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Reuters Attempts “Open Source” Analysis – Perilous Fail Ensues
The news agency Reuters/Thomson snitches on North Korean ship movements to suggest how sanctions could mess up commerce between North Korea (DPRK) and China.
China’s grip on North Korea’s economy
The Trump administration has pressured China to do more to rein in North Korea, which sends most of its exports to its giant neighbour across the Yellow Sea. We take a look at the impact of China’s recent ban on North Korean coal and other ways Pyongyang relies on China. – May 4, 2017
But the data Reuters uses is unreliable and the news agency is drawing dubious conclusions from it. Such reporting by an official news agency can easily lead to wrong assumptions in the political sphere and to unhelpful if not dangerous policies.
Reuters uses public available data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) of DPRK ships to identify their destination and load conditions, But the only "automatic" data AIS is transmitting from the ship's transponder to other ships and land stations is position, direction and speed. Even these can be spoofed or be wrong for various reasons. Other AIS data is entered manually into the AIS systems and is often false. Wikipedia notes of AIS data types:
Message 5: Static and Voyage Related Data – Gives information on a ship and its trip – One of the few messages whose data is entered by hand. This information includes static data such as a ship's length, width, draught, as well as the ship's intended destination
Using open source data Reuters looks at ships involved in coal exports from the DPRK to China using AIS derived data.
bigger
Of the North Korean vessel Hae Bang San it writes:
This vessel departed two Chinese coal handling ports in late April. Ship tracking data showed the bulk carrier was sitting almost one meter lower in the water than its maximum draft of 4.15 meters, indicating it was carrying a heavy load bound for North Korea.
The conclusion from that data is that the ship probably did not unload in China but may have loaded up. Such a conclusion is likely wrong because:
- the draft of a ship is manually entered into AIS for each voyage and is often mistyped
- the "maximum draft" of a ship is not registered reliable
- a ship's draft does not say anything about its loading status.
Here for example is the AIS data of the Belgium river barge Jaguar on a German inland waterway. If you believe its AIS the barge is 76 meter wide ("Breite") and has a current draft ("Tiefgang") of 10 meter. The waterway is less than 2 meter deep.
The German shipping message board the example is taken from has 28 pages of such "Funny AIS Entries". According to AIS data sailing ships of over 500 meter length are quite common. But a U.S. Homeland Security study found (pdf) that 45% of its 17,000 observed vessels had inconsistencies in their AIS data. 211 of them had "incorrect draft where it is deeper than overall length or beam." Such AIS data is mere garbage.
The Korean vessel Hae Bang San (IMO: 8518962) is listed at fleetmon.com as container vessel with a maximum draft of 5.2 meter. The same ship/IMO is listed as general cargo vessel with a maximum 4.1 meter draft by vesselfinder.com. Marinetraffic.com gives 5 meter draft but no maximum. The sites show different deadweights for the same ship. Reuters picks some of these public data items, says the vessel is a "bulk carrier" and suggests the ship is overloaded based on data that is inevitably inconsistent. Even if the draft data in the AIS messages were correct the ship might have unloaded in China and taken on ballast water to stabilize itself for the home voyage. Draft data, even correct ones, says little about the actual loading status.
We now see more and more of such amateurish and often false "open source" analysis. The unemployed British office administrator Eliot Higgins turned into a hailed "Nonresident Senior Fellow, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Future Europe Initiative of the Atlantic Council". He did so by sitting on his coach musing and blogging about photos of conflict damages found on the Internet. He is no expert in anything. But somehow he always finds a NATO-friendly and anti-Russian interpretation of the incidents he investigates. Higgins has been proven wrong again and again. Amnesty International (which also cheerleads for NATO) uses mere hearsay of two partisan "witnesses" and misinterpreted satellite pictures to claim mass executions in Syria. During the Georgia war in 2008 Human Rights Watch was caught falsely blaming Russia for cluster bombs used by the Georgian side. The false claim was based on faulty interpretation of open source pictures. Recently Human Rights Watch alleges (pdf) that Russian KhAB-250 ammunition was used in the Khan Sheikhun "Sarin" incident in Syria. The claim is based on amateurish interpretation of public pictures. The alleged ammunition type was never exported from the USSR, never able to contain a sarin load and dismantled in the 1960s.
Open source data is unreliable. It must always be crosschecked and crosschecked again. Pictures and videos are prone to misinterpretation. Humans often see in them what they want to see – not what the pictures really show. Expertise of the domain in question must be consulted before drawing conclusions.
The Reuters report on the North Korea-China coal shipping is likely wrong because the open source data it uses is inconsistent and in general not reliable. Additionally no conclusion at all can be drawn from even a correct AIS "draft" entry. Reuters also uses satellite pictures that show what one wants to see. Are those "coal heaps" Reuters detects and marks in satellite pictures of Chinese harbors really of coal? It is possible but how the hell would it know?
Experts of a field may be able to find truth in open source data. Amateur interpretation of such data by NGOs or none-expert journalists will often be wrong. It is dangerous to report such interpretations in absolute terms and without upfront explicit caveats. Policy decisions based on such propagandistic reports will likely be the wrong ones but are inherently dangerous.
@ Posted by: harrylaw | May 5, 2017 12:33:39 PM | 11
Further, and to complement … the THAAD deployment is a fraud re the claimed aim of defending SK from NK. To do so requires deployment of a minimum of two(2) dispersed THAAD complexes, not one(1), even under the most wildly optimistic scenario.
In any case, even with one or more complexes, its far more probable strategic objective & true operational purpose is for its radars to scan deep into China to collect data to pass along to the Stateside ABM defenses in real-time at time-of-launch within China. This enables a potential Strategic nuclear first strike capability on China by diminishing any retaliatory strikes potential effectiveness, Chinese ICBMs.
Regardless, no ABM system will protect any US/SK forces, nor Seoul, within 30-60Kms Sth of the DMZ from literally thousands of long range artillery, unguided rocket launchers & a variety of literally 1000+ Scud SRBMs & other MRBMs, fired en masse & in salvo, respectively. In the case of arty/rockets, whether dumb and obsolete or not, the rounds will be on target in less than 60 seconds of a fire order. Simultaneous salvo launches of missiles will overwhelm any likely defense and is dramatically cheaper to increase in qty than expand upon cost prohibitive multi-layered ABM defenses. And nothing can possibly neutralize even just the ‘obsolete’ arty/rockets alone, other than simultaneous detonation of a series of tactical nukes in a pre-emptive strike line-abreast along the Nth side of the DMZ from coast to coast, and even then given the NK redoubts/emplacements built and expanded upon to resist/defeat nuclear weapons starting in the ’60’s ?
Detailed analysis:
THAAD: What It Can and Can’t Do (38thNorth.org)(PDF)
By Michael Elleman and Michael J. Zagurek, Jr. March 10, 2016
All told, this preliminary analysis of THAAD capabilities indicates that two(+) THAAD batteries are required to defend all of South Korea…
Layered Defenses and Interceptor Efficiency
While two THAAD batteries can be deployed in such a way to cover all of South Korea, an additional critical question is how effective will the system be in destroying incoming missiles. Because THAAD intercepts targets at altitudes above 50 km and is capable of protecting large areas, it ideally complements the lower-tier PAC-3, which protects point targets. In essence, intercepting targets at multiple levels, or tiers, offers more opportunities to succeed and improves intercept efficiency, which is the calculated number of interceptors needed to achieve a specified measure of protection. Interceptor efficiency is governed primarily by the probability an individual interceptor will collide with and destroy a missile or warhead. It is often referred to as the “single-shot probability of kill,” or SSPk. Historically, missile-defense designers at the US Missile Defense Agency have sought to achieve SSPk values of between 0.8 and 0.9, which means a single interceptor should succeed 80 to 90 percent of the time. Recent development and validation testing of THAAD indicate a kill probability of 0.8 is feasible, though design goals and test results may not be replicated under wartime conditions.
…
Some Significant Caveats
While THAAD can provide an important additional capability to protect for South Korea, a critical question is whether Pyongyang’s large missile inventory will afford it opportunities to overwhelm the postulated one-to-two THAAD battery architecture. A single THAAD battery holds a limited number of ready-to-launch interceptors, likely ranging from 48 to 96. Spare interceptors can be stockpiled, though at great expense. This implies that one THAAD battery can defend against 20 and 50 attacking missiles if two interceptors are assigned to each incoming
warhead. If additional interceptors are available, the launch canisters can be reloaded within an hour or so. However, there is no assurance that North Korea would pause firing its missiles to allow THAAD to reload. And given that North Korea has hundreds of Hwasong and Nodong missiles, one can easily recognize how large the defenses would have to be if the mission was to attempt intercepts on all incoming missiles over an extended time. Further, the AN/TPY-2 fire-control radar is limited in terms of the number of objects it can track while also providing updated guidance information to the interceptors in flight. Once again, if North Korea launches more than roughly 20 missiles simultaneously, this would likely saturate the radar, as it would necessarily be tracking 60 objects at once. The precise limitations are classified, though it is clear that if the objective is to blunt large salvos from North Korea, at least two or more THAAD batteries would be required.
Lastly, to protect against missile attacks launched from North Korean territory, all of the PAC-3 and THAAD radars would necessarily be pointed north. If North Korea successfully develops and deploys a submarine-launch ballistic missile, as it has been attempting over the past year or two, the missile defenses discussed above would be ineffective against the missiles fired from the waters east, west and south of the lower Korean peninsula.
Comment: Salvos of 20-50+ missiles from an arsenal of 1000+ will overwhelm any possible ABM defense. Especially if the salvos are fired serially within the space of less than an hour between launches, even under the most ideal and unrealistic, conditions & scenario, as proposed.
The claimed success rate even with two THAAD batteries and multilayered PAC-3 is unrealistic under ‘wartime conditions’. Even so, a 90% interception rate means 5 of a 50 missile salvo get thru even under ideal conditions (one salvo only of <=50), under the scenario. This does not consider where the interceptors & missiles then land 'as debris' (warhead + kinetic energy). In reality an interception rate is IMHO far more likely to be somewhere between ~8-90%(probability is towards the lower %), even against just obsolete relatively primitive Scuds only, given past actual performance of Patriot ABM under actual, 'wartime conditions'.
An obsolete Scud launcher usually has 2-3 reloads available, which if pre-fueled ready-to-fire (tho dangerous), can be fired serially in very short order ....
KSA claims not even one Yemeni/Houthi missile has successfully struck a Saudi target, or caused any damage or casualties due to PAC-3 batteries ... separately they decry and condemn the damage and casualties caused by said missiles ... take your pick ... 😉
Successful interception rate against Iraqi Scuds was only ~8% against Kuwaiti/Saudi/Israeli targets, given multi-layered Patriot batteries, dedicated assigned geostationary multi-satellite surveillance, total air supremacy and constant rotating 24hrs/day in theater surveillance overflights as well as multiple CAP strike aircraft flights loitering over Iraq with a reaction time to any possible target of <15Mins ... just sayin'
@ Ghostship
Indeed ... but we should all just nod, smile and trust the likes of Bellingcrap, according to the corporate-controlled MSM, et al.
Posted by: Outraged | May 5 2017 19:08 utc | 20
@ Posted by: harrylaw | May 5, 2017 3:48:02 PM | 21
To follow-up, the situ with MacArthurs intended destruction of significant Chinese industrial infrastructure and creation of an annihilating ‘moat’ of atomic bombs is somewhat different to tactical nukes re the NK redoubts/emplacements just Nth of the DMZ (nuclear hardened from the ’60’s).
By way of brief explanation, some hard operational considerations, actual on the ground realities, relevant timeframes, the MSM does not report … why there is no practicable civil defense response (other than living in a bunker 24/7) and why the DMZ has not gone HOT for ~67 years now …
…North Korea has about 5,000 long-range artillery tubes within range of Seoul, and the total rate of fire of these artillery pieces would be between 2,000 and 4,000 rounds per minute. The DPRK’s two hundred 240mm MRLs fire either 12 or 22 rounds, providing a maximum single salvo of no more than 4,400 rounds… These launchers can fire a first strike of many thousands of missiles and return in a few minutes to protected caves or to alternate firing positions. The Arty/MRLs move out from underground facilities (UGFs), fire from preplanned firing positions, and return to the UGFs. Examination of the available data on the UGF sites suggests that a number of possible “exit and return” methods for the MRLs may be possible. In this case, the launchers move directly from the firing points to the UGFs. This procedure makes it difficult to target the launchers, because once they fire it only takes 75 seconds to return to their UGFs…
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) – The Military Balance in Korea & Northeast Asia (PDF)
– Author – Anthony H. Cordesman, with the assistance of Charles Ayers, Jan 31 2017 Edition
Comment: The first rounds from those obsolete long-range artillery pieces & MRLs initial salvos will strike their targets <=~60km Sth of the DMZ, US/SK military facilities/assets/formations, and/or targets such as Seoul, in ~45-60 seconds. Expend all rockets on MRLs, fire 1 possibly 2 rounds per 5,000 Arty tubes, and then withdraw into the UGFs. All up ~5Min30Secs for each asset to deploy from, fire, & withdraw back into each UGF. Rinse & repeat. This would be occurring in a staggered, rolling 'wave' like basis all along the line, from coast to coast.
Also, those obsolete Scuds have a maximum flight time to target of ~7Mins from launch.
Now, it takes about ~45-60 seconds for an on station surveillance satellite to detect and verify the first Missile launch or opening Arty/MRL salvo. Takes ~1-2Mins to determine each Scuds probable trajectory, and hence general locale/region of the intended target. The arty/MRL rounds are a whole 'nother matter, but they strike within less than a minute, so you know for sure soon enough. Estimate best case ~3-5Mins as a 'Flash' message to any ABM batteries and the intended targets. Then there is 'reaction time', if on high alert, ~1Min+. So ~6-9Mins, absolute best case advance warning ... the Scuds have likely already struck or hopefully attempted to be independently detected/targeted/engaged by ABM complexes.
Therefore obsolete rounds/rockets are already falling in salvos before any possible advance warning, alert or evacuation possibly being initiated. Same for Scuds. In the case of the Arty/MRLs they've already temporarily withdrawn back into the UGFs by then. US/SK conventional counter-battery fire by arty/MRLs will be largely ineffective. Even in a total air supremacy 'best case' situ with CAP strike aircraft flights loitering on station above the actual NK positions ... by the time the aircraft has setup a run on a target, it has already withdrawn back into the UGF, whilst another nearby has deployed and fired another salvo. Whack-a-mole, 5,000+ of 'em, all the while rounds/rockets keep going down range, along the line.
The scale of destruction & loss of life Sth of the DMZ would be, horrendous.
Hence, the only likely practical 'military' solution would be a string of tactical nukes from coast-to-coast, and even that could not be 100% effective. Pre-emptive or retaliatory. That then results in immediate retaliatory escalation, see MAD.
US/SK have no good 'military' options ...
Posted by: Outraged | May 6 2017 0:11 utc | 29
I wrote this to part comment for Tim Hayward’s blog. It’s about the HRW reporl…
Part I.
I’ve read the full HRW ‘Death by Chemicals’ report (the one that George Monbiot sees a s slam-dunker), a couple of times now – and it’s pretty clear that it suffers from all of the issues that have been raised with the reporting of both MSF and Amnesty (see Tim Haywards excellent ‘How we were misled on Syria blogs at https://timhayward.wordpress.com): No site visits were conducted – just a series of interviews conducted either in Turkey, over the phone or, and this was a new one for me, text message. All very dubious, all very Al Quds.
However, one thing that does seriously concern, but not surprise, me is that there appears to be something of a slight-of-hand going on with the way HRW is presenting their non-interview based evidence.
This involves the rather coy way in which they described what steps they took to externally validate the content of the videos and pictures. I was particularly interested in this as there have been a number of serious issues raised about the absence of certain symptoms in the images of the victims (see Denis O’Brien’s work at logophere.com).
Here’s how HRW introduce the matter:
“To corroborate information from witnesses, Human Rights Watch reviewed photos and videos posted online and shared directly by witnesses, in particular to see whether clinical signs and symptoms were consistent with witness statements and exposure to chemicals. Keith Ward, an independent expert on the detection and effects of chemical warfare agents, reviewed and assess information about clinical signs and symptoms witness statements, videos, and photos.” (p.10)
And that’s it. At least on the website version (and at least as far as I can see) there then follows almost nothing at all of the results of any of Dr. Ward’s assessments – positive or negative in the HRW report. There are a couple of general remarks about symptoms (of pupil dilation for instance), none of which are attributed to Dr. Ward, but there is nothing at all comprehensive, systematic or definite regarding Dr Ward’s judgement as a whole. I may be missing something from the Appendices, but this surely must ask serious questions of the intention of the authors – they want us to believe that the videos have been expertly corroborated, but offer us no evidence at all that they have been.
There were also no obvious links to any of the credentials of the ‘independent’ Keith Ward. A quick google did show that a Keith Ward has worked with HRW before in a report in Sudan. I think it is almost certain that the Keith Ward in question is one who from 2005 to 2010 was the Chief of the R&D Section of the Chemical and Biological Division within the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate – and whose linkin profile states that his current position is as a ‘Science Advisor’ in Washington for the ‘Federal Government’.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-ward-9a60b716
Of course, I’ve no reason whatsoever to doubt Dr. Ward’s integrity, but to describe someone employed by the US government as ‘independent’ is something of a stretch.
Part II.
I managed to download the pdf version of the HRW report yesterday as well as the appendices and the more I read them, the more it becomes clear what slippery and cynical documents they are.
The, completely un-referenced, description of the effects of sarin in the Appendix are written in such a way as to promote those medical effects that were reported by their interviewees and the ‘early reports’ HRW deign to include, but they appear to gloss-over or completely ignore, those that were not (compare them to the work of Denis O’Brien at http://www.logophere.com).
Even in this limited context, there is no case-by-case assessment of the reported symptoms presented – nothing at all to suggest the outcome of the analysis which was stated to have occurred in their Methodology.
FWIW, I can now confidently state that HRW have offered NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that they have corroborated the symptoms exhibited by the victims in any of the videos and images they mention as being due to sarin exposure.
So I thought I’d have a look at their evidence from the bomb fragments, this must have been weighty given than in their Methodology they state:
:
“Human Rights Watch also obtained photos and videos of remnants of the munitions used in the attacks. Specialists in weapons identification and chemical weapons inside and outside the organization analysed the remnants. “ (p.10)
They first try to let it slip by that they haven’t actually got any photographic evidence for 3 of the 4 warplane-dropped ‘attacks’, but then, guess what? In the context of the KS incident, HRW present NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER of the outcomes of these expert analyses. Absolutely BUGGER ALL.
The evidence that they do bother to provide from images of bomb fragments is limited to a couple of tweets that identify a similarity with some Russian bombs (which they then cynically proceed to shoehorn in on this basis alone) and, surprise, surprise, a couple of links to Bellingcat.
Of the KS incident in general they state “Human Rights Watch has reviewed dozens of photos and videos of the crater at Impact Site 1 posted online and provided directly to Human Rights Watch by people who took them.” (p28), but their references point only to those already available – either via social media from the ‘first responders’ or (you’ve guess it) Bellingcat. They make similar claims to have inspected other material elsewhere in the report – and in some cases have included references to videos or audio ‘held by Human Rights Watch’ – they do not, however, provide ANY links to these or any comment on their expert analyses (so they could, you know, be bullshit)..
[If you get the chance, I seriously recommend you read the introduction to the section “III. Warplane-Delivered Munitions’ – it’s a masterpiece of whatever the name is of the rhetorical device when arguments are made for two tenuous propositions – in this case that bombs were dropped from planes and that the bombs contained sarin – by jumbling them both together in such a way as to magically prove both. I thought it might be ‘begging the question’, but isn’t that a more appropriate term for calling all of these alleged incidents ‘attacks’? HRW seem happy to do so throughout].
As for the list of the victims, here’s how they refer to them in the main body of the text: “Human Rights Watch
has identified 159 people who reportedly died in the four attacks from chemical
exposure. Hundreds were injured.” (p.20).
And from the Appendix :”The fatality list was compiled by an activist from the Syrian Revolution Coordination Committee and many names were
corroborated by local residents who spoke to Human Rights Watch.”
So nothing other than interviews then – no matching of any of them with the autopsies for instance.
Elsewhere the bullshit continues…
On numerous occasions they report the UN OPCW report that concluded Syrian Government use of chlorine as corroborating their findings, but fail to mention that, despite the headlines, that report found a significant amount of evidence of CW attacks being staged by opposition forces.
They repeatedly state that they (HRW) concluded that the Syrian Government were responsible for the 2013 Ghota massacre, but despite mentioning the UN report, fail to mention that the OPCW did not come to that conclusion – or that much of the evidence HRW themselves provided has since been shown to be codswallop.
HRW also state that just 2 alternative theories for KS have been presented – that a Syrian/Russian bomb hit an ammunition depot releasing the gas, or that armed groups detonated a chemical munition on the ground. HRW say that they have not found any evidence for these – but they have offered no evidence that they actually considered or investigated the latter option.
They also fail to consider a fourth option – that hostages and/or locals were gassed either on site or nearby and moved there to be filmed – and the number of victims may not have been as numerous as reported by the ‘Civil Response’ or local groups (names provided or not). This alternative has been posited for the 2013 Ghouta massacre (where there is still no evidence of the bodies of the hundreds reported killed) and has been for the KS incident too – it is highly unlikely that HRW were not aware of it.
So what exactly is left of the HRW report? It’s the selective and mostly uncorroborated accounts of a number of opposition activists, ‘local journalists’, ‘first responders’ and a smattering of locals all arranged by, or piped through, the usual, hugely partisan sources. It’s numerous links to Bellingcat as honest purveyors of truth. It’s suggested, but never actually provided, expert assessment. It’s a series of sly linguistic tricks meant to obscure the limited nature of the evidence upon which it stands.
It is, as Tim Hayward would put it, bullshit.
Posted by: Adrian D. | May 6 2017 8:58 utc | 36
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