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Comment by whywhywouldyou | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure you're correct, as the whole thing reads like "look how smart I am".

1. Extraneous details about satellites not being overhead at night -- as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites.

2. Mentions things like them not scrubbing the EXIF data was a "mistake". How could it be a mistake if this was public information?

3. Says at the end "(this data is all public now)". Making it sound like he made the data public through his top notch sleuthing. It should read "this data was all public a week prior to my analysis".

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> as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites.

This bit, at least, is more or less the case. Even if you spend some fuel to alter your orbit and throw people off for a bit, you can't do anything major over the course of a few hours without sci-fi engines.

> as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites.

It's basically impossible to hide things in orbit. Hobbyists have been able to track the Misty spy satellite that has an inflatable cone to mask its optical signature. The major powers all operate space tracking radars that can spot anything up there bigger than about a baseball.

Also nearly all optical imaging sats are in sun synchronous orbits because it maximizes power generation vs solar panel size as well allows comparison of multiple days images with the same shadow angles.

> How could it be a mistake if this was public information?

Well they scrubbed the data from the website so that's a pretty clear indication it was a mistake. You're oversimplifying this into a binary thing, whereas a lot of security is more of the form "this isn't foolproof but there's no need for us to make it this easy."

>How could it be a mistake if this was public information?

Not to pile on, but the government releases info by mistake all the time. Even simple things like doing a crappy job redacting court filings. It's just people doing this stuff, and people make mistakes all.the.time.

> I'm sure you're correct, as the whole thing reads like "look how smart I am".

It's been that way for a long time. The whole "UFO movement" had it's flames fanned by agents of foreign power who literally salivate at how many useful idiots will do the work their analysts would have done.

Some officer in the Russian equivalent of the NRO is probably gonna take that post and run with it.

> 1. Extraneous details about satellites not being overhead at night -- as if government spy satellites operate on the same schedule with the same priorities as publicly known satellites.

You can bet that the US, China and Russia know about at least the orbital data of all satellites that the other nations put up.

> 2. Mentions things like them not scrubbing the EXIF data was a "mistake". How could it be a mistake if this was public information?

Because even what otherwise should be public domain under US copyright rules can still be censored for national security reasons - precisely to avoid OSINT research like this. What some random Twitter hobby astronomy researcher can do in their free time with basic tools, Russian and Chinese secret services can do as well.

Another fine example just how important attention to detail is with maintaining operational security.

> You can bet that the US, China and Russia know about at least the orbital data of all satellites that the other nations put up.

Of course, but I think they would refrain from publishing that information? Unless they want to make sure that "they know that we know"...

We will never learn of satellite war.... we will never hear about attack sat drones that take out other sats but it happens regularly... think of the plane that was in orbit as 3 years, which was the Jimmy Carter of space (I hope you know that ref) ((if you dont, then you dont know shit))

That's paranoid nonsense. Attack drones don't regularly take out other countries' satellites. There is no way to hide such activity in orbit and it would be obvious to everyone, including amateur civilian observed.

Here's the real situation. All of the superpowers have some level of kinetic anti-satellite weapons capability and have conducted a few isolated tests against their own satellites. The X-37B drone spaceplane may have some anti-satellite role but has never been used operationally in that capacity.

1. What orbit sphere level do spy sats sit at?

(I worked with many sat engs from Loral and another quiet facility called Lokheed (Also you shouls look into BALL ((the actual Mason Jar company - and see how many spy sats they make)))

Anyway, I think that DEFCON needs to break this shit open....

Read all the lines, then read all the ones in-betweeen....

Serious.

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