Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions

I don't really see how we can roll back mass wide-area surveillance. It's much too useful a tool. Hell, I'd want it.

I think the best we can do is to get transparency and at best to subject the authorities to the same level of surveillance.

I'm having trouble seeing how it's use could be justified for this event when the amount of storage space it requires for an average flight is massive. Also, the cameras aren't so high fidelity as to be able to personally identify people, so I'm not sure how useful it would be in addition to what the police are already doing by looking at security camera footage and other sources.

The one tail number that the initial Washington Post article linked to is N39MY[1], which is a Cessna 182T registered to NG Research, PO Box 722 in Bristow, VA. That company's web presence is close to zero, basically below the noise floor.

If you google [po box bristow va] you find FAA records for a bunch of other oddly named companies that all have similarly close-to-zero web presence and addresses that are PO Boxes in Bristow: FVX Research, NBR Aviation, NBY Productions, OBR Leasing, OTV Leasing, PSL Surveys, PXW Services. They all seem to like Cessna 182Ts.

If you Google the tail numbers of aircraft registered to those companies, you start to find forum and mailing list posts (often at sites that tilt toward paranoid/conspiracy/right wing, but not always) with people discussing these specific tail numbers and linking them to the FBI. Some of the supposed evidence includes details of radio communications that people have heard, e.g. talking about "being on station" or using callsigns that start with JENNA, JENA or ROSS, which are supposedly used by the FBI. Other posts claim that DOJ/FBI surveillance aircraft often squawk 4414 or 4415 on their transponders.

I monitor aircraft in Los Angeles using an RTL-SDR dongle. I keep a database of almost every transponder ping I receive. You can see some more info, analysis and examples of stuff I've seen (U-2, AF1, AF2, EXEC-1F, E-6 "Doomsday" planes) at http://viewer.gorilla-repl.org/view.html?source=github&user=... I decided to check my database for planes that have squawked 4414/4415 or used one of the suspicious callsigns: I found 8 aircraft in the past 2 months, several of which exhibit suspicious behavior: Flying for hours at a time without going anywhere in particular (I don't have position information for them, but I know they're in the air and not leaving the LA area), flying almost every day for months at a time, squawking 4414 or 4415, and one that used a JENNA callsign. 2 of them are registered to companies with PO Boxes in Bristow, VA. Another is registered to AEROGRAPHICS INC. 10678 AVIATION LN, MANASSAS VIRGINIA, which googling shows has also been linked to the FBI/DOJ. Several others are registered to WORLDWIDE AIRCRAFT LEASING CORP and NATIONAL AIRCRAFT LEASING CORP in Delaware, similar to other suspected FBI front companies (e.g. Northwest Aircraft Leasing Corp. in Newark, Delaware[2]).

(I call what I'm doing "persistent sousveillance": using historical sensor data to retroactively identify and track new subjects, it's just that my subjects are the government. One of the surprising things I've found is that all you need to do is look: the weird stuff jumps out right away, e.g. Cessnas registered to fake-sounding companies that loiter overhead for hours every day.)

It's a lot of circumstantial evidence, but at this point it doesn't seem far-fetched that I'm monitoring aircraft involved in persistent FBI aerial surveillance.

My twitter has more info: https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/595814966382469120

Edit: One other thing worth mentioning is that I was surprised at how many local news stories I turned up while googling these planes & companies that fit the template of "Citizens complain about mystery Cessna flying low, circling over their neighborhood".)

[1] http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NN... [2] http://www.wired.com/2006/06/mystery_planes_/

The government has quite a bit of power to do things other than actually kill people. It can take away people's lives in many other ways.

Which is are the bigger risks for you? Getting your money taken from you by the government via fines or getting it stolen from you by a criminal? Being forced, under threat of imprisonment, to show up in a location at a specific time and account for your actions by the government or by a corporation, your work, your neighbor? Getting locked up in a basement by a criminal or locked up in a prison by the government?

We give the government quite a lot of power. It behooves us to ensure that power is kept in check.

There is absolutely a point. It's possible to oppose surveillance on multiple fronts.

The whole point of checks and balances is that the government doesn't do everything it can do, nor does it act as a unified whole. A bad actor in one branch can be held in check by a good actor in another. If the police/FBI/whomever wanted to storm a government center, it's theoretically up to a court to determine if that is legal and constitutional.