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FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

theguardian.com

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Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#71

Post by Retric »

genericuser wrote: post #60
Retric wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

License plate scanners are actually just scanning everyone so there is no slippery slope involved. Right now we are all being watched. It's a pure cost issue; camera + OCR + database lookup is really cheap so just tag everyone.

How did we go from the FBI flying aircraft with video cameras to license plate scanners which scan 'everyone'? I ask because there is no mention of license plate scanners in any of the parent comments to this, or the article. Also while I assume by everyone you mean everyone who passes through the field of view of the scanner, and not actually everyone; phrasing things in false absolutes like that does not further yo…

It's hard to directly read a license plate from an aircraft. However that's not necessary as the plates are being recorded as part of a separate system all it takes is continuous footage of a car from aircraft and you are recording everyone. https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-trac...

Basically, aircraft follows car X, it passes by a scanner, you now know every car with timestamp that passed by the scanner and can look it up on the video. Doing this automatically is just a question of having enough video coverage and some fairly basic video analysis. They don’t even need to do this in real time as you can write the software after the fact.

In other words because they already have license plate scanners and are doing OCR + lookup they just need a video of the cars after that point.

Note: I doubt they have nearly enough footage to track everyone right now, but the cheaper it is to add one more camera and archive the footage the closer you get to that point.

PS: You can even back track cars so if you have a lot of footage of a car that then passes near a scanner you then know its path from wherever the footage starts.

Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#72

Post by eruditely »

I think the realities of statecraft in the twenty-first century has made stuff like this to be impossible to do without, from what it seems like these agencies are not evil and they have merely had to evolve to the realities of this era.

I do not like it nor enjoy it but it seems like Russian/Chinese intelligence have free reign in america whereas our agencies are under constant assault by the public and all other nations versus us. Sometimes I fear we are bringing down the state with out actions.

Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#73

Post by god_bless_texas »

jjwiseman wrote: post #45
jjwiseman wrote: post #32

I've written up my findings (almost 100 aircraft, 17 front companies) and how I reached them at https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillan...

The surprising thing was how easy it was to do this. Really, all you had to do was look: These planes seem to literally use (unencrypted, easily decoded) transponder codes that mean "FBI surveillance", the public records show company names that mostly fit a simple regex, and one of the front companies even has the exact same address as the U.S. Dept of Justice.

JJ,

I love your research on this, with SDR Dongle.

I'm building up my ADS-B receiver with a NooTech SDR. One question, you talked about capturing squawks with your SDR - did you try for ADS-B or do you know if these aircraft employ it? This would give you location.

Kudos to you, man!

Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#74

Post by enraged_camel »

rayiner wrote: post #17
diafygi wrote: post #2

> "Aircraft surveillance has become an indispensable intelligence collection and investigative technique which serves as a force multiplier to the ground teams," the FBI said in 2009 when it asked Congress for $5.1m for the program. Holy military state, Batman! It seems that the FBI has really taken to heart the change in mission statement from "law enforcement" to "national security"[1]. > The surveillance flights c…

It falls squarely within California v. Ciraolo, which says there is no expectation of privacy in anything visible from the air. It also common sense. Any shmuck with a general aviation license can take up an ultralight and see what he can see. So can the government. Jones involved a trespass on the suspect's property. Totally different situation.

Yeah, but isn't a similar argument made with regards to license plate readers, and isn't the common counter-argument that there's a difference between a license plate being readable by a random schmuck vs. all license plates systematically scanned, recorded and kept as records by the government?

Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#75

Post by [deleted] »

jjwiseman wrote: post #45
jjwiseman wrote: post #32

I've written up my findings (almost 100 aircraft, 17 front companies) and how I reached them at https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillan...

The surprising thing was how easy it was to do this. Really, all you had to do was look: These planes seem to literally use (unencrypted, easily decoded) transponder codes that mean "FBI surveillance", the public records show company names that mostly fit a simple regex, and one of the front companies even has the exact same address as the U.S. Dept of Justice.

[deleted]

Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#76

Post by RyJones »

jjwiseman wrote: post #45
jjwiseman wrote: post #32

I've written up my findings (almost 100 aircraft, 17 front companies) and how I reached them at https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillan...

The surprising thing was how easy it was to do this. Really, all you had to do was look: These planes seem to literally use (unencrypted, easily decoded) transponder codes that mean "FBI surveillance", the public records show company names that mostly fit a simple regex, and one of the front companies even has the exact same address as the U.S. Dept of Justice.

almost like they weren't trying with that last point.

Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#77

Post by marincounty »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #35
msane wrote: post #25

I think this is our future, whether it's dystopian or not. Technology is eventually going to make it impossible to really prevent "Persistent aerial surveillance". What requires an expensive small blimp today might become the size of a ping pong ball (or wide area flock of them) and come out of a 3D printer tomorrow. So who will be using such tech? Governments and private entities alike - we can try to legislate agai…

I think it sounds scary anyway. I mean, I'd know everything about you -- where you lived, where you shopped, where you worked, where you ate out, where your friends lived, what you did with your friends, when you did it, etc. I could even get further than you might imagine: I probably have a really good guess (>0.99) what you do at your work, given your activities outside of work and the people you associate with. I…

I believe this surveillance can be slowed down? We need to stop being so complacent with our photo being taken? We could start be not shopping at stores like Home Depot. Home Depot takes my photo multiple times for the purchase of a screw? I know all stores treat their employees and customers like convicted felons, but some are worse than others?

Then, maybe we could slow down on the posting of pictures? Show up at local town hall meetings--questioning the need for so many cams, and license plate readers? Especially, if said town doesn't have a problem with crime?

Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#78

Post by snowwrestler »

ninkendo wrote: post #11

Haven't they always done this? They've always used surveillance vans parked outside of suspect's houses with listening equipment, for example. They even used fake company names on the sides of the vans. Why should we be surprised they're using airplanes too?

Which suspects are they parking the surveillance planes over?

The fear is that the answer is "none"--they're flying planes continuously to see what they can see across the whole city.

What if they started parking a surveillance van with listening equipment outside of EVERY single house in the city? Still ok?

Americans are ok with surveillance technology as long as its use is limited. The American system for limiting it has always been focused on the exclusion of evidence. If the state violated the 4th Amendment (like parking a listening van without a warrant), the evidence could be excluded from trial and the surveilled person is less likely to convicted.

The government is now pivoting to the concept of national security to get around all these limitations. If the FBI is not investigating a crime, it does not care about the 4th Amendment. Terrorism is defined as an act of war--not a crime--so as long as the FBI is doing "counter-terrorism" it can just collect all information about whatever it wants, whenever it wants, with no limitations. And it can keep the entire process secret.

Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#79

Post by rosser »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #58
tertius wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stopping tax payments isn't the only way to protest.

I'd love to hear ideas on this. I am dismayed, nay, infuriated that we waste taxpayer dollars in such a manner when the returns have been found to be non-existent. Yet, I read about atrocities committed every day by ISIS and the US government sits back and does little. This is not the world I want to live in, and I have no idea how to solve these non-technical problems. EDIT: Regarding downvotes and the replies as of…

"Doing something" about IS is exactly what they (the leadership of IS) want. They want the West — and particularly the US — to engage militarily with them, to give credence to their particular, perverse brand of apocalyptic Islam.

Letting them continue to alienate themselves amongst all the other Muslims on the planet by the way they treat their fellows (if you're Muslim, but don't believe in IS's specific notions of the caliphate, you're an apostate, and must be killed) will, in the long run, do more to destroy them than even nuking all of Syria ever could.

EDIT: re your edit: if the West engages militarily with IS, that becomes an even bigger recruiting tool for them than did the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine how many villages will be raped and killed and sold into sex slavery when IS has three times as many crazy fucknuts who all believe their heinous idiocy?

So, yes, by all means. Let's just go ahead and print their recruiting posters too, while we're at it.

This is long, but it's well worth the read. The Atlantic's article, titled "What ISIS Really Wants": http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isi...

Don't mistake me. I think IS and what they're doing are heinous and disgusting. But to react to what they're doing and try to stop them with force of arms will be massively counter-productive. Sometimes, blowing shit up just makes it worse. I mean, IS wouldn't even be a thing if the US hadn't blown up Iraq. How, exactly, is doubling down a good idea, again?

In the days immediately after 9/11, I said in an online forum to some friends that I really didn't want the US to spend the next several decades playing Whack-a-Mole with the jihad-inclined parts of Islam. Guess what we've done, and what you seem to be calling for doing...

Re: FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

#80

Post by happyscrappy »

marincounty wrote: post #77
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it sounds scary anyway. I mean, I'd know everything about you -- where you lived, where you shopped, where you worked, where you ate out, where your friends lived, what you did with your friends, when you did it, etc. I could even get further than you might imagine: I probably have a really good guess (>0.99) what you do at your work, given your activities outside of work and the people you associate with. I…

I believe this surveillance can be slowed down? We need to stop being so complacent with our photo being taken? We could start be not shopping at stores like Home Depot. Home Depot takes my photo multiple times for the purchase of a screw? I know all stores treat their employees and customers like convicted felons, but some are worse than others? Then, maybe we could slow down on the posting of pictures? Show up at l…

That seems like a lot of effort just to keep your apocalyptic narrative alive.
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