With the help of false location information, among other things, sanctions are avoided, says Windward, a company that monitors the movements of ships.
5.9. 20:17
World technology that has previously been mostly used by the armed forces is now rapidly becoming common on the water, reports the Israeli company Windward news agency AP’s and a US magazine of The New York Times by.
Windward, which investigates the movements of ships for the UN and the United States, among others, has observed a total of more than 500 cases since January 2020 in which ships have reported incorrect coordinates. Hundreds of ships have been involved in the incidents.
According to Windward, ships seem to be using false location information especially to avoid sanctions in the tightening world political situation. There are observations of oil tankers that are clandestinely going to the ports of Venezuela and Iran.
For example According to location data, the oil tanker Reliable, registered in Cyprus, appeared to float almost in place in the Caribbean Sea near the island nation of Saint Lucia in December, but eyewitness and satellite images reveal that it was actually docked next to a large Venezuelan oil refinery, reports The New York Times.
According to the newspaper, wrong coordinates have also been sent by many ships carrying cargo in the Middle East and by Chinese fishing fleets that catch their catch from the coast of South America.
A scam enables technology that works in the same way as vpn services familiar from home computers. It falsifies the GPS coordinates sent by the ship.
Reporting false information is a crime, as international agreements oblige ships to report their location. Among other things, the United States uses location data to control who trades with countries under sanctions.
According to Windward, the technology that was previously used by the armed forces has in recent years spread rapidly to the dark market and into the hands of an increasingly large number of people.
“The situation has gotten out of hand,” says Windward’s founder and former Israeli Navy officer Matan Peled According to AP.
“There are no states or great powers in the background. Ordinary companies use this technology. The scale is amazing.”
The According to the security industry experts interviewed by the New York Times, the war in Ukraine and the related sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU and the United States may lead to an even wider falsification of coordinates if, for example, Russia’s energy trade goes underground.
According to Peledi, interviewed by AP, the same technology can be used not only in ships but also in other traffic.
“Think about what would happen if small planes used this tactic to hide their location?”
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