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Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

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Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#41

Post by Mtinie »

vonmoltke wrote: post #13
MattGrommes wrote: post #4

" Among the companies offering this technology are major defense contractors working for the Pentagon and an Ohio company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, which is trying to sell it to local police departments." I know this is an unpopular opinion these days but the people working for these companies should be ashamed. There is little use for this technology, especially on US soil, except mass surveillance of…

Also an unpopular opinion is that some people (I am not one of them FYI) think mass surveillance of the population is a good thing. It can be hard to understand that position, but there are people who believe mass surveillance, security theater, and the like really are protecting them and that it is all for their own good. As long as sufficient numbers of these people exist there will be not shortage of people who ar…

> It can be hard to understand that position, but there are people who believe mass surveillance, security theater, and the like really are protecting them and that it is all for their own good.

Not only that, but supplying the infrastructure for mass surveillance and security theater pays REALLY well.

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#42

Post by diminoten2 »

rmxt wrote: post #39
diminoten wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually think it's possible to perform police activity as outlined in the Public Laws of Baltimore without executing intelligence operations? How would you know when Bad Things are happening? Are you recommending they exclusively perform reactive services?

I stand fast by the notion that they shouldn't be performing general "intelligence operations", nor should they be recruiting the FBI to so on their behalf. They should be proactively fighting crime, but that doesn't need to (and legally shouldn't) entail wholesale monitoring of everyone in their jurisdiction (and then some, judging by the range of the drones and the involvement of the FBI). Do you actually think tha…

I get where you're coming from, but it's not "unnecessary dragnet surveillance" to fly a drone over a hot zone in a city during a period of riots to monitor the state of the area, nor should the employees of companies who offer such services to these police departments "be ashamed".

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#43

Post by nyolfen »

sjm-lbm wrote: post #15
tomswartz07 wrote: post #2

If you're big into crowd-sourcing: There are super-inexpensive RTL-SDR dongles[1] that can be used to track airplanes such as this. I'm not a lawyer, but I've fooled around with these dongles and a few programs enough to discern that Gov't aircraft absolutely need to broadcast their info on the 1090MHz band. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to have a few people pop these up and see if they could monitor the airplanes…

Since, for whatever reason, I enjoy tracking flights as a hobby, here's a couple of extra tidbits: 1) If you are in the right area, Flight Radar 24 might actually give you the equipment for free. See here: http://www.flightradar24.com/free-ads-b-equipment for info. 2) It is unlikely that even aircraft that the government desires to be secret will stop broadcasting ADS-B anytime soon, as one of the major usages is avo…

genuine question, what do you get out of this hobby? i'm not trying to sneer or trivialize it, i'm sincerely curious about what makes it interesting to people who enjoy it

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#44

Post by comrade1 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #40
comrade1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are used in drug interdiction and other coast guard functions. My brother was an Air Force test pilot that tested these for that purpose (he was originally a surveillance pilot flying kc-135s). They are basically a kc-135 in a small jet (e.g., leer jet 35) form factor, and not carrying a team of technicians in the back but instead just equipment, or maybe a technician or two. Officially he's not supposed to kno…

Do you mean an RC-135? KC-135 just carries a bunch of fuel, which doesn't seem useful for surveillance.

Yes, sorry, RC-135.

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#46

Post by dogma1138 »

nyolfen wrote: post #43
sjm-lbm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since, for whatever reason, I enjoy tracking flights as a hobby, here's a couple of extra tidbits: 1) If you are in the right area, Flight Radar 24 might actually give you the equipment for free. See here: http://www.flightradar24.com/free-ads-b-equipment for info. 2) It is unlikely that even aircraft that the government desires to be secret will stop broadcasting ADS-B anytime soon, as one of the major usages is avo…

genuine question, what do you get out of this hobby? i'm not trying to sneer or trivialize it, i'm sincerely curious about what makes it interesting to people who enjoy it

Some people enjoy tracking birds some people enjoy tracking aircraft. If you're not into that you probably won't get it I knew a guy who was a plane spotter and he would get a kick of being able to recognize a commercial jet by its sound and even estimate it's approach and altitude. I didn't get why he enjoyed that, and i don't think that you can relate to that to understand it if you didn't decide to take up that hobby in the first place.

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#47

Post by underbluewaters »

beat wrote: post #28
diminoten wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You basically say mass surveillance is (figuratively) "literally Hitler", and you think that's an "unpopular opinion" on HN? Well, have I got some fortunate news for you... The fact is, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a police department flying an airplane over an area under their jurisdiction with the intent of surveying the area as an intelligence gathering activity. What's actually absurd is the idea that th…

There are limits to jurisdiction, well defined. For example, police cannot enter your home without your permission, unless they have a warrant from a judge. So if the airplane surveillance is being used to collect and act on data that would normally require a warrant, then "jurisdiction" is not sufficient. Even having the ability to do this is problematic in the eyes of many judges and many civilians (it would be the…

I'd go further and say the nature of these new technologies changes what observations should be permitted by law enforcement, with or without a warrant.

While automated license plate readers may be collecting the same information that police officers can from a public vantage point, the scale that they can be used at changes the nature of the information. Suddenly it can be used to track the movements of everyone in a city. While it's arguably the "same" information, it vastly changes the calculus of the public benefit vs privacy of the individual.

We ought to be having a deliberate debate about how to change our laws to reflect the fundamental differences these new technologies bring about. While it may be legal for law enforcement to fly these surveillance missions now, the public has every right to demand that the laws be changed. The police in Baltimore have proven they are incapable of wielding the privileged status they have without systematically oppressing minorities. It makes sense that we roll back some of the surveillance tools they use to prevent dissent.

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#48

Post by sjm-lbm »

nyolfen wrote: post #43
sjm-lbm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since, for whatever reason, I enjoy tracking flights as a hobby, here's a couple of extra tidbits: 1) If you are in the right area, Flight Radar 24 might actually give you the equipment for free. See here: http://www.flightradar24.com/free-ads-b-equipment for info. 2) It is unlikely that even aircraft that the government desires to be secret will stop broadcasting ADS-B anytime soon, as one of the major usages is avo…

genuine question, what do you get out of this hobby? i'm not trying to sneer or trivialize it, i'm sincerely curious about what makes it interesting to people who enjoy it

It's just an outgrowth of the fact that I find commercial aviation fascinating, really. I'll occasionally pull up flights near where I am, but I usually use tools to track whatever flights I find interesting for other reasons (off the top of my head, for instance, American Airlines' first revenue 787 flight was today, and I watched that one this morning).

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#49

Post by dogma1138 »

MattGrommes wrote: post #4

" Among the companies offering this technology are major defense contractors working for the Pentagon and an Ohio company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, which is trying to sell it to local police departments." I know this is an unpopular opinion these days but the people working for these companies should be ashamed. There is little use for this technology, especially on US soil, except mass surveillance of…

That can be said for people who are working for Google, Facebook and any other major tech company out there.

All of them milk the heck out of every piece of data they got and each service they put out is designed to milk as much data as possible in the future. Like it or not personal data and clever means of working with it is the new currency for many companies on the market these days.

And some of the stuff they pull off is just as shady as what the NSA and similar organizations do. Heck at this point a better bet will to worry more about those companies than the NSA since for better or for worse the NSA still works for you, they are not planning a coup. Google and every other company out there wants to know as much as they can to not only "own you" financially but to ensure that they can direct virtually every step you take online and offline.

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#50

Post by gtrubetskoy »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #7

They mention gigapixel cameras, my (brief) googling couldn't find any evidence that such a thing exists, except for an experimental one at Duke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldQXHP7TFUE . Although I suppose a gigapixel photo can be made by taking pictures by multiple cameras at the same time just as well. Still, wouldn't that sort of thing be available commercially, at least for the enthusiasts out there?

I also found this detailed post on ARGUS-IS http://ambivalentengineer.blogspot.com/2012/08/argus-is.html
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