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

FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 229 posts

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

#151

Post by juliangregorian »

denzil_correa wrote: post #8
themartorana wrote: post #6

When it was imagined, we called it "distopian" - books were written and immortalized, movies were made, warnings were served. When it happened, there was barely a murmur.

> When it was imagined, we called it "distopian" I always though it was "dystopian" but your spelling made me check again. Apparently, "distopia" is used in some romance languages like Spanish - http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distop%C3%ADa Portuguese - http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distopia Italian - http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distopia

It's appropriate, too, as "dis" is Latin while "dys" is Greek.

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

#152

Post by genericuser »

Retric wrote: post #71
genericuser wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

You completely ignored my question to you. I asked how you got to the topic of license plate readers, I know how they work and an explanation of how they work does nothing to answer the question of how you transitioned to that topic.

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

#153

Post by robk »

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...

Someone on reddit claims they got a close up photo of the camera. http://postimg.org/image/hm861sw61/

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

#154

Post by maxxxxx »

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 will be a monopoly for people/organizations who have the necessary money.

And they will probably create rules that prevents others from getting information. So we will have some information have's and a lot of have nots.

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

#155

Post by istvan__ »

ianstallings wrote: post #150
istvan__ wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. The first country where people do this will write history about who is really in charge in a country.

That's already happened - December 16, 1773.

That is slightly different but similar. I am expecting a sovereign country's citizens to do something like that, as far as I know that did not happen yet.

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

#157

Post by linkregister »

awch wrote: post #114
linkregister wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because now they can spy on millions I didn't see that part of the article, can you link me to some resources for the planes having that level of camera and computer vision technology?

ARGUS-IS "ARGUS is an advanced camera system that uses hundreds of cellphone cameras in a mosaic to video and auto-track every moving object within a 36 square mile area. ARGUS is a form of Wide Area Persistent Surveillance that allows for one camera to provide such detailed video that users can collect 'pattern-of-life' data and track individual people inside the footage anywhere within the field of regard." [0] htt…

So I did the deep dive of the ARGUS-IS wikipedia article. The majority of sources were regarding the possibilities of such a system. The one authoritative source, from fbo.gov, was an RFP. It appears that such capability doesn't exist, though it is interesting that a government agency is actively working toward the capability.

However, since you asserted that such a thing could happen, your link supports your point. I think it should have been qualified that the technology doesn't exist yet in the interest of full disclosure.

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

#158

Post by davnicwil »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #123
davnicwil wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that some of the possibilities of such tech are scary. However, putting on my optimist hat, they are only possibilities. Of course it will be possible to do such things. The question then becomes: why would anyone do them, and (somewhat linked) what are the chances that anyone will do them to you? > I tell your boss when you lie about being sick, I tell your insurance how often you do risky things when not dr…

> All of these things were possible 50 years ago. They are possible now. They will be possible in 50 years. But 50 years ago, these things were not trivial to accomplish. You couldn't just rewind a public feed, and find this information out about any given person - you had to dedicate manpower to tracking any one given individual.

That's very true - it's the point I address on the next line :-)

> Increasingly advanced technology reduces the amount of effort, and to some extent, the prior knowledge about you required to do these things - but that doesn't automatically make them more likely to happen.

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

baddox wrote: post #106
kenbellows wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... are you suggesting that the entire US population refuse to pay any taxes until surveillance issues are fixed? Because that's a terrible idea.

I wouldn't suggest that such a plan is remotely likely, but a massive organized tax protest would be interesting and probably even beneficial.

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by canvia »

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…

There was an interesting recent book that covers a lot of privacy vs technology concepts that are increasingly relevant. I'd highly recommend checking it out. It's a quick read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_%28Eggers_novel%29

Post reply on HN