You can see where a person who lives on a compound runs down a street to exercise. "This is a clear security threat," he said. Concentrations of light inside a base may indicate where concentrations of troops live, eat or work, suggesting possible targets for enemies who wished to target the base.Īt a site in northern Syria, where analysts have suspected the US military is building a base, the map shows a small blob of activity accompanied by an intense line along the nearby dam, suggesting the personnel at the site jog regularly along the dam, Schneider said. The map of Afghanistan appears as a spiderweb of lines connecting bases, showing supply routes, as does north-east Syria, where the US maintains a network of mostly unpublicised bases. Lines of activity extending out of bases and back may indicate the routes of patrols. The Pentagon has publicly acknowledged that US special operations troops maintain a small outpost at Tanf in the Syrian desert near the Iraqi border, which shows up on the map as a neatly illuminated oblong, probably because US soldiers wearing Fitbits or similar devices either jog or patrol around the perimeter.īut the data also offers a mine of information to anyone who wanted to attack or ambush US troops in or around the bases, including patterns of activity inside the bases, said Schneider.
The location of most of the sites is already public knowledge - such as the vast Kandahar air base in Afghanistan. But the Pentagon has encouraged the use of Fitbits among military personnel and, in 2013, distributed 2500 of them as part of a pilot program to battle obesity. The US military did not respond to a question about what the regulations are regarding the use of fitness tracking apps. Zooming in on those brings into focus the locations and outlines of known US military bases, as well as of other unknown and potentially sensitive sites - presumably because US soldiers and other personnel are using fitness trackers as they move around.Īir Force Colonel John Thomas, a spokesman for US Central Command, said on Sunday the US military was looking into the implications of the map. Credit:Kate Geraghtyīut in war zones and deserts such as Iraq and Syria, the heat map becomes almost entirely dark - except for a few scattered pinpricks of activity. Most parts of the United States and Europe, where millions of people use some form of fitness tracker, show up on the map as a blaze of light, because there is so much activity.Ī US platoon sergeant leads his men and women in a run along one of the perimeter fences for their daily physical training in the early hours of the morning in Qatar in a file picture. The map is not live - rather it shows a pattern of accumulated activity between 2015 and September last year.
Strava says it has 27 million users around the world, including people who own widely available fitness devices such as Fitbit, Jawbone and Vitofit, as well as people who subscribe directly to its mobile phone application.
The Global Heat Map, published by the GPS tracking company Strava, uses satellite information to map the location and movements of subscribers to the company's fitness service over a two-year period by illuminating areas of activity. Beirut: An interactive map posted on the internet that shows the whereabouts of people who use fitness devices such as Fitbit also reveals highly sensitive information about the location and activities of soldiers at US military bases, in what appears to be a major security oversight.
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