CNN: U.S. Officials Confirm Lying About Russian Troop Movements and Buildup

[stevenleser]

4. We need a lot more data to determine that one way or another.

You mention satellites, but do we know whether the determination was made by satellite?

It is not as simple as "America has satellites so we know everything that is going on everywhere!!!!111!11!"

Russia has 6.5 million square miles of territory. The Russia-Ukraine border is 1400 miles long. The unfortunate truth about using any camera to perform surveillance is, the more you zoom in to get details in a photo, the less total area that photo covers.

Satellite surveillance still involves a lot of tasking requests to move around satellites to get pictures of different parts of the globe. Even if we assume that a satellite has been tasked to be in geosynchronous orbit right above Ukraine to see what's going on there. There is a lot of territory to cover.

Intelligence estimates are almost always that. Estimates. "We think there is a 60% chance that..." or there is a high likelihood of X or a low likelihood of Y. Here is an example http://www.governmentattic.org/5docs/NIE-2006-02R.pdf

Just like polls, there is always a percentage chance of error.