Thread by @mattkorda

When a Russian mapping service tried to obscure every military facility in Turkey and Israel, it had the unintended effect of *revealing* the exact locations of over 300 distinct sites (whoops) 😬

See the juicy details in my latest piece for @FAScientists
fas.org/blogs/security…

TLDR: Yandex has selectively blurred out 300+ military facilities in Turkey and Israel. Many sites were already known, but many others look completely innocuous through sat imagery (e.g. apartment blocks like this). Blurring indicates that they likely have a military function.

Since these sites aren't obscured on Google Earth, it's relatively easy to match the blurred Yandex sites to high-quality GE images for identification.

For example, here's NATO's Allied Land Command (LANDCOM) -- blurred on Yandex (right), clear as day on Google Earth (left).

In a fun convergence of timelines, the list of blurred sites actually includes all four suspected Patriot batteries that I identified using radar interference in my previous @FAScientists blog post -- thus indicating that these sites are indeed military: fas.org/blogs/security…

The main takeaways here are:
1) Needless attempts to censor information that can/should be made freely available will often backfire.
2) OSINT can increasingly play a critical role in promoting transparency.
3) Wow there are a lot of military facilities in Israel. Like... a lot.

Here's a fun thing: there are so many blurred Yandex sites in Israel that you can basically cover the country's *entire* landmass in pins.

I spoke to @AthertonKD at @C4ISRNET about the Yandex story to chat about the implications of this type of OSINT analysis -- check out his story here! 🔎

c4isrnet.com/c2-comms/2018/…