When Jogging Reveals Secret US Army Bases

Nowadays it's almost impossible to remain invisible and anonymous in the globally connected world we live in—no matter whether you are a regular citizen or a US soldier posted in a secret military operation.

An interactive heatmap published by the tracking company Strava highlighting the athletic activity of its users, as well as those of fitness devices Fitbit and Jawbone, has revealed sensitive US information from war zones like Irak or Syria.

How could that even happen?

Not a lot of people use fitness apps in remote areas, especially in such countries. Except, well, American soldiers and other military personnel. Furthermore, the use of Fitbit was encouraged by the Pentagon in order to fight obesity among its employees.

The publication of the map by no means had this intention. Actually, it has been out there since November 2017, and no one found anything strange to it until a 20-year old Australian college student had a look at it and scrolled over Syria.

Now the US authorities are revising their privacy guidelines, as the official statement quoted by the Washington Post reads:

“The [US-led] Coalition [against the Islamic State] is in the process of implementing refined guidance on privacy settings for wireless technologies and applications, and such technologies are forbidden at certain Coalition sites and during certain activities.”

The map is now being closely checked in order to find more possible traces of fitness activities in other troubled parts of the world. Some journalists had already pointed out, for example, Somalia and the Sahel region of Africa.

Despite many of the locations being public knowledge, the heatmap also shows activity where US troops were only rumoured to be. This unlikely exposé not only reveals sensitive intelligence information with unknown consequences, but also reminds us how controlled and traceable we are all the time.