byrne would say: “same as it ever was.”

 

https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2018/01/29/big-data-awkward/

[Skiver Veteran]

I'm with Dipsy here, what person is running around a top secret base thinking it's OK to GPS the whole area.

[cork1958]

13 minutes ago, Mando said:

this plus 1000! 

 

WTH how daft are the personel??

How daft are they? Obviously about as daft as the idiots going around eating Tide pods, for crying out loud!!

[FunkyMike]

Looks like someone has been tracking through the mountains east of ‎Pyongyang‎ 

 

https://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#13.15/127.17720/39.22560/hot/all

 

edit: probably picking mushrooms

[Mando]

2 minutes ago, cork1958 said:

How daft are they? Obviously about as daft as the idiots going around eating Tide pods, for crying out loud!!

LOL Yep  

Just now, FunkyMike said:

Looks like someone has been tracking through the mountains east of ‎Pyongyang‎ 

 

https://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#13.15/127.17720/39.22560/hot/all

certainly aint "the grinning chubster" 

 

thats an awesome find Mike hahahahah ooooops! 

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

5 minutes ago, Skiver said:

I'm with Dipsy here, what person is running around a top secret base thinking it's OK to GPS the whole area.

I made a comment on the FPN article about the data that Google captures and I'm sure not enough people actually read the permissions screen when they're installing any app. It's like the T&Cs of old, and people will just blindly accept. 

[d5aqoëp]

This could help with finding secret terrorist/army hideouts?

[Skiver Veteran]

1 hour ago, dipsylalapo said:

I made a comment on the FPN article about the data that Google captures and I'm sure not enough people actually read the permissions screen when they're installing any app. It's like the T&Cs of old, and people will just blindly accept. 

What's worse is this line...

 

"Strava issued a statement effectively telling users to mark their activities private if they don't want to broadcast locations:"

 

As it states, there's an option that allows you to mark runs/cycles or whatever it is you're tracking as Private. When I first came to this I thought I wonder if private runs still show in heatmaps which would have been harsh but this reads as if it would not have.