Aaron Schachter: Sebastian, start by telling me, if you would, a bit more about what sorts of facilities you can find labeled on something like Google Maps.

Sebastian Vandermeersch: Yeah, absolutely. So, the vast majority is like restaurants, gyms, facilities you’d expect everyday people to identify and review on Google Maps. But what we also found was that some more kind of sensitive sites, such as the headquarters of some bases, locations on bases where US air Force pilots sleep are also identified. Various office buildings from quite senior military officers are also identified on Google Maps. And yeah, what we’re not talking about is just the satellite view from above. We also see photos, videos from the insides of these locations revealing some sensitive information.

And those photos are from soldiers posting them online, right?

Yeah, we see in many cases in the reviews, on the profiles of the Google reviewers, we can identify that they’re soldiers themselves leaving the reviews. But I mean, many of these bases are basically small cities and have had huge numbers of contractors over the years. So, it’s not only soldiers but in many cases it is soldiers.

A lot of these facilities that you find, as you said, are the more public places like gyms or the dining commons. What is the big deal about seeing the gym or the dining commons?

OK, so the idea is basically to kill or injure as many of the enemy as possible.

Absolutely. And what we’ve learned from speaking to military experts, as well, is that this kind of information helps to build up what’s called a pattern of life, which is a military term used to help in targeting, where you try and hit your enemies in the locations they’re going to be. So, it all helps. It’s definitely not the only source of intelligence which Iranian targeters relied upon, but it is sensitive and it’s just freely available online.

Yeah, there was a lot of talk about whether or how much Russia might be helping Iran with targeting, but it sounds like Iran doesn’t need Russia’s help. It’s right there in public.

Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, we’ve seen in a lot of cases high-resolution satellite imagery probably has been passed on to Iran, and they’ve been able to target fighter jets and other really expensive equipment that’s just been out in the open on these bases. But here, we’ve also seen that Iran’s really gone after service members themselves and been targeting what we’ve been told are kind of soft targets, you know, gyms, accommodation buildings, trying to catch them off guard and really just injure US service members or kill them.

Yeah, there was a quite renowned case where Iran hit a communications center that certainly was not labeled. It sounds like that might have been with someone’s help or the high-resolution satellite imagery.

Yeah, exactly. It’s definitely a combination of intelligence sources that’s feeding into their targeting decisions. I mean, you’d think something like Google Maps, which is an American creation, would have better operational security controls for the US military itself. And the US military has been warning about this for years. I mean, we saw it with Strava years ago where service members were giving away secret locations of bases and being targeted as a result.

Right. And Strava is the running app that people use to know how long they’ve been jogging, and so on.

Exactly. Now we’re seeing it with Google Maps, where these bases, which service members assume are safe, are being used as if they’re normal civilian places where they’re leaving loads of information online on Google Maps, which is now possibly being used against them.

You know, I did not realize that with Strava you could locate a GPS location. Is that what’s happening? Beause I mean, when I use Strava, I just see myself going around in circles on a map.

Yes. So, it depends on your settings. You should definitely, if you’re in a sort of sensitive role, have the maximum security settings where the public can’t view your running routes on Strava. But there’s been numerous incidents now in which, yes, service members have given away sensitive locations by running around the perimeter of their bases. Even in Jordan, we saw a Sky News investigation identified that service members kept running even after the start of the war, and they kept starting and finishing their runs in these northern barracks in which people were eventually targeted and killed in a strike in July.

Oh my goodness. So, when you go talk to Google about this question you asked, “How can this possibly be public?” what do they say?

We didn’t get a response from Google, unfortunately. Neither Google [nor] the US military responded to our comments. We did get a response from Bing Maps, which is Microsoft’s version of Google Maps, in which there’s less sensitive details identified, but still some. In some cases on Bing Maps, the satellite imagery of the base is unblurred, when in Google Maps it’s blurred, in particular of Camp Arifjan, which is a big military camp in Kuwait. And Bing Maps responded that basically they take down or they blur satellite imagery and they take down details at the request of governments, which clearly hasn’t happened in this case.

Right. Either the government hasn’t asked or Bing hasn’t taken it down.

Absolutely. But I think we see in a lot of other cases, especially with Google Maps, many locations such as prisons in countries like Belgium are blurred and obscured on Google Maps, but then big US military bases in the Middle East seem to be unobscured and have lots of details freely available. So, it seems like the US military hasn’t bothered to sort of take care of this and request it to be blurred by Google Maps.

Wow. So, reconnaissance like this from the air is not something new. Certainly planes have been doing this for a long time, even during World War II. But in the Second World War, you had those cases of people trying to conceal facilities, you know, painting roofs to look like something else. Is there a way for someone on the ground to try and camouflage their location?

It’s very difficult to conceal fixed infrastructure. Basically, big fixed military bases are now impossible to hide due to the availability of satellite imagery. So, what the difference is here is that through these placemarks on Google, on which people upload footage and photos from the ground itself, you can learn a huge amount about the operational layout of the base. So, that’s what particular facilities and buildings on the base are used for. So, that shouldn’t be freely available, according to military experts. And that is the big issue. We know that people are able to see it from above, but should they really know exactly all the details about what they’re looking at and what the different buildings are and when exactly they’ll be busy with service members? Probably not. Then you’re putting yourself at risk of being targeted.

We’re passing around notes right now while you’re talking that says this is crazy. It just, it does sound crazy, doesn’t it?

It does. And it’s a big claim to make that Google Maps exposed US service members during Iran’s missile campaign. So, we’ve really taken our time and we talked to a range of military and OSINT experts who all said that they’ve known this is an issue for some time. And it seems to be a particularly American problem. We looked at some other military bases by other countries, sensitive ones on which there’s almost nothing online, which are even hard to find online. But yeah, these bases basically have existed since the Second Gulf War, enjoying a strong sense of security, and that’s now what’s biting them in the a–, if you’ll excuse my language.