Fitness app Strava lights up staff at military bases


Security concerns have been raised after a fitness tracking firm showed the exercise routes of military personnel in bases around the world.

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 including Syria and Afghanistan as soldiers move around them.

The US military was examining the heatmap, a spokesman said.

How does Strava work?

San Francisco-based Strava provides an app that uses a mobile phone's GPS to track a subscriber's exercise activity.

It uses the collected data, as well as that from fitness devices such as Fitbit and Jawbone, to enable people to check their own performances and compare them with others.

It says it has 27 million users around the world.

What is the heatmap?

The latest version of the heatmap was released by Strava in November last year.

It is a data visualisation showing all of the activity of all of its users around the world.

Strava says the newest version has been built from one billion activities - some three trillion points of data, covering 27 billion km (17bn miles) of distance run, jogged or swum.

But it is not a live map. The data aggregates the activities recorded between 2015 and September 2017.

So why is it in the news now?

That is thanks to Nathan Ruser, a 20-year-old Australian university student who is studying international security at the Australian National University and also works with the Institute for United Conflict Analysts.

He said he came across the map while browsing a cartography blog last week.

It occurred to him that a large number of military personnel on active service had been publicly sharing their location data and realised that the highlighting of such exercises as regular jogging routes could be dangerous.

"I just looked at it and thought, 'oh hell, this should not be here - this is not good,'" he told the BBC.

"I thought the best way to deal with it is to make the vulnerabilities known so they can be fixed. Someone would have noticed it at some point. I just happened to be the person who made the connection."

What does the heatmap show?

Although the location of military bases is generally well-known and satellite imagery can show the outline of buildings, the heatmap can reveal which of them are most used, or the routes taken by soldiers.

It displays the level of activity - shown as more intense light - and the movement of personnel inside the walls.

It also appears that location data has been tracked outside bases - which may show commonly used exercise routes or patrolled roads.

Mr Ruser said he was shocked by how much detail he could see. "You can establish a pattern of life," he said.

A significant risk

By Jonathan Marcus, defence and diplomatic correspondent

Many years ago, operational security was a relatively simple matter of not being physically overheard by the enemy.

Think of the British WWII poster with the slogan "Careless Talk Costs Lives".

Well, no more. Our modern electronic age means that we all move around with a number of "signatures"; we send and receive a variety of signals, all of which can be tracked. And as the episode with the exercise tracker shows, you do not need to be an American or Russian spy to be able to see and analyse these signals.

Russian troops have been tracked in Ukraine or in Syria by studying their social media interactions or geo-location data from their mobile phone images.

Each piece of evidence is a fragment, but when added together it could pose a significant risk to security - in this case highlighting the location of formerly secret bases or undisclosed patterns of military activity.

Which bases are affected and why?

The app is far more popular in the West than elsewhere and major cities are aglow with jogging routines.

But in remote areas foreign military bases stand out as isolated "hotspots" and the activities of a single jogger can be illuminated on dark backgrounds.

Exercise activities stand out in such countries as Syria, Yemen, Niger, Afghanistan and Djibouti, among others.

A US base at Tanf in Syria, near the Iraqi border, is an illuminated oblong, while forward bases in Helmand, Afghanistan, are also lit up.

Although US bases have been frequently mentioned it is by no means just an American problem.

One image shows the perimeter of the main Russian base in Syria, Hmeimim, and possible patrol routes.

The UK's RAF base at Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands is also lit up with activity, as are popular swimming spots nearby.

And it is not exclusively the more remote areas either. Jeffrey Lewis in the Daily Beast highlights one potential security flaw at a Taiwan missile command centre.

Neither is it just military personnel who could be affected, but also aid workers and NGO staffers in remoter areas too.

Both state and non-state actors could use the data to their advantage.
Can't you apply a privacy setting?

Yes. The settings available in Strava's app allow users to explicitly opt out of data collection for the heatmap - even for activities not marked as private - or to set up "privacy zones" in certain locations.

Strava has not said much since the concerns were raised but it released a brief statement highlighting that the data used had been anonymised, and "excludes activities that have been marked as private and user-defined privacy zones".

But journalist Rosie Spinks is one of those who has expressed concern at the privacy system.

In an article for Quartz last year she said there was too much onus on the consumer to navigate an opting-out system that required different levels.

Then there is the fear that hackers could access Strava's database and find the details of individual users.

What have authorities said?

A US Department of Defense spokeswoman, Maj Audricia Harris, said it took "matters like these very seriously and is reviewing the situation to determine if any additional training or guidance is required".

The US has been aware of such problems, publishing a tract called Enhanced Assessments and Guidance Are Needed to Address Security Risks in DOD.

In 2016, the US military banned Pokemon GO from government-issued mobile phones,

An image of the Pentagon on the Strava heatmap showed no activity.

The UK's Ministry of Defence said it also took "the security of its personnel and establishments very seriously and keeps them under constant review" but would not comment on specific security arrangements.

My Response:

Audience:

This article is mainly focused on people from western countries because they are more likely to be using Strava. Also it may also be written to inform those on the military bases of their actions and how it could potentially put them at risk.

Bias:

The article seemed to have a clear bias that having these routes highlighted was a bad thing. What was less obvious was the fact that they seemed to agree that it was the company's (not the individual's) responsibility to protect privacy.

My Opinion:

I agree with this article that the individual cannot be held accountable to make sure that all of their privacy settings our correct especially since the app is focused on public sharing. Since I do believe that these military personnel should have the same opportunity as us to use fitness apps like this I think that Strava needs to change these heat maps. I think it is a really cool idea to be able to see the routes with the most activity so I don't think that Strava should totally get rid of them but they could do something to protect the privacy of places like military bases.

Turkey's Erdogan vows to press offensive on U.S.-backed Kurds in Syria


ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Monday to keep up an offensive against U.S.-backed Kurdish militias in Syria, rejecting American calls for restraint and boasting of a deal with Russia to press ahead with the assault.

Erdogan’s defiant message underscored the deepening rift between the NATO allies over the Kurdish militias and signaled a possible escalation of the latest tensions in Syria’s seven-year conflict.

Turkey sees the Syrian Kurdish fighters as linked to insurgents fighting for Kurdish autonomy at home. Washington, meanwhile, has turned to the Syrian Kurds as a proxy force against the Islamic State and a bulwark against efforts by the extremists to reclaim territory.

Turkey on Saturday announced an air and ground offensive to rout the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, from Afrin, an enclave near the Turkish border. U.S. officials quickly called on Turkey to limit the scope and duration of the operation to avoid civilian casualties.

“We appreciate their right to defend themselves, but this is a tough situation where there are a lot of civilians mixed in,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters while traveling from London to Paris, according to a pool report.

“Turkey has legitimate concerns about terrorists crossing the border into Turkey and carrying out attacks,” he said, adding that the United States has asked Turkey to “just try to be precise, try to limit your operation, try to show some restraint.”

But Erdogan offered little suggestion that Turkey would scale back its offensive. “We are determined. Afrin will be sorted out. We will take no step back,” he said at a meeting of business leaders in Turkey’s capital, Ankara. Without elaborating, he said Turkey had reached an agreement with Russia — whose forces back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — over the operation.

“America says the timing [of the operation] should be clear,” Erdogan continued. “Well, was your timing in Afghanistan clear? Is your time in Iraq done?”

Syrian Kurdish officials said Monday that at least 13 civilians and three Kurdish fighters had been killed since the operation started. Turkey also deployed allied Syrian rebels to help in the fight.

It was unclear, however, how far Turkey or its proxy forces had advanced on Afrin or surrounding Kurdish areas. Turkish officials said this weekend that the goal was to create a “secure zone” along the border.

In Afrin, a spokesman for the YPG, Nouri Mahmoud, denounced Russia for apparently giving a green light to the Turkish attacks. “This is an unethical position from the Russian forces,” he said at a news conference.

U.S. officials say the YPG militia played an essential role in ousting Islamic State militants from several areas of Syria.

“They have proven their effectiveness,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Sunday en route to Southeast Asia.

“It has cost them thousands of casualties,” he said. “But you have watched them, with the coalition support, shred [the] ISIS caliphate in Syria.” ISIS is an acronym for the Islamic State.

My Opinion:

Audience:

The audience of this article seems to be mainly for those in the US who are concerned with the US military actions and those in Turkey who are concerned about their country's safety.

Bias:

I think this article does a pretty good job of being impartial but I still think that they definitely are writing with the US in mind. Although it states that Turkey has legitimate concerns of safety it also provides many examples about how the US is taking into account these concerns and how they are not asking Turkey to do anything dramatically different.

My Thoughts:

Since I do not really have much previous knowledge of this subject reading this article did make me agree that the US seems to be quite reasonable in their demands of Turkey. Although I agree that a country must be able to protect itself Turkey seems to be taking that to the extreme. However, I do not like the fact that the US is just using the Kurdish militias to fight ISIS because it seems that they are putting other countries safety in jeopardy by doing so. Also I generally do not think that it is a good idea for the US to be getting involved in other nations wars. It hasn't gone well in the past so I do not think that will change in the future.

Suicide Bombings in Baghdad Puncture Newfound Hope

By FALIH HASSAN and MARGARET COKER JAN. 15, 2018

BAGHDAD — Two suicide bombers killed more than two dozen people in Baghdad on Monday, mostly street vendors and day laborers gathered at dawn in hopes of finding work at an open-air market, in the first major attack in the Iraqi capital since the government declared victory over the Islamic State.

The carnage in Tayaran Square punctured a growing sense of hope and pride that had permeated Baghdad after Iraq’s security forces, bolstered by large numbers of volunteers and fresh recruits, successfully fought grueling battles against the insurgent group that had held one-third of Iraqi territory and terrorized millions of citizens.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings, but officials in charge of security in the capital immediately cast suspicion on Islamic State sleeper cells, the target of Iraq’s intelligence and counterterrorism forces since major military operations ended in the fall.

Even as battles against Islamic State militants raged in northern Iraq and in its second-largest city, Mosul, Baghdad had largely been free of violence. The suicide bombings Monday morning caught many residents of the capital off guard, as they had become used to living relatively free of fear, taking their families to parks and shopping malls.

The attacks came a day after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and other politicians announced competing coalitions ahead of national elections scheduled for May. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, campaign seasons in Iraq have been scarred by terrorist attacks and other violence.

It was still unclear how the two assailants wearing suicide vests had entered Baghdad or why they had chosen to attack a market popular for cheap electronics and secondhand clothes.

The first assailant detonated his explosives around 6 a.m., as the sun was rising and as day laborers, shopkeepers and street vendors were starting to gather for work, according to Maj. Muhammad Mudhir, a traffic police officer who witnessed the attack. Minutes later, as people rushed to help the wounded, the second assailant detonated his explosives, said Kadhim Ali, a construction worker who was at the square.

Dr. Abdul Ghani, the director of Al Rusafa hospital in Baghdad, said at least 27 people had been killed, and 60 others wounded, many of whom were in a serious condition.

Since counterterrorism operations were ramped up in 2015, Iraqi security forces have established a tight security cordon around Baghdad in an attempt to keep insurgents and violence from infiltrating the city.

The belt of suburbs and farms to the west of the capital have long been home to bomb factories for Al Qaeda offshoots that have plagued Iraq since the mid-2000s.

Muhammad al-Jiwebrawi, the head of the Baghdad Province’s security committee, said those areas around the capital remained insecure. He urged the government to increase intelligence operations around the city.

“Islamic State terrorists are still present,” Mr. Jiwebrawi said. “There are reasons for what they are doing.”

Although the areas around the capital have been relatively safe compared with previous years, violence has not disappeared.

On Jan. 13, an insurgent detonated an explosive vest near a convoy carrying the head of Baghdad’s provincial government, wounding four Iraqi security forces.

A suicide bombing on a checkpoint in the north of the city on Saturday killed at least five people, according to the Iraqi police.

My Opinion:

It seems that his article was written mainly to inform as it was pretty short. Obviously they as most of the world are biased against the Islamic State. With that in mind and the fact that this issue is mainly impacting those in middle eastern nations the audience is probably written for people living in the middle east. Although the article was short it seemed to have the idea that the people living in Baghadad had forgot about the violence that their nation has faced and that that was a bad thing. This article seemed to have the idea that it is a good thing to live in fear of such things as the Islamic state. However, I think that it is great that people had moved on and were living relatively normal lives. That is why this attack is such a set back because people will go back to living in fear and I do not thing that is a good thing.

Trump Administration Says That Nearly 200,000 Salvadorans Must Leave


By MIRIAM JORDAN JAN. 8, 2018

Their Status Is Temporary. But to Salvadorans, the U.S. Is Home.


LOS ANGELES — Nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who have been allowed to live in the United States for more than a decade must leave the country, government officials announced Monday. It is the Trump administration’s latest reversal of years of immigration policies and one of the most consequential to date.

Homeland security officials said that they were ending a humanitarian program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Salvadorans who have been allowed to live and work legally in the United States since a pair of devastating earthquakes struck their country in 2001.

Salvadorans were by far the largest group of foreigners benefiting from temporary protected status, which shielded them from deportation if they had arrived in the United States illegally. The decision came just weeks after more than 45,000 Haitians lost protections granted after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, and it suggested that others in the program, namely Hondurans, may soon lose them as well. Nicaraguans lost their protections last year.

Immigrant advocates and the El Salvadoran government had pleaded for the United States to extend the program, as it has several times since 2001. A sense of dread gripped Salvadorans and their employers in California, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere.

“We had hope that if we worked hard, paid our taxes and didn’t get in trouble we would be allowed to stay,” said Veronica Lagunas, 39, a Salvadoran who works overnight cleaning offices in Los Angeles, has two children born in the United States and owns a mobile home.

But the Trump administration has been committed to reining in both legal and illegal immigration, most notably by ending protections for 800,000 young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, beginning in March unless Congress grants them legal status before then.Photo

And despite its name, the administration says, the Temporary Protected Status program, known as T.P.S., had turned into a quasi-permanent benefit for hundreds of thousands of people.

The Department of Homeland Security said that because damaged roads, schools, hospitals, homes and water systems had been reconstructed since the earthquakes, the Salvadorans no longer belonged in the program.

“Based on careful consideration of available information,” the department said in a statement, “the secretary determined that the original conditions caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist. Thus, under the applicable statute, the current T.P.S. designation must be terminated.”

The ending of protection for Salvadorans, Haitians and Nicaraguans leaves fewer than 100,000 people in the program, which was signed into law by President George Bush in 1990.

It provides temporary lawful status and work authorization to people already in the United States, whether they entered legally or not, from countries affected by armed conflict, natural disaster or other strife. The homeland security secretary decides when a country merits the designation and can renew it for six, 12 or 18 months.

There is no limit to the number of extensions a country can receive. Countries that have received and then lost the designation in the past include Bosnia and Herzegovina, which endured a civil war in the 1990s, and Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia during the Ebola crisis. El Salvador was one of the first countries in the program because of its civil war; that designation expired in 1994.

The administration is giving Salvadorans in the program until September 2019 to get their affairs in order. After that, they no longer will have permission to stay in the country, forcing them into a wrenching decision.

Ms. Lagunas said that she would remain in the United States illegally, risking arrest and deportation. But she would lose her job of 12 years without the work permit that comes with the protection. Her family would lose medical insurance and other benefits.

“There is nothing to go back to in El Salvador,” she said, speaking in Spanish. “The infrastructure may be better now, but the country is in no condition to receive us.”

With his protected status, Carlos Jiron, another Salvadoran, started a small contracting business and won bids for big jobs, including to paint federal buildings in the Washington area.

“We have built a life here,” said Mr. Jiron, 41, who lives with his wife and two American-born children in a four-bedroom house they bought in Springfield, Va.

He will have to decide whether to take his children to El Salvador, where he says they would not maximize their potential and would face safety threats; leave them with guardians in the United States; or remain in the country at the risk of arrest and deportation as one of the millions of undocumented immigrants.

His 14-year-old daughter, Tania, a fan of Disney movies and hip-hop music, said she could not fathom starting over in El Salvador. “This is where I was born and am supposed to be raised,” she said.

Temporary protections were granted to Salvadorans who were in the United States in March 2001 after two earthquakes in January and February of that year killed more than 1,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. Over the next 15 years, the George W. Bush and Obama administrations extended the protections several times.Photo

In 2016, the final time, the government cited several factors, including drought, poverty and widespread gang violence in El Salvador, as reasons to keep the protections in place.

El Salvador has rebuilt since the earthquakes. But the violence — San Salvador, the capital, is considered one of the most dangerous cities on Earth — has inhibited investment and job creation, and prompted tens of thousands to flee. The country’s economy experienced the slowest growth of any in Central America in 2016, according to the World Bank.

But officials in the Trump administration say the only criteria the government should consider is whether the original reason for the designation — in this case, damage from the earthquakes — still exists.

Some lawmakers have introduced legislation to enable people with temporary protection to remain in the United States permanently. At the same time, instability in Venezuela has prompted some members of Congress from Florida to call for protected status for Venezuelans.

The government of El Salvador had asked the Trump administration to renew the designation for its citizens in the United States, citing drought and other factors. Money sent home from Salvadorans abroad is a lifeline for many in the country, where four out of 10 households subsist below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. In 2016, the $4.6 billion remitted from abroad, mostly from the United States, accounted for 17 percent of the country’s economy.

El Salvador’s president, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, spoke by phone with Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, on Friday to make one last plea. After Ms. Nielsen’s decision was announced on Monday, Mr. Sánchez posted on Twitter, calling it an 18-month “extension” of T.P.S. The post prompted a flurry of angry replies accusing him of trying to spin the bad news.

Flor Mejia, who works in a day care center on the outskirts of San Salvador, said her family gets by with the help of money sent regularly by her sister and brother-in-law, who recently bought a home and have two children born in the United States. Her parents live in Chalatenango, a rural province in the northern part of the country, and are subsistence farmers, growing corn and beans for the family’s food supply.

“It’s going to be very difficult for my parents, not having this income anymore,” Ms. Mejia said.

The United States Chamber of Commerce and immigrant advocacy organizations also had urged the administration to extend the protection, noting the Salvadorans’ deep connections to America. According to an analysis by one group, the Center for Migration Studies, Salvadoran beneficiaries have 192,700 American-born children; 88 percent participate in the labor force, compared with 63 percent for the overall United States population; and nearly one-quarter have a mortgage.

Donald M. Kerwin Jr., the center’s executive director, called rescinding protection for Salvadorans a “baffling ideological decision that is extraordinarily destructive on all ends. They are deeply vested and embedded in the U.S.”

In Houston, the elimination of protected status would aggravate a labor shortage already delaying repairs after Hurricane Harvey, said Stan Marek, the chief executive of Marek Brothers, a large construction company with offices across Texas and in Atlanta. At least 29 Salvadorans on his payroll are program recipients.

“During hurricane recovery, I especially need those men,” Mr. Marek said. “If they lose their status, I have to terminate them.”2978COMMENTS

But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors restrictions on immigration, said the Trump administration was correctly abiding by the original intent of the program.

“We need to put the ‘T’ back into T.P.S.,” he said. “It has to be temporary. This has gone on far too long."

My Response:

Bias:

I think that it is pretty obvious that the author of this article is quite disappointed in the Trump administration and believes that the people from El Salvador should be allowed to stay in the US. He cites sources about how bad the situation in El Salvador still is and the violence in the area. 

Audience:

The intended audience for this article is probably mainly for US citizens who see and believe in the helping of people in natural disasters. It is probably also written for those in El Salvador who are relying on support from friends and family in the US. Also others who are under the same status of these people who have been deported would probably be interested in this information also.

My Opinion:

I tend to agree with the author on this issue because I think that helping people is super important and if it is still a terrible life for these immigrants to go back to they should be allowed to stay. However the Trump administration had some rational in saying that because the initial disaster was taken care of they can go back. Even still they have created a life in the US and to make them just walk away from that into a poverty struck country is wrong and evil.