FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by Retric » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:03 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #134

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same with watch lists, doesnt all the ineffectiveness go away if they have tiering or triage system? If properly used, perhaps. However, the standards for government forensics have been... questionable. Generally speaking, government "tests" seem more focused on confirming the prosecutor or investigator's theory than on actually resolving truth about facts. You seem to be assuming a great deal of statistical litera…

But a lot of arguments about surveillance tech seem to be really arguments about people not doing their jobs. If they get overwhelmed with the data, it's not the fault of technology. So preventing them from using new technology doesn't strike me as a right solution.

I don't think you can dismiss that argument until people actually do there jobs. Case in point there has been a big push to stop collecting SSN on so many forms. Not because you can't collect that information saftly in theory, but because people and systems have repeatedly failed to protect it in the past.

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

#172

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:07 PM UTC

rosser wrote: post #170

toomuchtodo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

The Union never claimed the war was about slavery (which would have been counterproductive, since the North contained slave states), but instead consistently said the war was about preserving the Union.

So, no, it wasn't a story offered to the polity to sell them on having a war. Because it wasn't the story offered to the polity at all.

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

#173

Post by cagey_vet » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:07 PM UTC

jjwiseman wrote: post #149

upofadown wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you can look up the aircraft based on the N number using the same transponder code doesn't really make much difference.

Yes, but I did it the other way around: I found the aircraft that were using the transponder code, then looked up who they were owned by and what other aircraft they had. That's how I was able to identify potential front companies that don't fit the "XYZ Aviation w/ PO Box in VA" template.

you do understand that flightaware data is crowdsourced, yes? the data format is trivial to fake, and subsequently upload. i am not saying thats the case here, but implicitly trusting user input makes me skeptical about the entire conclusion.

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

#174

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:14 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #136

toomuchtodo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 US civil war was large enough that it was tantamount to another country (the North) overthrowing the South to end slavery. Only slavery was just a pretext for that war.

The South claimed that secession was about the imminent threat to slavery from the Northern states, but that the war was just Northern aggression.

The North claimed that the war was about preserving the Union, not about slavery.

So how was slavery a "pretext" for the war?

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

#175

Post by SomeStupidPoint » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:26 PM UTC

davnicwil wrote: post #68

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 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…

> Yet you can't imagine (at least I can't) what benefit or pleasure anybody would get out of knowing such information about a person today. Therefore it's extremely unlikely anyone will care enough to do it - evidenced by the fact that practically nobody does. Why will this change in the future?

I'm paid to profile people and discover facts about their lives from their habits and the stream of data their phones collect.

Quite literally, there's hundreds of millions of dollars on the line to get that information about you, because it allows people like me to teach computers to manipulate you in to doing what other people want (statistically).

> Taken to the extreme, ask yourself even if you could retrieve this information about any given person instantly, for zero cost or effort, would you even care enough to do it?

The data about people stalking their exes on Facebook strongly suggests that people would peep on each other all the time, given an easy way to do so. However, it doesn't suggest that such habits are healthy.

> Are the things you could do with that information more exciting or interesting than what you were otherwise going to do today? For how many people is that answer going to be yes?

I'm not worried about most people; I'm worried about the people for whom that information is useful, because it can be used against me in effective and highly problematic ways.

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

#176

Post by tonyhb » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:34 PM UTC

verbin217 wrote: post #147

Symmetry wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think people can't handle it but it's actually pretty close to the way most people lived before urbanization brought anonymity to the masses. Now, technological changes might eliminate privacy which would be unprecedented but it's anonymity that's historically weird, not its lack.

Anonymity sure. We're talking about privacy. It's always been at least non-zero available.

Live in a faraday cage. I'm only semi-joking; I think that it could be a solution to your issue if you're that concerned about it. Whatever the outcome technology is going to be persistently ubiquitous.

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

#177

Post by cyorir » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:35 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #163

toomuchtodo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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.

America did not intervene militarily in Syria (covertly, perhaps, but not militarily) yet Syria managed to fall apart. Similar to Syria, Iraq was an autocracy/oligarchy in which a religious minority ruled over a religious majority with pretenses of secularism. If these conditions were sufficient for the destabilization of Syria, it seems to me unclear whether the conditions for destabilization of Iraq were introduced with American invasion or were simply dormant.

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

#178

Post by awch » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:38 PM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #157

awch wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm a little confused about what you're trying to say.

Light googling indicates that this is an extant system that has been fitted to aircraft since 2009:

"DARPA, working in partnership with the Army Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate, Air Force, Air Force Research Laboratory and National Geospatial Agency, conducted its first test flights using the ARGUS system last year [2009]."

The DoD indicates that the system was operationally deployed to Afghanistan in Q1 2011. [0]

LLNL has an article describing the system's optics, technical specs, and their work on processing the data streams it generates. [1]

BAE released an IR upgrade in 2010:

"BAE System's first flight tests of ARGUS-IR's predecessor, ARGUS-IS, concluded last October aboard a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter." [2]

[0] http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=62138

[1] https://str.llnl.gov/AprMay11/vaidya.html

[2] http://www.baesystems.com/article/BAES_028152/bae-systems-wi...?

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

#179

Post by tormeh » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:42 PM UTC

happyscrappy wrote: post #131

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.

Aren't they already doing this in Greece?

No, that's just tax evasion for financial gain.

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

#180

Post by morgante » Tue, Jun 02, 2015, 11:55 PM UTC

Honestly, unlike what the NSA is doing, this doesn't outrage me. Surveillance aircraft only see what is visible from the air—primarily public spaces.

When I'm in a public space, I don't have any expectation of privacy. Heck, a single private citizen intent on tracking my every move could easily "surveil" me in this way.

If the FBI is only exercising techniques which a private citizen could deploy, I really don't care. I fully expect that every minute I'm in public is being documented—it's spying on private communications which really outrages me.