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Russia

Is Roscosmos Spying on Americans Or Not So Much?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 17, 2013
Filed under

A Russian GPS Using U.S. Soil Stirs Spy Fears, NY Times
“In recent months, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have been quietly waging a campaign to stop the State Department from allowing Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, to build about half a dozen of these structures, known as monitor stations, on United States soil, several American officials said. They fear that these structures could help Russia spy on the United States and improve the precision of Russian weaponry, the officials said. These monitor stations, the Russians contend, would significantly improve the accuracy and reliability of Moscow’s version of the Global Positioning System, the American satellite network that steers guided missiles to their targets and thirsty smartphone users to the nearest Starbucks.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

15 responses to “Is Roscosmos Spying on Americans Or Not So Much?”

  1. DTARS says:
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    I would worry less about Russia tracking us and more about our own government tracking us. With our loss of privacy we are losing our freedom!

    • John Thomas says:
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      This is a very naive view. We have little or no evidence of any American being wrongly affected by any US government tracking of its citizens, but there is plenty of evidence of Russia targeting the US.

      • DTARS says:
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        Mr. Thomas
        Today for our own good GPS is in every phone we buy. This is IMPOSSIBLE to turn off. The GPS can be followed even if the battery is out of the phone. I have been witness to EMS fire, and police employees using cells to watch stauk harrass and attempt to control people by knowing where they are at all times as well as intercepting messages and altering them and listioning to or turning on and off calls. Once someone has your number if they wish you il will they can do so. It is naive to believe you are safe.

        My comment was not to be little this threat from Russia. just to point out the power that “government” does have over you once you become dependent on these neat little Mobil devices.

        • hikingmike says:
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          GPS satellites (and likely GLONASS) don’t track anything. GPS satellites transmit only, no
          receiving. Now, if your phone has its coordinates, those can be used by whoever has access to your phone data (phone company, apps, your phone’s camera, etc.). These monitoring stations are just fancy receivers of GLONASS signals. If they are doing something with cell phone signals then that is a whole other deal.

          “The GPS can be followed even if the battery is out of the phone.”
          Uhhh no, I’m going to have to pretend I’m from Missouri and say “show me” on that one.

        • J C says:
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          Ok I call tinfoil on this one. GPS units, whether in a phone or standalone, do not transmit. They receive. In a GPS-enabled phone, the phone transmits, which is the only way it can be tracked. Phones without batteries do not transmit; hence cannot be tracked. All smartphones have an airplane mode, which turns off all transmitters; cell, wi-fi, and bluetooth. The other stuff you mention might happen, as I’m sure not every EMS person out there is totally trustworthy, but it is simply not true that just owning a phone with a GPS means you can always be tracked.

          • DTARS says:
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            Thanks JC I was hopeing someone would clarify. So a smart phone turned off with battery in, not in airplane mode, still transmitts and can be tracked. Correct?

          • Paul451 says:
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            Not your phone. I think the myth comes from bugged phones that intelligence agencies plant on suspects/targets. When the target “turns off” the look-alike phone, it will continue to silently send location data and possibly audio/video to the agency. Obviously a bugged phone can transmit anything it wants.

            [I believe you can also get similar phones from consumer “spy-shops” for industrial espionage. You can “turn them off” but they can secretly record a meeting. Hell, there may even be apps that let you do that.]

            People have taken this to mean that any and every smartphone is constantly transmitting location data to the NSA/CIA/WTO/UNESCO/ABBA. But it’s not true. (Other people might also be confused that a phone operates normally when the display is blanked off.)

            If there was any brand of phone that transmitted anything when turned off, or even when in airport-mode, the thousands of well-equipped professional and recreational security analysts would have picked up on it by now – and that manufacturer would be facing a storm of public protest.

            So if I was Edward Snowden, I’d be asking people to leave their phones outside. And if I owned a company discussing secret plans, I’d ban phones from the meeting room. But if I was just the very unimportant me, I wouldn’t (and don’t) worry about any of this. It doesn’t affect us. And it has nothing to do with Roscosmos and GLONASS.

    • dogstar29 says:
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      Privacy is dead, and it is mainly corporate entities that are spying on us, not governments. Just insist on us getting to put GPS ground stations in Russian territory.

  2. Astroraider says:
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    I think the state department is right on this one. Do not permit these sites in the U.S.

  3. Michael Spencer says:
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    From the article: I wasn’t that current smartphones and other devices were already using the Russian systems.

    • Tim Blaxland says:
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      There’s heaps of smartphones using it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…. Garmin GPS cycling computers do too.

    • hikingmike says:
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      It didn’t sound like that’s what it said to me – “the American satellite network that steers guided missiles to their
      targets and thirsty smartphone users to the nearest Starbucks” That’s talking about GPS. But anyway, I don’t know whether or not GLONASS is being used for that stuff yet. Why not? Tim below shows that it is indeed being used.

  4. Rich_Palermo says:
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    Between hauling Americans to the ISS in their rockets
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/s
    and hauling American rockets in their aircraft,
    http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.go

    I think the Russians might be a little miffed at all this resistance.

  5. SouthwestExGOP says:
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    Vladimir Putin uses hyper-nationalistic groups to harass opponents and allows anti-US propaganda to be spread by the media under his control. The US does nothing like this at all. When Mr Putin and the Russian government acts like good international citizens – we should consider helping them. Not before.