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Google Map To Real Piracy

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Nov 24, 2008 04:03 PM
from the not-the-pretend-kind dept.
Businesses Google The Internet News
An anonymous reader noted that you can now see a Google Map of piracy. Not the pretend kind, the real kind with boats and stuff. Considering how much time we spend talking about the other kind, I think it's worth paying attention to the real problems out there.
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Submission: Google tracking Piracy on the Seas... by Anonymous Coward
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  • From what I've been hearing, it sounds like the biggest problem in defending against the Solmalian surge in piracy is that the pirates know where the US ships are and avoid them. They've taken to attacking farther and farther out from the coast, often impacting new shipping lanes when displaced by US warships.

    Maybe I've been reading too much fiction, but am I the only one thinking: Q Ship [wikipedia.org]?

    1. Lure pirate in with tasty looking merchie.

    2. Wait until pirate is within range and intentions are clear.

    3. Throw the covers off the guns and blast them into next year.

    4. ???

    5. Profit!!!

    (Well, the merchies do anyway.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mmkkbb (816035)

      It's not just that. Trying to coordinate the numerous navies involved can't be easy. I have been reading the occasional bit of Informattion Dissemination [blogspot.com]'s coverage of the events out there. It's way too much for me to swallow on a regular basis, but it has commentary from professionals, not just journalists or cheerleaders.

    • Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Informative)

      by eldavojohn (898314) * <my/.username@@@gmail.com> on Monday November 24 2008, @04:25PM (#25877609) Homepage Journal

      Throw the covers off the guns and blast them into next year.

      Your punishment may be a bit extreme but maybe it's just because I'm the kind of guy that likes fair justice & is concerned that the rest of the world sees my country as one that blindly kills people.

      You are forgetting that these pirates are (aside from being human beings) winning people over by giving them things in a very Robin-Hood-esque type scenario--even if it's only offering the people a paying job as a pirate in an otherwise devastated and unstable economy. You would very quickly fall into disfavor with the locals ... these pirates have even alegedly defended fishing areas for locals [nytimes.com]. They claim they are more like the coast guard trying to protect the food of hungry people. I think entire cities have bought into their propaganda and are willing to harbor/help them.

      True or not, it's brazen disregard for how other people see things that causes really really bad things for America. Going in there, shooting up criminals & leaving is not going to improve anyone's image. Yes, these people are kidnappers & thieves but I don't think insta-death is a good way to deal with them.

      Not a whole lot in this world is purely black and white.

      • "Launch Marine Assault to capture positively identified pirates" works just as well. It merely lacks that nice ring "blast them into next year" has. :-)

        Your point is well taken. However, I still think Q-Ships are an answer. Q-Ships are the kind of bait that would cause pirates to identify themselves so that you can take action. Whether that be a matter of sinking them or capturing them, there's a good chance of it working. As a bonus, you'll start to give the pirates pause as they attempt to ascertain whether the ship they're about to attack is a real merchie or a Q-Ship.

        For bonus points, borrow real merchant ships but crew them with naval officers and marines. That way NATO forces can move from ship to ship, leaving the pirates to further second-guess themselves. Is this merchie a trap? No way to know short of attempting attack.

        • Why not just allow ships to arm themselves? Q-ships will just lead to "scout" pirate ships that test the waters to see if the ship is armed then still go after the regular ships.

          If that oil tanker had a few RPGs and people that knew how to use them, there wouldn't be a problem. As other people have said these are fishing boats.

          • Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Snocone (158524) on Monday November 24 2008, @05:22PM (#25878321) Homepage

            If that oil tanker had a few RPGs and people that knew how to use them, there wouldn't be a problem.

            No, RPGs aren't an appropriate defense weapon. 500m is the propulsion limit and the limit of hand held accuracy is more like 50m.

            All you need is a handful of hunting rifles of polar bear hunting capability, I suggest my preferred caliber the .300 Win Mag aka 7.62 × 67 mm. Half a dozen of those on deck and you are effectively safe from anything short of an actual warship.
             

          • Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Insightful)

            by RogerWilco (99615) on Monday November 24 2008, @06:34PM (#25879155) Homepage Journal

            The problem is, that if the ships start shooting at the pirates, the pirates start shooting at the merchant ships.

            Given that those ships might carry a cargo worth hundreds of millions, are very slow, almost impossible to miss, and can be sunk with a well placed RPG, it's not a risk most of the merchant companies want to take.

            That is the essence of the issue why these ships are not protecting themselves. The pirates would blow them up.

    • Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Interesting)

      by IronChef (164482) on Monday November 24 2008, @05:19PM (#25878283) Homepage

      I can't find the reference right now, but when I was reading about piracy last week arming the merchant ships was said to be difficult politically.

      I think it was something like this: the merchant ships have to pass through many nations' waters, and in some of those nations the arms needed to fight off pirates are illegal. So... if you have private armed guards on board, you're breaking the law at some of your ports. Therefore, being a well behaved company, you don't have guards at all.

      This is lame, even as it makes sense. How would a US port feel about a foreign ship pulling in when a dozen civilians with grenade launchers are strolling around on deck? The Coast Guard would go ape.

      Anyway, I would like to find a proper explanation for the current state of affairs.

      • Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jmorris42 (1458) * <jmorris@bea[ ]rg ['u.o' in gap]> on Monday November 24 2008, @05:35PM (#25878469) Homepage

        > How would a US port feel about a foreign ship pulling in when a dozen civilians
        > with grenade launchers are strolling around on deck? The Coast Guard would go ape.

        As an NRA member I'm not afraid of arms or people wielding them, so long as they are the right people bearing them for the right reasons and shooting them at the right (or would that be wrong?) people. So no, I would have no problem with a $150M tanker laden with $100M in crude being armed. Seems rather sane to me. If we are trusting the crew not to use the far more dangerous tanker itself as a weapon I see no reason to begrudge them a couple of rocket launchers to defend themselves from pirates. No, they can't carry them off the ship and they should be expected to have the decency to stow them away once they are safely in US waters. If I can't have a rocket launcher why should they get to have all the fun. :)

        This story just goes to show ya what pansies we have allowed ourselves to become. Can you imagine pirate infested waters under Ronald Reagan's six hundred ship navy? People might accuse America of trying to police the world, but dang it back when we really did it the world was a safer place... as it was when the British Navy ruled the seas. Pirates had short life expectancies.

      • I seriously doubt that a Q-Ship armed to the hilt and crewed by experienced naval personnel would fall into pirate hands. These guys are attacking with fishing boats for crying out loud! The problem isn't that our ships can't hold their own against the pirates. That much is stupidly simple. It's finding the pirates that's the problem. And these guys are even less sophisticated than other piracy organizations equipped with speedboats and cutters.

        I mean, take a look at these guys [timesonline.co.uk]. If someone would arm our merchies with a few mortars and sniper rifles, these pirates wouldn't be able to get their assault rifles within weapons range. But for some reason, today's governments think that armed merchies are a bad idea. So... Q-Ships. They'd kick ass. :-)

  • Not Pirates (Score:5, Funny)

    by youngerpants (255314) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:06PM (#25877363)

    I wish people would stop using the word Pirate; they're merely redistributing content.

    • Re:Not Pirates (Score:4, Funny)

      by Mantrid (250133) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:20PM (#25877539) Journal

      We should really be going after the shipyards...without them, we wouldn't have this problem!!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by megamerican (1073936)

      Historically, there were very few real pirates.

      Most were privateers, meaning they were sponsored by a nation. It wouldn't surprise me if this is the case here as well. These so-called pirates don't have a lot to gain in the long term. It'll be interesting to see what the response will be by governments in order to "fix" this problem and who really benefits.

      These stories about pirates have been very frequent in the past few weeks, magically when oil and gas are well below what most could have ever predicted.

      • Take off the tinfoil hat (Score:5, Insightful)

        by spun (1352) <loverevolutionar ... om minus painter> on Monday November 24 2008, @04:41PM (#25877833) Journal

        No, most pirates were not privateers. But most privateers were also pirates. The reason being, privateers could only get Letters of Marque and Reprisal [wikipedia.org] when their country was at war, and the letters only covered attacking enemy shipping. What did privateers do during the times their country was not at war? They turned to outright piracy.

        The idea of modern countries handing out letters of Marque is ridiculous. Implying the pirates are after oil is just dumb. Saying the pirates don't have a lot to gain in the long run is also stupid, and shows how uneducated you are on the matter. Just look at the ransoms they receive. You only have to do it once. This is not some kind of Pirates of the Caribbean secret order of pirates. This is groups of starving desperate men trying for the Big Score. They take what they can get, and hope the shipping company will pay a ransom rather than see their ship sunk. They aren't selling oil and goods on the black market.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MozeeToby (1163751)

        Have you heard anything about Somolia in the past, oh I don't know 20 years? There is no government in control of the people, not in the sense you seem to imply. There's also no organized economy or workers rights. Most likely, these pirates are average people with starving family back home, doing anything they can to put food on the table.

        Like a lot of problems around the world, the only way you are going to 'fix' the problem is to raise the standard of living so that the risks of brazenly illegal behav

  • Google identified the pirate locations based on the ships themselves! If you zoom in on one, such as Attack ID: 2008/187 You can actually see the pirate ship, and somebody walking the plank! (Just above puerto la cruz)

  • Shippers urge copyright blockade of Somali coast (Score:5, Funny)

    by mcgrew (92797) * on Monday November 24 2008, @04:10PM (#25877423) Journal

    By EILEEN NG - 42 minutes ago
    KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Shipping officials from around the world called Monday for a military blockade along Somalia's coast to intercept copyright infringer vessels heading out to sea. Yemen's government said Somali copyright infringers have seized another ship.

    Peter Swift, managing director of the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, said stronger naval action -- including aerial and aviation support -- is necessary to battle rampant piracy in the Gulf of Aden near Somalia.

    But NATO, which has four warships off the coast of Somalia, rejected a blockade.

    Some 20 tankers sail through the sea lane daily. But many tanker owners are considering a massive detour around southern Africa to avoid copyright infringers, which will delay delivery and push costs up by 30 percent, Swift said.
    The association, whose members own 2,900 tankers or 75 percent of the world's fleet, opposes attempts to arm merchant ships because it could escalate the violence and put crew members at even greater risk, he said.
    "The other option is perhaps putting a blockade around Somalia and introducing the idea of intercepting vessels leaving Somalia rather than to try to protect the whole of the Gulf of Aden," Swift said.

    Somali copyright infringers have become increasingly brazen, seizing eight vessels in the past two weeks, including a huge Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil.

    On Monday, Yemen's Interior Ministry says Somali copyright infringers have hijacked a Yemeni cargo ship in the Arabian Sea. It said communication with the vessel was lost last Tuesday after it had been out to sea for a week.

    The ship is called Adina and it was not immediately clear what cargo it was carrying. The U.S. 5th Fleet based in Bahrain could not confirm the hijacking.
    The Arabian Sea is part of the Indian Ocean and stretches between Yemen and Somalia. The Gulf of Aden links it with the Red Sea.

    A blockade along Somalia's 2,400 mile coastline would not be easy.
    "But some intervention there may be effective," Swift told reporters on the sidelines of a shipping conference in Malaysia.

    U.S. Gen. John Craddock, NATO's supreme allied commander, said Monday the alliance's mandate is solely to escort World Food Program ships to Somalia and to conduct anti-piracy patrols.

    Asked what he thought of a Russian proposal to jointly attack the copyright infringer strongholds, Craddock answered: "That's far beyond what I've been tasked to do."

    According to Lt. Nathan Christensen, 5th Fleet spokesman, more than 14 warships from Denmark, France, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, the U.S. and NATO are currently patrolling a vast international maritime corridor. They escort some merchant ships and respond to distress calls in the area.
    Christensen declined to comment on the idea of a blockade.
    But the navies say it is virtually impossible to patrol the vast sea around the gulf.
    NATO has ruled out a blockade.

    "Blocking ports is not contemplated by NATO," said NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Brussels. U.N. Security Council resolutions "do not include these kind of actions and as far as NATO is concerned, this is at the moment not on the cards," he said.

    Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Moussa said Monday Arabs should deploy their own naval forces to fight piracy in the Horn of Africa and also cooperate with foreign fleets in the area.

    Diplomats of the Arab countries on the Red Sea met in Cairo last week to coordinate efforts to combat piracy, but some of these nations have been reluctant to get involved.

    Somalia, an impoverished nation caught up in an Islamic insurgency, has had no functioning government since 1991. Before the Yemeni report of another hijacked ship, there had been 95 copyright infringer attacks so far this year in Somali waters, with 39 ships hijacked.

    There were 15 ships with nearly 300 crew still in the hands of Somali copyright infringers, who dock the

  • They've kidnapped the maps! (Score:5, Funny)

    by davidwr (791652) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:12PM (#25877445) Homepage Journal

    NEWS FLASH

    This just in...

    Somali pirates have seized control of Slashdot and are using it as their new gunship to take down web sites such as http://www.icc-ccs.org/ [icc-ccs.org] .

  • Site slashdotted, mirror here: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2008, @04:19PM (#25877531)

    Site is slashdotted, here's a mirror of the current pirate activity:

    Pirate Hotbed [google.com]

  • Convoys (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zentinal (602572) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:22PM (#25877573) Homepage
    Does anyone know why, given the huge area and the number of ships to protect, merchant ships in the area aren't being organized into convoys with military escort through those waters?

    Wouldn't that strategy work at least as well as it did in WWII? [wikipedia.org]

    I don't think the pirates have submarines or aircraft... yet.

    • Re:Convoys (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kwiqsilver (585008) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:49PM (#25877897)

      Because that would be expensive. There are too many ships going through the Red Sea or other hot spots to organize small enough convoys that don't end up leaving ships waiting for days for an escort. And imagine the traffic jams you'd see at the Suez and Panama Canals when that convoy showed up.

      If you want a military solution, a better option would be to park a carrier or two in each hot spot, and give each merchant ship contact information for the carrier(s) in an area, so they can call in a strafing run on any small, well armed boats that get too close (like pirate 911).

      A better solution still would be to remove the international legal restrictions against carrying small arms (e.g. battle rifles) and fixed armaments (e.g. fixed machine guns and light artillery) on a merchant ship. A few years ago, a Cruise Ship [wikipedia.org] used a sonic weapon to fend off a pirate attack off Somalia. Imagine if instead of a non-lethal sonic cannon, they had unleashed a few rounds from a 30mm Cannon [wikipedia.org] modified to fire at sea-based attackers. It would have stopped that attack and prevented those pirates (and that boat) from mounting any future attacks.

      • Re:Convoys (Score:4, Informative)

        by YrWrstNtmr (564987) on Monday November 24 2008, @05:04PM (#25878069)
        give each merchant ship contact information for the carrier(s) in an area, so they can call in a strafing run on any small, well armed boats that get too close (like pirate 911).

        By the time the 'small, well armed boat' is identifiably too close...it is too close for an aircraft to get there in time. Plus which, the military pilot can't just take the word of some random guy about whether to shoot some other random boat in the water.

  • speaking of piracy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jollyreaper (513215) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:27PM (#25877639)

    It looks like the jacked up idle template pirated my user page. What do we have to do to get rid of it?

  • The solution is simple (Score:5, Funny)

    by xs650 (741277) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:29PM (#25877653)
    Send the RIAA and their lawyers after the pirates. It won't stop the piracy, but it will get rid of the RIAA and a bunch of lawyers.

  • Piet Hein (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tsa (15680) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:32PM (#25877713) Homepage

    Here in NL we have a song about Piet Hein. [wikipedia.org] He brought us the Spanish silver fleet when Holland ruled the waves and was at war with the Spaniards in the 17th century. He was a national hero back then, but in fact he was just a pirate. He stole all the silver the Spaniards had stolen from the natives in South America.

  • Proof for Pastafarienism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nick Ives (317) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:40PM (#25877813)

    The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster has revealed to us that there is a link between pirates and global warming, as piracy goes down, global warming increases [venganza.org]. Surely this is evidence (not that any is needed) for this basic truth? As pirates steal oil tankers the price of oil will increase thereby limiting its consumption and decreasing the amount of global warming.

    It's plain simple logic, just like the plain, simple, wholesome taste of pasta with a tomato sauce.

  • Historical Precident (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sp3d2orbit (81173) on Monday November 24 2008, @04:58PM (#25878001)

    I'm normally pro-US hegemony and quick to defend our actions. But, I'm about to give a silver bullet to my opposition.

    I can't help but notice the parallels between America's situation and Rome during its final centuries. Rome eventually degraded as barbaric pressures from the outside world overwhelmed their ability to control them.

    Modern America seems to be collapsing under a similar weight. Terrorism and piracy are equivalent modern forms of barbarism. The fact that the US cannot control it anymore validates the position that the US military is way overstretched and that our empire is on the decline.

    Ug.

  • So... (Score:4, Funny)

    by yyr (1289270) on Monday November 24 2008, @05:00PM (#25878013)
    ...when will there be a Google map showing the locations of ninjas?

  • Robert Heinlein wrote a book where merchant ships scooting through space were armed with nuclear rockets to blow the pirates straight to hell because the government cruisers, while effective, were few and far between.

    Obviously, we don't need to go nuclear on the pirates, but some small arms would go a long way to curbing the problem. Bigger ships can get bigger guns.

    Arm each ship with some guns and grenade launchers. Scale up as appropriate for larger ships. Problem solved.

      • Hire adventurers? Put an exclamation point in front of the hiring place and gun toting wow players will naturally gravitate towards the quest giver. Set up cameras and sell footage to TV shows. Adventurers get salvage rights on the pirates taken out, everyone wins.

        Call it the Naval Interdiction Nullification Joint Assault program. Or for short, the NINJA program.

  • Reasons Piracy Continues (Score:4, Insightful)

    by linuxbert (78156) on Monday November 24 2008, @06:40PM (#25879217) Homepage Journal

    Piracy exists in Somalia because the government lacks sufficient ability and influence to stop it.
    It continues largely because the international community that has the ability to stop it, doesnt have the reason to. Modern warships can sink targets they cant visually see. The Gulf of Aden is large, but its not that large.

    Most ships, even if owned by a western company, are flagged in a Convenient state - Panama, Liberia etc. these countries love the revenue form being a flag state but have no means of protecting their flagged ships. Most ships are crewed by non western crews.. many from the Philippines, Bangladesh, etc. again countries with limited abilities to protect their nationals internationally.

    The west has many ships in the area, however they are reluctant to act for political reasons, if no nationals are involved, or its not a home flagged ship, its really not the concern of the country. The pirates get their million dollar ransom, which to a pirate is a wind fall, but to a shipping company, used to paying $60000/day fuel bills, really isnt that big a deal. Furthermore the risks to the pirates are relatively small - the French raided a la Poinete, a yacht that was taken by pirates and was crewed by french nationals, and the Indians sunk a Pirate mother ship last week. So for the pirates 2 out of over 100 incidents ended badly. To stop the pirates, the western world needs to actively seek them out, hunt them down and stop them from taking ships, as well as recapturing ships by force. When pirates begin to face the consequences - to this point there have been almost none, then they will cease their actions, because taking a ship no longer results in a quick profit for the prirates, and the risk of death goes up significantly for the actual takers of the ship.

    Incidentally, the IMO is now recommending ships hire private security to protect them in troubled waters. Blackwater international has also purchased ships. The 18th century tales of piracy make a difference between a Privateer and a pirate a privateer was a mercenary ship working for a nation, to harass enemy shipping - they could take prizes, but paid a percentage to the crown, and wouldn't attack friendly shipping. a pirate had no Letter of Marque, paid no commissions, and attacked who he wanted when he wanted...

    everything old is new again.

    One final aside, those whom complain about copyright infringement by referring to it as piracy do a great disservice to the victims of piracy, imagine having your office attacked by men armed with machine guns and RPG's and your only defense is to run, and spray the attackers with a fire hose. from the floor above..

    • Don't worry. Crimson Permanent Assurance Co. will get them.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by spun (1352)

        Technically, Wall Street is the Capo di tutti Capi directing their Uomini D'onore, Congress, on who to shake down. Leave it to a troll who's name is deliberately reminiscent of 'hairy vagina' to defend Wall Street.

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