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Strava, a smartphone app that tracks "athletic activity" using GPS, published an interactive heatmap of user activity around the world. That heatmap included some U.S. military bases:
Military personnel around the world have been publicly sharing their exercise routes online - including those inside or near military bases.
Online fitness tracker Strava has published a "heatmap" showing the paths its users log as they run or cycle. It appears to show the structure of foreign military bases in countries like Syria and Afghanistan, as soldiers move around inside.
The US military is examining the heatmap, a spokesman said. Air Force Colonel John Thomas, a spokesman for US Central Command, told the Washington Post that the US military was reviewing the implications.
Strava said it had excluded activities marked as private from the map. Users who record their exercise data on Strava have the option of making their movements public or private. Private data, the company said, has never been included.
The "private" option is for people who like to track their step count during sexual activity, not protecting the operational security of the military base you're stationed at.
Also at The Guardian, which contains more examples than the BBC for those who don't want to enable JavaScript to view the interactive one linked to above.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday January 29 2018, @04:40PM (12 children)
I suspect this is example #153116 of the general societal problem of everyone in every country in both the government and corporate ecosystem has free access to data one thousand times more detailed, but because your next door neighbor, who ironically doesn't care at all, has no access, we as a culture use that to pretend no one has the data and have to act all shocked and dismayed that my neighbor, who as I already stated, doesn't even care, could obtain access to the data.
I was in the army a quarter century ago, got out before 9/11. It sounds very much like stories about modern high schools, where today there's armed guards to shoot anyone entering or leaving, but in the old days the doors were open and people freely wandered around. Back in the old days there were of course guarded buildings surrounded by barbed wire and cameras and guards where you needed a pass to get in; however no armed guards to prevent access to the bowling alley, library, or PX (essentially a socialized government on-base department store). I would imagine life on base would be very weird, almost an entirely different lifestyle for people in the army in 1990 vs 2018.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday January 29 2018, @05:19PM (8 children)
Even just in the last 5 or 6 years. When I went down to my alma mater last Halloween, I found that the replacement cafeteria on campus, you can apparently only get into by swiping your campus ID. The old cafeteria, you could just walk in and pay with cash if you were some random person on the street. *Why* exactly does a cafeteria need to be secured?!
One could argue it had something to do with the same building also being a dorm, but I think the doors to the dorm wing were keycarded as well anyway.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 29 2018, @05:33PM (7 children)
You cannot be allowed access to the dorms, because you might be a cereal killer or rapist.
You cannot even be allowed access to the students in the cafeteria because you might promote unacceptable ideas to the kiddies. And it might poison their young minds and affect how they vote.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday January 29 2018, @05:38PM (3 children)
I mean, if that were their reasoning they should lock up the academic buildings, library, and student center, too.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday January 29 2018, @06:17PM (2 children)
Yeah funny you should mention that...
Where I live this is mostly an anti-homeless thing. So state-U suburban expensive suburb branch campus about three blocks from where I live, no lockdown. The state-U branch in the old "big city" has guards to keep the homeless out. Take a non-credit night class by home, you don't even need a parking permit and no door is ever locked, take a non-credit night class by work and the guards make it feel like you're going thru an airport checkpoint. "papers please" checking your ID and all that.
An army base would be an interesting place for a homeless person to live. Wasn't an issue back when I was in, back when bases were pretty much wide open.
(Score: 1) by starvingboy on Monday January 29 2018, @08:15PM (1 child)
? Having spent some time on military bases in my youth, you had to have a base ID in order to actually do anything. Sometimes they'd check just going into the BX, and you definitely needed one in order to buy anything, from candy to movie tickets.
Carrying your ID was a rite of passage as a base kid.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 31 2018, @12:25PM
Yeah, maybe both true. In retrospect looking like a 19 year old enlisted I might have been waved thru everything to save time, I don't remember ever showing a ID.
Seriously though, like they check ID at the on-base Burger King or the post library or post museum or the bowling alley? I guess if they did, they did, but ...
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday January 29 2018, @07:19PM (1 child)
Cereal killers would be trying to get into the cafeteria.
They probably came from the dorm. Who knows what goes on in those dorms.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 29 2018, @07:23PM
I know what goes on in the dorms. That is the rappists I mention along with the cereal killers.
Imagine rappists unable to get their rap music to rhyme, in the dorms! Poisoning the minds of the kids.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @07:37PM
Like this guy!
https://mashable.com/category/cookie-monster/ [mashable.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @06:57PM (2 children)
In seventh grade, we were allowed to wear knives on our belts.
Typically a Bowie knife.
The times they are a changing.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Monday January 29 2018, @07:21PM
Where were you living? Where I was we had to conceal things better. :-)
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday January 29 2018, @07:26PM
Early 1970's. About 4th grade, can't remember precisely. Not allowed to have fingernail clippers. Because it's a weapon!
Reminds me of TSA today. On an airplane: Look! I've got nail clippers! I'm going to take over the plane! You better stay back or I'll use these nail clippers! Nobody will be able to overpower me with my trusty nail clippers!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.