High Seas Deception: How Shady Ships Use GPS to Evade International Law
eSysman SuperYachts
Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg’s $120 million yacht was seized in April.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BHV3x-rxi
Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg the owner of $120 million yacht Tango was boarded by US gov’t officials and seized in April.
Feds raid Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg’s NYC apartment on Thursday and his Hamptons mansion.
FBI officials and Homeland Security Investigation agents were seen carrying boxes out of Vekselberg’s 515 Park Ave. apartment building and his Southampton mansion at 19 Duck Pond Lane, according to NBC New York, which first reported the searches. A similar search occurred in Fisher Island, a stone’s thrown from Miami Beach, where dozens of agents from the FBI and other federal agencies could be seen on properties linked to Vekselberg and his associates.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/viktor-vekselberg-russia-billionaire-oligarch-fbi-search-new-york-florida-properties/
2 Abramovich Yachts, and tracks them to their ‘hidden’ location!
Straw Buyer for Auctioned Russian Yacht
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC6OJEv5-0s
High Seas Deception: How Shady Ships Use GPS to Evade International Law
A technology enabling the transmission of fake locations to carry out murky or even illegal business operations could have profound implications for the enforcement of international law.
By Anatoly Kurmanaev Sep 3 2022
The digital mirage — enabled by a spreading technology — could transform how goods are moved around the world, with profound implications for the enforcement of international law, organized crime and global trade.
Tampering this way with satellite location trackers carried by large ships is illegal under international law, and until recently, most fleets are believed to have largely followed the rules.
Under a United Nations maritime resolution signed by nearly 200 nations in 2015, all large ships must carry and operate satellite transponders, known as automatic identification systems, or AIS, which transmit a ship’s identification and navigational positional data. The resolution’s signatories, which include practically all seafaring nations, are obligated under the U.N. rules to enforce these guidelines within their jurisdictions.
The spread of AIS manipulation shows how easy it has become to subvert its underlying technology — the Global Positioning System, or GPS — which is used in everything from cellphones to power grids, said Dana Goward, a former senior U.S. Coast Guard official and the president of Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a Virginia-based GPS policy group.
“This shows just how vulnerable the system is,” he said.
Mr. Goward said that until now, all major global economy players had a stake in upholding an order built on satellite navigation systems.
But rising tensions between the West, Russia and China could be changing that. “We could be moving toward a point of inflection,” Mr. Goward said.
Analysts and Western security officials say the U.S. and European Union sanctions on Russian energy imports as a result of the war in Ukraine could drive Russia’s trade underground in coming months, obscuring shipments of even permitted goods in and out of the country. A large shadow economy risks escalating maritime deception and interference to unprecedented levels.
U.S. intelligence officials confirmed that the spread of AIS manipulation is a growing national security problem, and a common technique among sanctioned countries. But China has also emerged in recent years as a source of some of the most sophisticated examples of AIS manipulation, officials said, and the country goes to great lengths to conceal the illegal activities of its large fishing industry.
Windward is one of the main companies that provide shipping industry data to international organizations, governments and financial institutions — including the United Nations, U.S. government agencies and banks like HSBC, Société Générale and Danske Bank. At least one client, the U.N. Security Council body that monitors North Korea’s sanctions compliance, has used Windward’s data to identify ships that breach international laws.
The Israeli company’s research offers a glimpse into the inner workings of the usually opaque and loosely regulated shipping industry.
Dror Salzman, Windward’s product manager, first spotted a civilian ship transmitting a fake voyage early last year, in Venezuela. A tanker called Berlina had been transmitting a strange drifting pattern for several weeks just outside the South American country’s waters.
The technology to fake satellite signals, either from the ship itself or from a remote location, has existed for decades, but was previously confined to military use, according to Windward. In the past two years, however, military grade AIS transponders, or at least the software that replicates its effects, appear to have become available for sale on the black market, spreading rapidly among dealers of sanctioned and illicit goods.
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