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MIAMI (AP) — Technology to disguise a ship’s location, which was previously only available to the world’s armies, is spreading rapidly across the global shipping industry as governments from Iran to the United States. Venezuelan – and the rogue shipping companies they rely on to transport oil products – are looking for more stealthy ways to circumvent US sanctions.
upwindA maritime intelligence firm whose data is used by the U.S. government to investigate sanctions violations said it has identified more than 200 ships since January 2020 that were involved in more than 350 incidents where they appeared to have been electronically manipulating GPS positions.
“This is out of control right now,” said co-founder Matan Peled. upwind and a former Israeli naval officer, said in an interview. “It is not driven by countries or superpowers. Ordinary companies using this technique. The scale is amazing.”
Peled said U.S. authorities have been slow to catch up with the spread of the technology, which has been part of the electronic warfare arsenal for decades, but is only now emerging in commercial shipping, with serious national security, environmental and maritime security implications.
upwind It was able to detect suspicious vessels using technology that detects digital traces that do not correspond to real movements, such as sharp turns at dizzying speed or drifting in perfect crop circles.
William Fallon, a retired four-star admiral and former head of the US Pacific Command, said US authorities have been aware for some time of the threat of electronic manipulation, one of the national security concerns that has been increasingly referred to as the “grey zone”. crossing traditional military, commercial and economic lines.
“You can trick anyone into believing you’re in a place that doesn’t concern you,” said Fallon, who is now a board member of the American Security Project, a Washington think tank. “It shows how unafraid people are willing to achieve their goals and how easily they can achieve it.”
One of the more frightening examples found by upwind An 183-metre-long oil tanker can be tracked en route to Iraq, even though it is actually loading crude oil in Iran, where the oil is prohibited from being sold by US sanctions.
the said tanker upwind He reported that his destination was Basra, Iraq, departing on February 11, 2021 from the United Arab Emirates, where he was requested to be detained so as not to interrupt any possible investigations by the US government. When we were 20 nautical miles away, the global navigation system began to exhibit strange drift patterns. Twelve days later, its transmission stabilized and could be traced back through the Strait of Hormuz at normal cruising speed, this time all with crude oil.
Satellite images show that during the two-week voyage, a ship of the same length was spotted dozens of nautical miles away at Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal, with the same red deck smashed by a white mast and bridge. This ship was then tracked on the satellite returning to the UAE, and its course merged with the original ship’s reported position after restarting its normal transmission.
According to the United Nations maritime treaty, since 2004 ships over 300 tons were required to use an automatic identification system to avoid collisions and assist rescues in the event of a spill or accident at sea. Modifying its use is a major violation that could result in official sanctions for a ship and its owners.
But what was designed as a safety mechanism at sea has also resulted in a proliferation of ship detection platforms such as MarineTraffic.com.
Experts say such websites can be easily fooled, partly because they rely on data gathered from thousands of amateur cell towers that operate like police radio scanners that detect maritime movements. Last year, two journalists from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation managed to register a fake cell tower near Somalia online and enter the wrong coordinates of a real ship. Seconds later, the fake location appeared on MarineTraffic.com.
“To minimize errors and ensure data integrity at all times, MarineTraffic has implemented a number of key actions over the past few months as we strive to further secure incoming data,” MarineTraffic’s Anastassis Touros said in a statement. The steps include blocking certain stations and IP addresses that constantly transmit false data.
Despite such quality control efforts, the volume of data reduces the usefulness of such open-source platforms, two US intelligence officials told The Associated Press. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss what they described as the latest and most extreme tactic in the cat and mouse game between officials and bad actors.
Another blind spot: China. The recent implementation of a tough data privacy law has nearly halved the amount of terrestrial data on maritime activity in Chinese waters, making it difficult to track everything from activity in busy ports to global supply chains and the movements of the world’s largest far seas. water fishing fleet.
Using satellite data and machine learning to monitor activity at sea, researchers from Global Fishing Watch found something like this: upwind. It detected 30 ships whose locations fell out of range of the satellite, which regularly takes the position of the ship, as reported by ship tracking platforms.
Among the ships suspected of falsifying their digital prints was Tulip, a Panama-flagged oil tanker. For almost six months last year, it posted its location along the west coast of Africa. But the satellite that was supposed to detect the ship’s movements was often thousands of miles away, suggesting that the ship was likely at sea. Venezuelan.
Associated Press received internal documents. VenezuelanHe stated that he loaded 450,000 barrels of fuel to Tulip, the state-owned oil company, during the first 15 days of September. Like several other questionable ships, the crude was purchased by a shell company, M and Y Ticaret A.S., registered in Hong Kong in November 2020, according to documents. Tulip belongs to another Hong Kong registered shell, Victory Marine Ltd. Both companies did not return emails seeking comment.
Bjorn Bergman, a data analyst for Global Fishing Watch and Sky Truth, said attempts to hide a ship’s location can be easily detected.
“While we need to stay vigilant, ship operators who choose to manipulate their data will shed some light on their activities,” he said.
from 200 ships identified by upwind with similar patterns of deception, the vast majority displayed no or only a few other classic red flags, such as disabling onboard tracking systems, falsifying a ship’s flag status, or constantly changing ownership from one shell company to another.
These maritime practices have become clear indicators of possible involvement in avoiding sanctions and are thus defined in a 2020 recommendation by the US State and Treasury departments and the US Coast Guard.
But the advice, heralded as an important step towards cracking down on shipping companies doing business with US enemies, makes no mention of the latest GPS trick to hide the illegal trade in oil, seafood and other products. As a result, what has the application turned into? upwind He called it a “free for all” with no immediate end in sight
“The vast majority of these ships were meticulously selected for these missions because they were otherwise well behaved,” said Dror Salzman, product manager at Risk. upwind. “If you go to the bank wearing a ski mask, everybody knows what you’re up to. But it’s like they’re working inside with the cashier here. Nobody can see them.”
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