WELCOME

The memo does not specify that there are any exceptions

Nov. 8, 2017 by James Ashley

The memo does not specify that there are any exceptions to the rules. In a May 3, 2015, letter to the Defense Department, the Joint Staff Command issued a memo that explicitly calls for its military commanders to "turn off their wearable devices." That document, from which this story has been extracted, was written by the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division and was obtained by The Intercept under the Freedom of Information Act under a Freedom of Information Act request. It describes how U.S. Army Intelligence and National Security analysts have recently been conducting "the largest ever analysis of the military's geospatial tracking capabilities, including the use of military geospatial intelligence to track operational locations of individuals and vehicles." The memo also says that "it will be important to ensure that the Army will be using GPS as widely available to all combatant commands and that the use of the system will be a limited activity for the remainder of the war effort."

The military is not the only one that has been instructing military troops to turn off GPS tracking devices. The Washington Post's Ben Wittes had this to say about the latest developments:

"This is one of the most disturbing developments in months. The war in Iraq is just not over yet," said Col. John Nesbitt, a former Air Force officer who leads the unit at Fort Leavenworth. "There's no place for such technology in our military. This is an issue that has been going on for almost 50 years. It can't be done. It's time to end it."

The Pentagon has now made it official. Eight months after a researcher discovered that the "heatmap" feature of the Strava fitness tracking community was revealing the location of US military facilities in Syria and other conflict zones as well as some troop movements, the Department of Defense has instructed troops headed to potentially hostile territory to turn off the Global Positioning System features of their fitness tracking gadgets and mobile applications.

The memo states that “These geolocation capabilities can expose personal information, locations, routines, and numbers of DOD personnel, and potentially create unintended security consequences and increased risk to the joint force and mission." But Defense Department leadership stopped short of instructing troops to leave their wearable devices at home. Instead, the memo instructs that the devices' geolocation capabilities must be turned off in sensitive or dangerous operating areas where the exposure of location data could cause a "significant risk" to members of the military.

The memo does not specify that there are any exceptions to