Via Strava: Bodyguards make the whereabouts of heads of state public
It has been known for years that fitness tracker maps make sensitive data public. This also affects heads of state such as Joe Biden, writes Le Monde.
US Vice President Kamala Harris with bodyguards
(Image: The White House)
Bodyguards and employees of secret services responsible for protecting heads of state like to share their fitness activities via Strava and thus reveal their whereabouts. The French newspaper Le Monde has discovered this and points out that the underlying problem was identified six years ago but has still not been fully resolved. The potential security risk has been confirmed for US President Joe Biden, his Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Jill Biden and Melania Trump were also affected.
View the movements of the heads of state
According to Le Monde, it has identified 26 employees of the US Secret Service, 12 of the French Groupe de sécurité de la présidence de la République and six of the Russian president's FSO security service who publicly share their fitness activities on Strava. This makes it possible to track where they and their heads of state are. In Macron's case, a weekend trip that had not been made public could be identified in this way. In addition, the bodyguards would unintentionally reveal their places of residence and private habits in this way, making them potentially vulnerable to blackmail attempts.
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When confronted with the potentially dangerous data that is made accessible in this way, both the authorities in the USA and those in France have played coy. Authorities are informed about the whereabouts of Macron & Co. and sufficient security is always in place. The risk "is non-existent", Macron's office is quoted as saying. The Secret Service also believes that whereabouts are regularly made public and that there is no impact on security. Nevertheless, staff should be informed about the potential source of danger. However, Le Monde sees a risk, for example if the bodyguard travels to secret locations in advance and then reveals them via Strava.
The revelation, which Le Monde is now making public under the title StravaLeaks, recalls similar ones from previous years. They began in 2018, when it was discovered that sporting soldiers were actually disclosing confidential data about themselves, their comrades and their armies via activity trackers. A Strava "global heat map" visualizing more than one billion activities also contained data from Western soldiers in Afghanistan, for example. This made it possible to identify previously unknown outposts. Four years later, Strava was still disclosing sensitive information about military personnel and intelligence services.
(mho)
