From: imbibe@mindspring.com   
      
   How Fake GPS Coordinates Are Leading to Lawlessness on the High Seas   
   By Anatoly Kurmanaev, Sept. 3, 2022, NY Times   
      
   The scrappy oil tanker waited to load fuel at a dilapidated jetty projecting   
   from a giant Venezuelan refinery on a December morning. A string of abandoned   
   ships listed in the surrounding turquoise Caribbean waters, a testament to the   
   country’s decay    
   after years of economic hardships and U.S. sanctions.   
      
   Yet, on computer screens, the ship — called Reliable — appeared nearly 300   
   nautical miles away, drifting innocuously off the coast of St. Lucia in the   
   Caribbean. According to Reliable’s satellite location transmissions, the   
   ship had not been to    
   Venezuela in at least a decade.   
      
   Shipping data researchers have identified hundreds of cases like Reliable,   
   where a ship has transmitted fake location coordinates in order to carry out   
   murky and even illegal business operations and circumvent international laws   
   and sanctions.   
      
   The digital mirage — enabled by a spreading technology — could transform   
   how goods are moved around the world, with profound implications for the   
   enforcement of international law, organized crime and global trade.   
      
   Tampering this way with satellite location trackers carried by large ships is   
   illegal under international law, and until recently, most fleets are believed   
   to have largely followed the rules.   
      
   But over the past year, Windward, a large maritime data company that provides   
   research to the U.N., has uncovered over 500 cases of ships manipulating their   
   satellite navigation systems to hide their locations. The vessels carry out   
   the deception by    
   adopting a technology that until recently was confined to the world’s most   
   advanced navies. The technology, in essence, replicates the effect of a VPN   
   cellphone app, making a ship appear to be in one place, while physically being   
   elsewhere.   
      
   Its use has included Chinese fishing fleets hiding operations in protected   
   waters off South America, tankers concealing stops in Iranian oil ports, and   
   container ships obfuscating journeys in the Middle East. A U.S. intelligence   
   official, who discussed    
   confidential government assessments on the condition of anonymity, said the   
   deception tactic had already been used for weapons and drug smuggling.   
      
   After originally discovering the deception near countries under sanction,   
   Windward has since seen it spread as far as Australia and Antarctica.   
      
   “It’s a new way for ships to transmit a completely different identity,”   
   said Matan Peled, a founder of Windward. “Things have unfolded at just an   
   amazing and frightening speed.”   
      
   Under a U.N. maritime resolution signed by nearly 200 nations in 2015, all   
   large ships must carry and operate satellite transponders, known as automatic   
   identification systems, or AIS, which transmit a ship’s identification and   
   navigational positional    
   data. The resolution’s signatories, which include practically all seafaring   
   nations, are obligated under the U.N. rules to enforce these guidelines within   
   their jurisdictions.   
      
   The spread of AIS manipulation shows how easy it has become to subvert its   
   underlying technology — the Global Positioning System, or GPS — which is   
   used in everything from cellphones to power grids, said Dana Goward, a former   
   senior U.S. Coast Guard    
   official and the president of Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a   
   Virginia-based GPS policy group.   
      
   “This shows just how vulnerable the system is,” he said.   
      
   Mr. Goward said that until now, all major global economy players had a stake   
   in upholding an order built on satellite navigation systems.   
      
   But rising tensions between the West, Russia and China could be changing that.   
   “We could be moving toward a point of inflection,” Mr. Goward said.   
      
   Analysts and Western security officials say the U.S. and European Union   
   sanctions on Russian energy imports as a result of the war in Ukraine could   
   drive Russia’s trade underground in coming months, obscuring shipments of   
   even permitted goods in and    
   out of the country. A large shadow economy risks escalating maritime deception   
   and interference to unprecedented levels.   
      
   U.S. intelligence officials confirmed that the spread of AIS manipulation is a   
   growing national security problem, and a common technique among sanctioned   
   countries. But China has also emerged in recent years as a source of some of   
   the most sophisticated    
   examples of AIS manipulation, officials said, and the country goes to great   
   lengths to conceal the illegal activities of its large fishing industry.   
      
   Windward is one of the main companies that provide shipping industry data to   
   international organizations, governments and financial institutions —   
   including the United Nations, U.S. government agencies and banks like HSBC,   
   Société Générale and    
   Danske Bank. At least one client, the U.N. Security Council body that monitors   
   North Korea’s sanctions compliance, has used Windward’s data to identify   
   ships that breach international laws.   
      
   The Israeli company’s research offers a glimpse into the inner workings of   
   the usually opaque and loosely regulated shipping industry.   
      
   Dror Salzman, Windward’s product manager, first spotted a civilian ship   
   transmitting a fake voyage early last year, in Venezuela. A tanker called   
   Berlina had been transmitting a strange drifting pattern for several weeks   
   just outside the South American    
   country’s waters.   
      
   The idle movements did not make sense — keeping such a vessel at sea costs   
   tens of thousands of dollars each day. Berlina’s movement also defied basic   
   physics, he said. The ship, at one point, turned its 270-meter body 180   
   degrees in only a few    
   minutes; its perfectly straight drift defied the effects of the tide and the   
   Earth’s rotation.   
      
   These anomalies could not be blamed on a technological glitch. Because AIS   
   transmissions are compiled by multiple sources — including nearby ships,   
   satellites and onshore stations — experts say they tend to track a large   
   vessel’s movements nearly    
   perfectly, especially in busy shipping areas like the Caribbean.   
      
   In fact, Berlina was nowhere near its purported location at that time. It was   
   loading oil in the eastern Venezuelan port of José, according to Vortexa,   
   another shipping data company that identified the ship through port sightings,   
   and shared its    
   findings with Windward.   
      
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)