Real-time tracking isn’t just for creepy stalkers anymore
If you’ve ever wondered just how accurate Google Maps traffic information is, wonder no more. It may just be changing the very nature of national — and international — military conflicts. In fact, Maps info is so timely that alert observers spotted Russian troop movements toward Ukraine hours before the first official announcement about the conflict hit the news.
An International Studies professor based in California used traffic data from around Belgorod, Russia, to alert his team that the Russian military was on the move, reports the Washington Post. Prof. Jeffrey Lewis studies arms control at Middlebury Institute of International Studies and has been mentoring a group of students in the analysis of images captured by Earth-facing satellites. On February 23, the Post reports he was surveying Google Maps around 3:15 a.m. Moscow Standard Time when he noticed something that didn’t make much sense at that hour: a traffic jam.
With his students, Lewis combined Maps info with radar imagery and realized the invasion was a go. He told the Post that while the public once relied on news correspondents on the ground, today you can just check Google Maps and see that people are streaming out of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. This is also a textbook example of the way tech is drawing people around the world into events in real time.
Google Maps and competing apps are revealing information based on tracking cell phone data. But each year the maps grow more sophisticated, adding more helpful bells and whistles like emergency weather and active shooter alerts. Each new feature aids researchers like Lewis in showing us how easy it can be to learn about events on the other side of the world almost immediately.
Unfortunately, knowing average people with access to publicly available tools could easily survey things like troop movements might lead to many future internet or cell service disruptions in conflict-prone regions, according to a national security expert contacted by the Post. Other than informing the public there might be danger afoot, however, it isn’t clear how far people like Lewis can go.
The military also tends to learn from mistakes and prepare solutions quickly. The next time someone spots ominous activity in a war zone on Google Maps, it might just be a form of digital camouflage to divert unwanted attention from what’s really happening on the ground.
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