like police radio scanners picking up maritime
movements. Last year, two journalists from the
Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation managed
to register online a fake base station near Somalia
and insert the false coordinates of a real vessel.
Seconds later, the falsified location popped up on
MarineTraffic.com.
“To minimize errors and always ensure data
integrity, MarineTraffic has introduced a
series of key actions in the last few months
as we strive to keep securing incoming data
further,” MarineTraffic’s Anastassis Touros said
in a statement. Steps include blocking specific
stations and IP addressees that consistently
transmit false data.
Despite such quality control efforts, the sheer
volume of data has cut into the utility of such
open-source platforms, two U.S. intelligence
officers told The Associated Press. The officials
spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss
what they described as the latest — and most
extreme — tactic in the cat and mouse game
between authorities and bad actors.
Another blind spot: China. The recent
implementation of a harsh data privacy law has
cut by nearly half the amount of terrestrial data
on maritime activity in Chinese waters, making
it harder to track everything from activity at
busy ports key to global supply chains to the
movements of the world’s largest distant water
fishing fleet.
Researchers from Global Fishing Watch, which
uses satellite data and machine learning to
monitor activity at sea, have made similar
findings as Windward. It has identified 30 vessels
whose locations, as reported on ship-tracking