For the love of OPSEC, put your phone away

[Elderberry]

Military Times by J.D. Simkins 1/8/2020

 Prior to his death in 2015, renowned British author and neurologist Oliver Sacks penned an essay lamenting society’s limitless plunge into the personality-depriving depths of smart phone and social media hysteria.

“Everything is public now, potentially: one’s thoughts, one’s photos, one’s movements, one’s purchases,” he wrote in the essay published posthumously in The New Yorker. “There is no privacy and apparently little desire for it in a world devoted to non-stop use of social media. Every minute, every second, has to be spent with one’s device clutched in one’s hand.”

Sacks’ smart phone-induced melancholia, however, had yet to extend to the arena of national security.

But here we are.

Like the general population, today’s troops entranced by the glowing hypnosis of iPhone and Android screens grow increasingly unaware of the security breach potential at their fingertips. Lurking enemies capable of crippling cybersecurity attacks seek to prey on the complacent, and junior personnel have shown little in the way of resistance — opting instead to prioritize online popularity at the expense of information sharing and operational security.

A concerned Gen. Robert Neller, the now-retired former Marine Commandant, addressed this trend at a 2016 Center for Strategic and International Studies conference discussion in which he urged Marines to put down their inanimate soulmates and turn their focus to the mission.

“We’re going to go to the field for 30 days; everybody leave your phone in the car and tell your significant other or your mom, your aunt, your uncle, that you’re not going to get 75 texts each day and answer them,” he said.

“You’re living out of your pack, you’re going to stop at night, you’re going to dig a hole, you’re going to camouflage, you’re going to turn off all your stuff, and you’re going to sit there. And you’ve got to be careful to not make any noise, and you’re going to try to have absolutely no signature. Because if you can be seen, you will be attacked."

More: https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2020/01/08/for-the-love-of-opsec-put-away-your-phone/

[rangerrebew]

A Marine's cellphone selfie got his whole unit 'killed' during training in California
Gina Harkins, Military.com
 
A Marine at the Marine Corps Drum and Bugle Corps performance recording with his cellphone at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort South Carolina on March 18, 2014. US Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Patrick J. McMahon

    During a recent major exercise in the Mojave Desert, a bored Marine took a photo of himself with his cellphone.

    The photo could be used for geolocation, and because of that, it compromised his whole unit, Corps leaders said.
 

A junior Marine got his artillery unit into a serious bind after snapping a photo during a massive force-on-force training exercise in California's Mojave Desert.

https://www.businessinsider.com/marine-cellphone-selfie-gets-unit-killed-at-training-in-california-2020-1

[rangerrebew]

The ship I was on was in war games back in the early 70s.  We were to maintain lights out conditions while the "enemy" searched for us.  We didn't do so well and got "bombed."  The pilot who bombed us found us flying at 25,000 feet when he spotted a tiny light which was my ship.  As it turned out somebody had walked out to an exposed area to have a cigarette and that light was enough to find us.  If you see a light on the ocean in the middle of the night you can be reasonably sure it isn't a campfire.  There were rules against smoking in an exposed area but someone, in a selfie-like form decided to ignore the rule.  In a real war that could have gotten almost 6,000 people killed.

[240B]

The ship I was on was in war games back in the early 70s.  We were to maintain lights out conditions while the "enemy" searched for us.  We didn't do so well and got "bombed."  The pilot who bombed us found us flying at 25,000 feet when he spotted a tiny light which was my ship.  As it turned out somebody had walked out to an exposed area to have a cigarette and that light was enough to find us.  If you see a light on the ocean in the middle of the night you can be reasonably sure it isn't a campfire.  There were rules against smoking in an exposed area but someone, in a selfie-like form decided to ignore the rule.  In a real war that could have gotten almost 6,000 people killed.

During WWI and WWII there was the expression, "Three men on a match". My father who served in Korea taught me this as a kid. He took it very seriously. The idea was if the match was left burning long enough for three men, the enemy would have time to zero in on your position with sniper and artillery fire. Of course today, with FLIR and Night Vision systems, the enemy does not need that much time anymore. Today, they can lock in on a spark.