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Posted onDec.10, 2018inFAS,Featured,Government Secrecy,Intelligence,Israel,俄国,Secrecyby

Widespread Blurring of Satellite Images Reveals Secret Facilities

想知道如何使卫星图像分析师立刻好奇的东西吗？

Blurit out.

Google Earth occasionally does this at the request of governments that want to keep prying eyes away from some of their more sensitive military or political sites. France, for example, has asked Google to obscure all imagery of its prisons after a French gangster successfully conducted a Hollywood-inspired jailbreak involving drones, smoke bombs, and a stolen helicopter(!)—and Google hasagreed通过2018年以类似的方式结束遵守，一个古老的荷兰法律要求的荷兰公司的军事和王室的卫星图像模糊的设施，甚至到了这种地步了卫星图像提供商一次doctoredan image of Volkel Air Base after it waspurchased通过FAS”自己的汉斯·克里斯滕森。

Yandex Maps—Russia’s foremost mapping service—has also agreed to selectively blur out specific sites beyond recognition; however, it has done so for just two countries: Israel and Turkey. The areas of these blurred sites range from large complexes—such as airfields or munitions storage bunkers—to small, nondescript buildings within city blocks.

Although blurring out specific sites is certainly unusual, it is not uncommon for satellite imagery companies to downgrade the resolution of certain sets of imagery before releasing them to viewing platforms like Yandex or Google Earth; in fact, if you trawl around the globe using these platforms, you’ll notice that different locations will be rendered in a variety of resolutions. Downtown Toronto, for example, is always visible at an extremely high resolution; looking closely, you can spot my bike parked outside my old apartment. By contrast, imagery of downtown Jerusalem is always significantly blurrier; you can just barely make out cars parked on the side of the road.

As I explained in myprevious pieceabout geolocating Israeli Patriot batteries, a 1997 US law known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment (KBA) prohibits US companies from publishing satellite imagery of Israel at a Ground Sampling Distance lower than what is commercially available. This generally means that US-based satellite companies like DigitalGlobe and viewing platforms like Google Earth won’t publish any images of Israel that are better than 2m resolution.

Foreign mapping services like Russia’s Yandex are legally not subject to the KBA, but they tend to stick to the 2m resolution rule regardless, likely for two reasons. Firstly, after 20 years the KBA standard has become somewhat institutionalized within the satellite imagery industry. And secondly, Russian companies (and the Russian state) are surely wary of doing anything to sour Russia’s critical relationship with Israel.

However, Yandex has taken a step well beyond simply downgrading its Israeli imagery, as is typical for most mapping services. Yandex itself—or perhaps its imagery provider ScanEx—has blurred out specific military installations in their entirety. Interestingly, it has done the same to Turkey, a country that benefits from no special standards and is therefore almost always shown in very high resolution.

This blurring is almost certainly the result of requests from both Israel and Turkey; it seems highly unlikely that a Russian company would undertake such a time-consuming task of its own volition. Fortunately (from an OSINT perspective), this has had the unintended effect ofrevealingthe location and exact perimeter of every significant military facility within both countries, if one isobsessivecurious enough to sift through theentiremap looking for blurry patches. Matching the blurred sites to un-blurred (albeit downgraded) imagery available through Google Earth is a method of “tipping and cueing,” in which one dataset is used to inform a more detailed analysis of a second dataset.

My complete list of blurred sites in both Israel and Turkey totals over 300 distinct buildings, airfields, ports, bunkers, storage sites, bases, barracks, nuclear facilities, and random buildings—prompting several intriguing points of consideration:

  • 包括在Yandex的的迷离网站列表至少两个北约设施：盟军司令部土地（LANDCOM）伊兹密尔和因吉尔利克空军基地，它承载美国B61核重力炸弹在任何一个北约基地最大的队伍。


  • Strangely,no俄国n facilities have been blurred—including its nuclear facilities, submarine bases, air bases, launch sites, or numerous foreign military bases in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, or the Middle East.
  • Although none of Russia’s permanent military installations in Syria have been blurred, almost the entirety of Syria is depicted in extremely low resolution, making it nearly impossible to utilize Yandex for analyses of Syrian imagery. By contrast, both Crimea and the entire Donbass region are visible at very high resolutions, so this blurring standard applies only selectively to Russia’s foreign adventures.
  • All four Israeli Patriot batteries that I identified using radar interference in myprevious post已经模糊了,确认这些网站do indeed have a military function.

Putting aside the geopolitical intrigue of Russia’s relations with both Israel and Turkey, Yandex’s actions are a prime example of what is known as theStreisand Effect. In 2003, Barbra Streisand attempted to sue a photographer who posted photos of her Malibu mansion online, claiming $10 million in damages and demanding that the innocuous photo be taken down. Her actions completely backfired: not only did Streisand lose the case and have to cover the defendant’s legal fees, but the attention raised by her lawsuit directed significant traffic to the photo in question. Before the lawsuit, the photo had only been viewed six times (including twice by Streisand’s lawyers); a month later, the photo had accumulated over 420,000 views—a prime example of how attempting to obscure something is actually likely to result in unwanted attention.

So too with Yandex. By complying with requests to selectively obscure military facilities, the mapping service has actuallyrevealedtheir precise locations, perimeters, and potential function to anyone curious enough to find them all.

Posted onJul.13，2010inFeatured,News Release,Nuclear Information,Strategic Securityby

美国能源部计划将减少核武库高达40％，但在很少的成本节约会导致或削减规模复杂性武器

–SCIENCE GROUPS RELEASE BUDGET PLAN PUBLICLY FOR FIRST TIME–

华盛顿(2010年7月13日)——奥巴马administration is planning to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal by as much as 40 percent by 2021, but also wants to spend nearly $175 billion over the next twenty years to build new facilities and to maintain and modify thousands of weapons, according to sections ofan administration planmade public today by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the忧思科学家联盟（UCS）.

该提案中，“FY2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan,”part of the Department of Energy’s proposed fiscal year 2011 budget, was drafted by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and presented to members of Congress in May.

“Nuclear weapons are now a liability, not an asset, so the plan to reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile is a step in the right direction.” said Lisbeth Gronlund, co-director of UCS’s Global Security Program.

The plan calls for the United States to reduce its nuclear arsenal 30 to 40 percent from today’s total of approximately 5,000 weapons. Reductions already underway will reduce the arsenal to 4,700 weapons by the end of 2012. According to the plan, “the future NNSA infrastructure will support total stockpiles up to a range of approximately 3,000 to 3,500 [warheads],” about twice the number of warheads the New START treaty permits to be deployed on strategic forces. (For more details, see“规划诺言削减核武器，但很少储蓄，”a fact sheet prepared by FAS and UCS.)

“The 3,000 to 3,500 total warhead target is a ceiling,” said汉斯·克里斯滕森, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. “Of course, the United States could reduce its arsenal to even lower levels through negotiated agreements with Russia and the other nuclear weapon states.”

该计划还包括超出成本估计NNSA has previously released. It calls for the United States to spend nearly $175 billion (in then-year dollars) from 2010 to 2030 on new weapons production, testing and simulation facilities, and on modernizing and extending the life of the remaining weapons in the arsenal. That price tag does not include the cost of maintaining and operating nuclear weapons delivery systems, which are covered by the Department of Defense budget.

Given NNSA’s spotty record for meeting deadlines and budgets, experts at FAS and UCS predict that the costs are likely to be higher.

The two science groups also questioned some of NNSA’s key assumptions. For example, they questioned the need to maintain the capability to support 3,000 to 3,500 weapons, even if the number of weapons in the stockpile dropped below 1,000.

“Weapons expenditures will remain high because the plan calls for retaining a large, capable weapons complex independent of the size of the arsenal,” said Gronlund. “This could be a problem for deeper reductions that are needed since it would be possible for the United States to rapidly rebuild.”

“That calculation makes no sense,” saidKristensen. “It is like saying that today’s stockpile of about 5,000 weapons requires a complex of nearly the same size and cost as when the stockpile had 8,000 warheads. Given the size of the federal deficit, the Obama administration needs to think more clearly about how it spends the taxpayers’ money.”

Finally, the groups cautioned the Obama administration against against making extensive modifications to U.S. nuclear weapons in the future, at a time when the United States is seeking additional reductions with Russia and other nuclear weapon states and needs the support of non-nuclear countries to implement the administration’s nonproliferation agenda.

“Not only could extensive ‘improvements’ reduce the reliability of the warheads, they would send the wrong message when we are trying to get other countries to reduce their arsenals,” Gronlund said.

The“FY2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan” consists of five sections (three are unclassified):

·2011财年的库存管理和管理规划纲要（机密）

·Annex A – FY 2011 Stockpile Stewardship Plan (unclassified)

· Annex B – FY 2011 Stockpile Management Plan (classified)

· Annex C – FY 2011 Science, Technology, and Engineering Report on Stockpile Stewardship Criteria and Assessment of Stockpile Stewardship Program (classified), and

·Annex D – FY 2011 Biennial Plan and Budget Assessment on the Modernization and Refurbishment of the Nuclear Security Complex (unclassified)

Analysis by Hans Kristensen.
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Posted onJun.04, 2010inArm Sales Monitoring,Featured,News Release,Strategic Securityby

弹药的新研究分析全球贸易

Chapter（PDF）

WASHINGTON DC — The Small Arms Survey released its tenth annual global analysis of small arms and related issues, the “Small Arms Survey 2010: Gangs, Groups, and Guns”.

Matt Schroeder, manager of theArms Sales Monitoring Project在美国科学家联合会（FAS），合着对全球贸易弹药的章节。

According to the new study, the first to examine the trade in ammunition for both small arms and light weapons, the global trade in ammunition is considerably less transparent than the trade in the weapons themselves.

This edition of the Survey also reveals that:
• The USD 4.3 billion ammunition finding shows that the long-standing estimate of USD 4 billion for the total trade (including weapons, parts, and accessories) considerably undervalues recent activity.

• In 2007, 26 countries had documented exports of small arms ammunition worth more than USD 10 million.

• The trade in propellant chemicals is worth at least tens, and perhaps hundreds, of millions of US dollars each year.

• Governments procure most of their light weapons ammunition from domestic producers when possible. Therefore, international transfers of light weapons ammunition are probably a small percentage of global public procurement.

• Ammunition imported by Western countries is overwhelmingly sourced from Western companies. Public procurement data from seven Western states indicates that in recent years they have received less than four per cent of their light weapons ammunition (by value) from non-Western firms.

• In 2007 the top exporters of all small arms and light weapons (those with annual exports of at least USD 100 million), according to available customs data, were (in descending order) the United States, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Austria, Belgium, the United Kingdom, China, Switzerland, Canada, Turkey, and the Russian Federation. The top importers of all small arms and light weapons for 2007 (those with annual imports of at least USD 100 million), according to available customs data, were (in descending order) the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, and Spain.

Published by Cambridge University Press, the report is the principle source of public information and analysis on all aspects of small arms and armed violence.

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Posted onApr.02, 2010inFASBoard,Featured,News Releaseby

在FAS局哈罗德·帕尔默·史密斯当选小新主席

(WASHINGTON DC) — The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) today announced the election of its newChairman of the Board of Directors— a technology, foreign policy, and defense expert who is a distinguished visiting scholar with the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB).

Asked about his new role at FAS, Dr. Smith said, “I very much look forward to working with our new CEO,Charles Ferguson, in guiding the Federation in the new and challenging era that lies before us.”

除了他在UCB工作，Smith博士担任顾问，以众多的政府在议会国家安全政策。

“FAS will greatly benefit from Dr. Smith’s leadership to become a leading credible, authoritative, and nonpartisan organization dedicated to using scientific analysis to make the world more secure,” said Dr. Ferguson.

Previously, from 1993 – 1998, he worked for the Clinton Administration as Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs. In that role he was responsible for reducing the American and NATO arsenals of nuclear weapons, dismantling the chemical weapon stockpile, chemical and biological defense programs, and managing treaties related to strategic weapons. Dr. Smith was also responsible for implementing the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which assists the former Soviet Union in the dismantlement of their weapons.

“我们正在进入一个新的时代，科学和政策的交集将是多么的和平与稳定至关重要，因为它是在1945年的时候开始FAS。这将是激动人心的时刻，”史密斯说。

In 1960, Dr. Smith received his Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in nuclear engineering.

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