[dist-epoch]

It's not necessarily illegal use of secret information.

There exists "alternate data", some companies monitor all kinds of stuff, satellite pictures, etc, some of these companies surely saw the inevitable asset positioning just before such a big attack (150 planes).

Just like the Ukraine invasion was first visible on Google Maps as traffic jams !!! at the border at midnight

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/02/25/google-...

[HNisCIS]

Counting cars in Best Buy parking lots on black friday used to almost be a meme in the GIS community until ai models became reliable enough.

You can also do entertaining things like determine if a factory/data-center is running at full capacity by looking at the fans in the cooling stacks. Satellites take the red, green, and blue channels separately at different times so you can see if a fan is spinning through the apparent chromatic aberration of the blades, same deal with anything else that spins or moves. If you know the satellite you're buying imagery from, its TLE and a little information about the sensor you can work out all sorts of fun details.

[asdff]

You could see USAF and navy air power operating in venezuela on ads-b. I was shocked seeing F15s. You'd think there'd be no way the military would have ads-b activated while performing military operations.

[jrjeksjd8d]

When you're doing extra-legal military operations in a country that isn't at war, what choice do you have? There are civilian aircraft up in the sky. Having a fighter jet run into one and kill a bunch of civilians is a bad PR situation.

[hrimfaxi]

When you're doing extra-legal military operations in a country that isn't at war, do you really care about PR?

[treis]

Yes? Nobody cares that they killed a bunch of Cuban body guards. Taking down a civilian airliner would have been a big deal.

[dist-epoch]

If the fighter jet collides with the airliner, the pilot most likely dies. They care about that.

[asdff]

Didn't they already clear the airspace?

[robcohen]

How would this happen? Jets are significantly more maneuverable than anything else in the sky. The military could, you know, pilot the plane so it does not hit anything.

[eru]

That's neat. Though I'd say it was the first public sign. The US had been telling anyone willing to listen for weeks beforehand that an invasion was coming.

[HNisCIS]

Disbelief and normalcy are a hell of a drug. Unless someone fully expects something terrible to happen and they are deliberately trying to find out when it'll happen, most people will happily ignore all of the signs until it's too late.

Just look at the lead up to the Ukraine invasion, the US intelligence services were practically screaming from the rooftops that it was happening. Russians were obviously stacking up on two borders. Meanwhile, reporters were on the street asking people how they felt about the oncoming invasion and they all said some variation of "they've been threatening that forever, it's all talk, it won't happen".

[rdtsc]

> Meanwhile, reporters were on the street asking people how they felt about the oncoming invasion and they all said some variation of "they've been threatening that forever, it's all talk, it won't happen".

The Ukrainian government took the approach of not starting a full on panic. They thought maybe there was still some chance of stopping it. And not knowing 100% the day and time meant stopping the economy, people fleeing and such. It could even play into the hands of the enemy as they could react and postpone as well.

Some have criticized the government for that tactic science. Some might say they should have listened to the US intelligence instead, but that presumes people should trust the US intelligence more than their own government.

[eru]

Well, one problem is that the US intelligence services might have a credibility problem with the general public.

[HNisCIS]

This was in the Before Times when we were mostly being helpful up them

[chrisss395]

This - the electronic warfare assets moved to this region months before were a huge sign of what was going to happen.