Very bizarre phe­nom­e­non with ten­drils every­where... When I first start­ed hear­ing “Pokemon=INqtel”, I was skep­ti­cal because “what more can the feds and mega­corps get out of peo­ple’s phones, what more do they want?” Well, this is a nice expla­na­tion as to why this is so use­ful to intel. Yes, it is Deb­ka, so caveats apply, but there is one pas­sage that explains it in plain lan­guage that most Poke­mon sto­ries don’t use.

http://www.debka.com/article/25562/Pokemon-Go-%E2%80%93-super-spy-potential-terror-tool

“It was devel­oped by the San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia-based Nan­tic which was found­ed in 2010 as a Google start­up by the per­son who estab­lished the map­ping firm Key­hole.
Key­hole, which was set up in 2001, was fund­ed by ven­ture cap­i­tal firm In-Q-Tel that was con­trolled by the US Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency and acquired sev­er­al years lat­er by Google.
The link­age of these com­pa­nies to each oth­er, to Google and to the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence agency, leaves lit­tle doubt about the real pur­pose of the game and how the vast amounts of col­lect­ed data may be used – pri­mar­i­ly as a quin­tes­sen­tial oper­a­tional spy tool.
Con­trollers of the game’s data col­lec­tion net­work are also pro­vid­ed with GPS to pin­point the exact loca­tion of mil­lions of users at any giv­en time togeth­er with access to their video cam­eras.
Thus, users of the app will be unknow­ing­ly engag­ing in intel­li­gence gath­er­ing with the help of pho­tog­ra­phy from every angle of near­ly every loca­tion on earth in the course of chas­ing the poke­mons that were released as their prey.
At least one of the fea­tures of the game was appar­ent­ly cre­at­ed under the direc­tion of an intel­li­gence ser­vice.
Niantic has giv­en var­i­ous com­pa­nies per­mis­sion to pub­li­cize the pres­ence of poke­mons around shop­ping cen­ters, restau­rants, muse­ums and oth­er sites. It then becomes a sim­ple mat­ter to spread the word on social net­works that a rare breed of poke­mons has appeared on the wall of a nuclear pow­er plant in a tar­get­ed city. Hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of addicts would head for the new loca­tion, click­ing their video cam­eras and GPS sys­tems as they go. This data would be beamed instant­ly to the mon­i­tors of the game’s clan­des­tine con­trollers.
Nin­ten­do Go and its poten­tial for lur­ing play­ers to high-secu­ri­ty and off-lim­its mil­i­tary facil­i­ties also makes it a major haz­ard in the hands of crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions and ter­ror­ists.
A sit­u­a­tion in which large num­bers of peo­ple inno­cent­ly search­ing for poke­mons with their eyes glued to their smart­phones are led into a trap by ter­ror­ists can no longer be dis­missed as a fan­tas­tic sce­nario. ”

I had also won­dered what intel would get out of Google Earth. You don’t need to make a pub­licly avail­able satel­lite view of Earth to be able to view things from space. Poke­mon Go helped me under­stand Google Earth, which came from the same folks. It’s the pic­tures that users can attach to the Google Earth inter­face! Crowd-sourced intel­li­gence.

For a more main­stream view than Deb­ka, here is Net­work World, which is NOT a con­spir­a­cy site.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3099092/mobile-wireless/the-cia-nsa-and-pokmon-go.html

“Way back in 2001, Key­hole, Inc. was found­ed by John Han­ke (who pre­vi­ous­ly worked in a “for­eign affairs” posi­tion with­in the U.S. gov­ern­ment). The com­pa­ny was named after the old “eye-in-the-sky” mil­i­tary satel­lites. One of the key, ear­ly back­ers of Key­hole was a firm called In-Q-Tel.

In-Q-Tel is the ven­ture cap­i­tal firm of the CIA. Yes, the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. Much of the fund­ing pur­port­ed­ly came from the Nation­al Geospa­tial-Intel­li­gence Agency (NGA). The NGA han­dles com­bat sup­port for the U.S. Depart­ment of Defense and pro­vides intel­li­gence to the NSA and CIA, among oth­ers.

Keyhole’s note­wor­thy pub­lic prod­uct was “Earth.” Renamed to “Google Earth” after Google acquired Key­hole in 2004.

In 2010, Niantic Labs was found­ed (inside Google) by Keyhole’s founder, John Han­ke.”

(con­tin­u­ing)

“Over the next few years, Niantic cre­at­ed two loca­tion-based apps/games. The first was Field Trip, a smart­phone appli­ca­tion where users walk around and find things. The sec­ond was Ingress, a sci-fi-themed game where play­ers walk around and between loca­tions in the real world.

In 2015, Niantic was spun off from Google and became its own com­pa­ny. Then Poké­mon Go was devel­oped and launched by Niantic. It’s a game where you walk around in the real world (between loca­tions sug­gest­ed by the ser­vice) while hold­ing your smart­phone.”

Next up, let’s look at this con­cept in prac­tice. For exam­ple, there is South Korea. Note: while the main goal would be to watch North Korea, South Korea is also kept under watch as they rou­tine­ly try to steal Amer­i­can nuclear secrets so they can keep up with their neigh­bors.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/22/asia/south-korea-pokemon-sokcho/index.html

“This is a scene repli­cat­ed across the sea­side city of Sok­cho in South Korea, 35 kilo­me­ters or 20 miles away from the DMZ or demil­i­ta­rized zone which splits North and South Korea.
Smart­phones raised, brows fur­rowed, Poke­mon Go zom­bies in a world of their own have tak­en over the streets of Sok­cho — and the game isn’t even avail­able in this coun­try yet.
This is the only area in South Korea you can play the aug­ment­ed real­i­ty game that has swept the world, large­ly thanks to a tech­ni­cal loop­hole.
This north­east­ern tip of South Korea lies just out­side the index grids the game’s devel­op­ers use to geo­graph­i­cal­ly block the coun­try.”

(con­tin­u­ing)

“Some local media have sug­gest­ed the fact Google Maps is restrict­ed here due to secu­ri­ty con­cerns may com­pli­cate the mat­ter. The South Kore­an gov­ern­ment denies that.
Google is request­ing full map data from South Korea, a request that has to be cleared by sev­en min­istries, includ­ing the defense and for­eign min­istries and the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Ser­vice.
Under South Kore­an law, any map has to have cer­tain secu­ri­ty instal­la­tions blurred or blacked out. The gov­ern­ment says it will give Google an answer before August 25.
But for now, restric­tions and geo­graph­i­cal block­ing aside, one city in South Korea is enjoy­ing its spe­cial sta­tus as the coun­try’s holy grail for Poke­mon fans. ”

And sur­prise, sur­prise, some­body placed Poke­mon in the DMZ!

https://www.inverse.com/article/18121-north-korea-pokemon-go-gym-dmz-south-korea

” Red­dit user post­ed an unusu­al mes­sage he received from a mil­i­tary bud­dy of his sta­tioned in South Korea per­tain­ing to the aug­ment­ed real­i­ty Poké­mon app. Appar­ent­ly, there is a Poké­mon gym locat­ed in the demil­i­ta­rized zone (DMZ) between the North and South Kore­an bor­der.

The DMZ is the bor­der between com­mu­nist North Korea and demo­c­ra­t­ic South Korea. Since the two coun­tries are tech­ni­cal­ly still at war — they signed an armistice in 1953 — the DMZ works as a de fac­to bor­der between them. Aside from a cen­tral point where the two coun­tries occa­sion­al­ly meet, the DMZ is lit­tered with armed guards, land mines, and snipers. So yeah, since Pan­munjom is offi­cial­ly on the North Kore­an side of the DMZ, reach­ing it might pose a lit­tle bit of a chal­lenge.

While the like­li­hood of some­one in North Korea claim­ing that gym are fair­ly slim, any­body from the South fool­ish enough to ven­ture close to the bor­der for the chance to claim, pos­si­bly the safest gym leader posi­tion avail­able in the world, would risk being per­ceived as an invad­er and trig­ger­ing an inter­na­tion­al con­flict (or at least a land­mine).

After news reports of find­ing dead bod­ies, armed rob­beries, angry rants, and now this, Poké­mon GO is pret­ty much tap­ping into the entire­ty of the human expe­ri­ence. It would be a sur­prise if every­one makes it out of this col­lec­tive obses­sion alive.”

And it ain’t just Korea that noticed...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/world/asia/pokemon-go-saudi-arabia-russia-egypt.html

“In Sau­di Ara­bia, cler­ics renewed an exist­ing fat­wa against Poké­mon, call­ing it “un-Islam­ic.”

Bosnia has warned play­ers to avoid chas­ing the crea­tures onto land mines left over from the 1990s.

An Egypt­ian com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cial said the game should be banned because shar­ing pho­tos or videos of secu­ri­ty sites could put the sites at risk.

Russ­ian offi­cials sound­ed sim­i­lar warn­ings, say­ing that “the con­se­quences would be irre­versible” if Poké­mon play­ers con­tin­ued unchecked.”

“The game is notable for caus­ing peo­ple to range out into the world, walk­ing into places where they might not nor­mal­ly have a rea­son to be, point­ing their smart­phone cam­eras at build­ings and his­tor­i­cal sites.

The game over­lays a dig­i­tal world of crea­tures, PokéStops and oth­er fea­tures on the real world. Play­ers cap­ture the many types of Poké­mon and then use them to bat­tle on teams for con­trol of loca­tions known as gyms.

“Poké­mon can be found in every cor­ner of the earth,” the app tells users when they down­load the game.

And that is pre­cise­ly the prob­lem.

“Poké­mon Go is the lat­est tool used by spy agen­cies in the Intel war, a cun­ning despi­ca­ble app that tries to infil­trate our com­mu­ni­ties in the most inno­cent way under the pre­text of enter­tain­ment,” said Ham­di Bakheet, a mem­ber of Egypt’s defense and nation­al secu­ri­ty com­mit­tee in Par­lia­ment, accord­ing to a report on Al Jazeera.

Russ­ian web­sites also pub­lished arti­cles claim­ing the game is a C.I.A. plot, while reli­gious fig­ures denounced it.

“It smacks of Satanism,” a Cos­sack leader told local media. The Kremlin’s press sec­re­tary warned users not to vis­it the Krem­lin look­ing for Poké­mon, and there was talk of prison time for any­one found look­ing for them in a church.

Kuwait banned the app’s use at gov­ern­ment sites, and offi­cials warned it could put users’ per­son­al data at risk or be used by crim­i­nals to lure vic­tims to iso­lat­ed places.

Indone­sian offi­cials also called it a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat that could allow its ene­mies to pen­e­trate mil­i­tary sites and gain access to top-secret data. On Mon­day night, a French cit­i­zen work­ing in Indone­sia was tem­porar­i­ly detained after stum­bling onto the grounds of a mil­i­tary base in West Java Province while search­ing, he said, for Poké­mon fig­ures.

Israeli offi­cials warned sol­diers not to use it on bases as it could reveal their loca­tion.

South Korea’s gov­ern­ment already restricts Google Maps for secu­ri­ty rea­sons, so Poké­mon Go — which uses the data to pop­u­late its own maps — wouldn’t work any­way. But the app hap­pens to be work­ing in one small sea­side town near the North Kore­an bor­der — and bus­loads of peo­ple are show­ing up to play.

The app uses geolo­ca­tion fea­tures and enables the phone’s cam­era. Users typ­i­cal­ly sign in with a Google account. An ear­ly ver­sion appeared to give the game full access to some users’ Google accounts, but the com­pa­ny said that was a mis­take that was reversed in an update.

Since the game was released on July 6, it has gained mil­lions of users around the world, includ­ing some who had already made head­lines with ques­tion­able deci­sions to play at Auschwitz, Arling­ton ceme­tery and the 9/11 memo­r­i­al in New York City.

A spokes­woman for Niantic denied the alle­ga­tions that the game is a tool of espi­onage, and said the com­pa­ny asks all users “to abide by local laws, and respect the loca­tions you vis­it and peo­ple you meet dur­ing your explo­ration.””

Trump and Abe sit­tin’ in a tree...

“Trump had a pri­vate meet­ing with Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Shin­zo Abe Thurs­day. Abe in brief remarks to reporters said the atmos­phere or the meet­ing was “cor­dial” and said “I am con­vinced that Mr. Trump is a leader with whom I can have great con­fi­dence.” He did not go into details about what they dis­cussed, because Trump has not yet tak­en office.”

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/romney-may-be-gringrich-out-trump-cabinet-n685541