Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

aclu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 150 posts

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#61

Post by nilkn »

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…

FlightAware has an awesome and rapidly growing ADS-B program as well. In particular, one of the easiest and cheapest ways to get into ADS-B flight tracking is with PiAware, which lets you convert a Raspberry Pi into an ADS-B receiver:

https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/

If you have a spare Android phone that you're not using anymore, you can even turn it into an ADS-B receiver:

https://flightaware.com/adsb/android/

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#62

Post by beaner »

dogma1138 wrote: post #49
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 pu…

I keep hearing this over and over, products don't actually exist for anyone's sake, they only exist to "sell your data".

Where's the evidence? What does it even mean? It's like somebody came up with this line back in 2004 and then it never died from paranoia. How is said "data" packaged?

The "data" might help google help advertisers advertise better, but it's not like your Drive photos are being viewed by Ebay's ad department.

If I were Google, would I be salivating over all the stuff you uploaded to Drive? Like really, what would I do with it? Maybe there's a small opportunity to take advantage of some sort of data science to improve some sorts of algorithms... but really the overriding factor is that I just want to make a good product to encourage customer lock in, so they use the rest of my ecosystem and namely my search engine.

It's right to be wary of data collection, but the whole "anything that displays ads is by definition strictly an ad company and they will murder your children for the opportunity to sell your SSN" is senseless.

At least these companies provide something that we opt into. Equating it with hardware for actual spying against peaceful populations, I might actually consider evil.

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#63

Post by [deleted] »

dogma1138 wrote: post #49
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 pu…

[deleted]

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#64

Post by dogma1138 »

beaner wrote: post #62
dogma1138 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pu…

I keep hearing this over and over, products don't actually exist for anyone's sake, they only exist to "sell your data". Where's the evidence? What does it even mean? It's like somebody came up with this line back in 2004 and then it never died from paranoia. How is said "data" packaged? The "data" might help google help advertisers advertise better, but it's not like your Drive photos are being viewed by Ebay's ad d…

I don't think Google is evil, i also don't think the NSA is evil. Both of them are doing things which are in opposite to your absolute freedom. Which one is worse well it's for you to decide. And I haven't said that Google sell your data, but they do sell data or at least the product of their analysis from what search results caught on during this holiday season to what people have searched to get to your site and how much time they've spent on it. Yes that not evil, but they do design virtually every service with a primary goal of generating data from it because that's their business model. And considering that (or a) you use Google, Amazon and Facebook for the majority of your day to day tasks from finding a how to get somewhere, to getting updates on news and topics of interest to connecting with people they can exert more influence on you than most intelligence agencies out there.

Say PlanetBucks whats to increase the amount of Moppachinos you drink a day, how about paying Koogle to ensure that the routes it suggest when you walk to your friend bring you past one? How about Koogle not displaying information that they do not want you to see or how about Omgzon not showing you products from a country that decided not to give them a tax break last year?

Yes those are all far fetched scenarios, and yes they will not happen any time soon, but none of those scenarios are impossible today. And the scary part is that if those companies wanted to do this besides another Snowden you wouldn't be able to notice any of those activities.

Heck It didn't came as a surprise to me that the NSA have been spying on everyone and their mother, they've been caught doing so over and over, yes it's out of their immediate mandate but they are a spy agency, and they still work for the US government so no matter how far they stretch their grasp it's still limited by what the executive and judicial system will end up doing with it.

Content providers on the other hand? well they only care about bottom line profits, as long as they can continue to hook in people from infancy to be their stock they'll do it. Tobacco companies used give out cigarettes for free to everything from soldiers to school kids, yeah they also wanted to ensure that their products are great.

Also this always gives me a chuckle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJqf0qYrYvU

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#65

Post by diminoten2 »

rmxt wrote: post #51
diminoten2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

What is a "hot zone"? People obstructing traffic and breaking a few windows merits recording the location of every cell phone (basically every person over the age of 10) for an extended period of time? That's textbook "unnecessary dragnet surveillance". EDIT: How do you separate out: 1. People in the streets participating in marches. ( maybe articuable suspicion) 2. People in the streets not participating in marches.…

Do you see no difference between recording the location of every cell phone and taking video from the air of city streets?

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#66

Post by diminoten2 »

ska wrote: post #52
diminoten2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything the BPD is doing to circumvent warrants is obviously bad and needs to stop. I'm not arguing they should be allowed to do any of that stuff. What I am saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with arial surveillance, to the point where everyone who works for companies offering such services is "evil".

I think the problem a lot of people have is with the "mass" part, not the "surveillance" part, of mass-surveillance.

Really? That's news to me, I thought the issue primarily revolved around "surveillance".

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#68

Post by beat »

Karunamon wrote: post #34
beat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average person cannot rewind the cross-town movements of thousands of individuals simultaneously.

Sure they can. Drones can be had for very cheap nowadays. And again, what you do in public is available for anyone who cares to look.

Then maybe we should be talking about what people (and governments) should do, rather than what they can do. Perhaps you think it's appropriate for the government to record your every step, just in case. I don't.

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#69

Post by beat »

strictnein wrote: post #57
beat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the ACLU. I imagine they're more circumspect than Infowars. If they're concerned, there's good reason to be concerned.

Ehh... it's written by one of their writers, who doesn't seem to have a great grasp of technology in general. This alone disqualifies him: > "super-high, gigapixel resolution cameras on planes, which are then used to monitor entire cities" > "Every moving pedestrian and vehicle can be tracked: the beginning and end everyone’s journeys, and the route taken in between" > "This gives the authorities the power to press "…

I think you'd agree it's quite possible to take high-quality footage and record every frame of it using current technology. What, a few terabytes maybe? Now, single an individual out. Now, data-mine those terabytes of footage. Even without exotic facial recognition or incredible resolutions, you can trace the exact movements of an individual, and of every other person whom they contact.

It's not just a question of resolution. It's a question of software and big data, which is very different. And it's a question the ACLU would be very interested in.

Don't throw out the critical concerns of privacy just because you can nitpick a few holes in the writer's technical understanding. It's bad form, and deliberately misses a valid point. A credible source focused on privacy is concerned enough to write about it. Dismissing it out of hand because the author isn't as much of a nerd as you is not a good argument.

Re: Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

#70

Post by dsugarman »

I believe this must be the case but who has the resources to deploy something like this? Does Palantir or some other contractor help mine captured images for data? What is done with this data? There is no way BCPD has the resources for this, does the FBI come in and feed them info? for what, arresting rioters?
Post reply on HN