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Comment by slowmovintarget | Hacker News Reader

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slowmovintarget·

This is just happening now? Shouldn't this have been done for troop security a long time ago?

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The US is currently not deploying troops against an adversary that can make use of that information.

China, Iran and Russia are probably all capable of it. Russians would love the blackmail potential.

There are currently no large-scale deployments against them though. Of course the US is going to learn the lesson painfully if they don't take care of these information leaks.

The KGB was famous for compromising people sexually and recruiting then that way. The FSB supposedly still does, although homosexuality and extramarital affairs are not the scandals they once were. It would be useful for these countries to have embedded agents in the US military, even in peace time.

Indeed, but that's orthogonal to soldiers bringing their phones on deployments. They can also be recruited and handled when there's no way to separate them from their phones, i.e., off duty.

Why would they need to be deployed for an adversary to make use of that information? Sure it's more valuable on deployment, but wouldn't we also want to, you know, not give information on mobilization or lack thereof?

Large-scale troop mobilization are not subtle and can be sussed out by satellite observations. You can bet that all US forces are already closely tracked that way.

Invasions are usually spearheaded by elite forces that I presume are competent enough to understand that actively broadcasting what you're about to do is a bad idea.

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