No way, says Guy Thomas, a man who’s in a position to know because he designed the satellite on which the information giant is renting space for its latest venture — a satellite that uses the same technology the Navy and the Coast Guard use. “Anybody driving along the shore with a pair of binoculars can see that destroyer out there. That’s the only time those ships have AIS on,” said Thomas, the Coast Guard’s science and technology adviser for maritime domain awareness. The controversy over AIS popped up after Michael Jones, chief technology advocate for Google Ventures, said in a May 17 speech to the U.S. Naval Institute’s annual Joint Warfighting Conference that his company was developing a system to track ships at sea globally — including naval vessels.
