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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

#161

Post by tertius »

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…

"and sell women into the sex trade"

Because that is a problem we don't have in the U.S...

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

#162

Post by fredgrott »

deathhand wrote: post #7

> The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating new cover companies to shield the government’s involvement, and could endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP declined the FBI’s request because the companies’ names – as well as common addresses linked to the Justice Department – are liste…

how hard let's see:

     -use lawyer to open up LLC as trust in Nevada as we can have those things not listed publiclally
Is FBI new at this?

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

#163

Post by dragonwriter »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #92
rosser wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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. Waiting it out is not an option. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east…

> Waiting it out is not an option.

The last time we "had to" intervene in the Middle East because "waiting it out is not an option", we generated the conditions giving rise to the Islamic State.

Perhaps we need to consider more than whether there is something we don't like going on in the region, but also whether we have a the capability to actually execute something that has net positive result, when considering the social/political impacts of our involvement, including the reactions of people in the region to the US specifically acting in the region, given our historical and current involvement with regional actors.

Everytime the US acts in the region, it promotes, rather than reduces, anti-western Islamic extremism. There's lots of obvious and subtle reasons for that (the least subtle being the convenient propaganda magnet for extremist groups that our involvement with Israel, combined with the Israel/Palestine conflict, combined with pretty much any of the inevitable accidents of war -- and even worse, any actual abuses by US troops, whether as policy or by rogue bad actors -- provide.)

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

#164

Post by JoblessWonder »

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...

Hi John,

Had you heard about the discovery of the plane last year in Sacramento? Here [1] is the story where they figured out the "JENNA" call sign. Here is the story that started it all. [2]

[1] http://www.news10.net/story/news/local/arden-lariviera/2014/...

[2] http://www.news10.net/story/news/local/sacramento/2014/03/18...

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

#165

Post by jjwiseman »

robk wrote: post #153
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/

Do you have a link to the reddit discussion?

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

#166

Post by Zigurd »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #92
rosser wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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. Waiting it out is not an option. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east…

> "Waiting it out is not an option."

Oh, you mean like Saddam putting his soccer coach in a plastics shredder? (Didn't happen. Nobody followed up on who planted that story.)

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

#167

Post by Zigurd »

rhino369 wrote: post #102
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, actually; enforcing all of the laws all of the time is completely impractical. If you want always-on enforcement of every law, then we're going to have to seriously reform all of the laws. So, WRT your comment, I would tell you that it is my preference that laws be enforced to solve a specific social problem, not merely for the sake of enforcing a law.

The FBI isn't handing out parking tickets.

That are intimidating protesters. Much worse.

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

#168

Post by Retric »

genericuser wrote: post #152
Retric wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you completely misunderstood my comment. If you have an hour of video footage of a blue car that you happen to collect from an aircraft while tracking a suspect then on it's own that says vary little. Historically you need to track a suspect to there car and then follow a car so together it's vary labor intensive to track large numbers of people.

However, if the blue car passed a license plate reader it stops being a random blue car and becomes license plate ABC-1234 registered to someone and your now "following" that specific car plus the original subjects car for that hour. Basicly, the readers enable you to track people not just where the reader physically is but wherever you have footage either leading up to that scan or after the fact. Together you can potentally follow millions of people for fairly low costs.

Granted, nothing says the person who the car is registered to is the actual driver, but you have someone who can probably tell you who was driving that car.

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

#169

Post by Retric »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #140
Retric wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re now basing your case on circumstantial evidence which is considered near worthless for a reason. If you have 5 suspects and then do DNA testing that's solid evidence. Ex: Paternity test. But, if you find someone with DNA testing you need to completely ignore that evidence after that point as 100% of its predictive power has already been used. PS: To show just how easy it is to mess this stuff up. Suppose a mur…

That seems to be a textbook case of people failing to apply Bayes' theorem properly, not a fault of tests or technology. They, just like doctors analyzing cancer tests, need to remember to multiply one more number...

It's also the kind of information that's easily dropped or misunderstood by a jury at trial.

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

#170

Post by rosser »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #124
coldtea wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If ISIS wants us to engage them, we just sit back and allow them to rape whole villages and sell women into the sex trade? ISIS are an insignificant mock army of goat herders with guns. They could be eradicated in an afternoon. It's presense though helps with strategic goals of instability for the region. > You don't go to war for oil. You go to war for human rights and to prevent the slaughter and abuse of innocen…

> Besides that's the role of cops. Who appointed any country world cop? Should third countries had invaded the US to end "slavery", seggregation, the "police state" killing blacks etc? You don't appoint someone to do the right thing. The US civil war was large enough that it was tantamount to another country (the North) overthrowing the South to end slavery.

The Southern states (at least the initial ones) seceded over slavery, yes. The war, however, was over the states' right to secede (and the adverse impact of the secession on the country as a whole — particularly economically) far more than it was slavery, itself.

Its being about slavery was just the story offered to the polity in order to sell them on having a war at all.

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