[mikestew]

One popular route on a base in Iraq has been nicknamed “Base Perimeter” by the U.S. runners who regularly use it.

I'm truly gobsmacked that it never occurred to anyone that this might pose a problem. Maybe not the 19 year old grunt who signed up because getting a master's in CS wasn't in his future, but c'mon, there isn't someone responsible for preventing data leakage? This is not some corner case, or some side-channel attack; Strava's whole business model rotates around "track where you've been with extreme accuracy, and let the world know about it". Otherwise I'd just keep the data locally, like I did in the old days.

But even if kept locally, what happened to the worry of radio leakage? Ten years ago I worked on some stuff that might end up being used by the military, and I distinctly remember a co-worker who used to be pretty high up in the army (colonel, maybe?) pointing out that in the field things like Bluetooth, et. al., were generally frowned upon for what I thought would be obvious reasons. Perhaps with the subsequent advent of more and more devices emitting radio signals, what used to be obvious isn't so obvious anymore, so now we let military personnel run around with devices on their wrist that signal to anyone within 30m that they're there.

[andrei_says_]

Tech evolves at least a magnitude faster than our thinking and even faster than our institutions.

Institutions tend to optimize so they run close to the redline, busy with a lot of stuff as it is. Adding more tasks, making them important, making everyone get educated and compliant is a huge undertaking.

Noticing and discerning what needs to be prioritized, in areas presenting such volatility and new possibilities as smartphones, apps, and data security could be daunting to do selectively.

They could ban cell phones / bt devices altogether but that will likely not go well.

As for our relationship with security, I find Richard Feynman’s experiences delightfully relevant:

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/34/3/FeynmanLosAlamos.h...

Edit: typo

[meritt]

> Maybe not the 19 year old grunt who signed up because getting a master's in CS wasn't in his future

Can we please drop the elitist attitude and explicit assertion that enlisted military personnel are stupid and that CS students are intelligent.

[mikestew]

I never brought up intelligence, I brought up the fact that I don't expect a Marine boot camp graduate with no specialized education to be the one thinking about these hard questions. Just like you don't want me, someone who has only fired an AR15 a few times, covering your ass on patrol. But despite your protestations to the contrary, the underlying assumption in my statement was that the military has someone on board, intelligent or not, who has been trained specifically to think around these very topics. That someone should not be a 19 year old kid who's only training consists of handling a rifle and whatever else combat troops are trained to do. There should be someone else who tells that kid, "hey, take off that FitBit before you head out."

[meritt]

> who signed up because getting a master's in CS wasn't in his future

Why did you make this statement? How did that help reinforce your point?

I don't disagree with your broader point at all, but I am annoyed by the fact that you made a causal connection between enlisting in the military because "because getting a master's in CS wasn't in his future"

[mikestew]

casual connection between enlisting in the military because "because getting a master's in CS wasn't in his future"

"Casual connection"? There was a direct connection with quite a few folks I grew up with. Because college costs money, which they didn't have. Argue all you want, I've seen it with my own eyes. You're the only one implying anything about intelligence.

[alien_robot]

This is getting down-voted but it's fair criticism of the parent comment. As a former Army grunt-turned-dev, I can personally verify that there are many very smart military personnel. They do deserve some blame for failing to imagine how their data could be used by our adversaries. It's a major OPSEC issue, no doubt, and a great learning opportunity for the military. Troops on the ground are adopting consumer tech too quickly for the DoD to keep up. In my experience in wartime operations overseas, this is often a failure to see the forest for the trees; that is, you're too involved in operations on the ground to see the danger of the (seemingly) innocent technology you're using to make your life easier, better, etc.