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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

#191

Post by jjwiseman »

JoblessWonder wrote: post #164
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...

Here's a reference to the FBI using "JENNA" from 2011: http://theaviationist.com/2011/05/15/the-white-fest-b757-and...

I found one link that claimed he found an FAA or DOJ publication that had at one time mentioned the JENNA callsign, but was then edited to remove the reference.

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

#192

Post by CyberDildonics »

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…

What a bunch of assholes.

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

#193

Post by linkregister »

awch wrote: post #178
linkregister wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for the added info. I didn't do any googling; I limited my commentary to the source you provided (I didn't look at the youtube video, that method usually carries a low signal to noise ratio). The wikipedia article is light on actual information about the ARGUS IS; the primary source is an article with the title "drone nightmare" in it. Other advertised capabilities don't exist yet. I will add your sources to the wikipedia article, they are much better than what is there.

I don't think that it should be expected that I exhaustively comb search engines to find support for your point; I think that it's reasonable that I look solely at the source you gave me.

That said, I found the capabilities in your first (0th) source to be chilling. That source definitely supports your point.

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

#194

Post by meatysnapper »

cyorir wrote: post #177
dragonwriter wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yes we did. Friends in a foreign military said there were plenty of American SF on the ground helping out. Otherwise the insurgency wouldn't have lasted a single month.

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

#195

Post by coldtea »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #130
coldtea wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Here's a chilling excerpt: "After attacking a village, [the Islamic State] splits women from men and executes boys and men aged 14 and over. The women and mothers are separated; girls are stripped naked, tested for virginity and examined for breast size and prettiness." So, like what Australians did to their indigenous population right until the 70's for example: > The Stolen Generations (also known as Stolen chil…

I'm not quite sure how, because atrocities previously have been committed, its acceptable to allow them to be committed now.

>I'm not quite sure how, because atrocities previously have been committed, its acceptable to allow them to be committed now.

The problem is they haven't just "previously been committed" they are constantly being commited by people who pretend to have the "moral high ground".

Even on a much larger scale than ISIS.

So it helps to a) highlight the hypocrisy, b) highlight the unsuitability and inner motives of self-proclaimed saviors, c) bring to the front additional atrocities that need to be aknowledged and stopped.

If there's a serial killer in your town that's killed 300 people, it's not actually optimal to mobilize the whole town to go catch a gang that killed 2 people in a nearby village.

Especially if your actual target is to get some access to some nice beach-front property in the nearby village, so you could not give less fucks about the effectiveness of your methods or what happens after your involvement. (E.g. civil war, chaos, and hellish instabililty in what were more of less stable societies for decades).

Case in point: who destroyed Iraq's stability and helped ISIS take over in the first place?

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

#197

Post by istvan__ »

bsbechtel wrote: post #185
tormeh wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Depending on your perspective, you could accuse anyone refusing to pay taxes as evading taxes for financial gain.

Wondering why the top 1% can get away with it in the US...

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

#198

Post by Karunamon »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #187
dragonwriter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, consider that ISIS is a product of the last time the US decided it needed to do more to rearrange the political situation in the region.

If ISIS is a product of US foreign policy, than the responsibility falls square on the US government to clean up its mess.

Only if that's a thing they're capable of doing in the first place. Which, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure they are. It seems like any time the US military gets involved in something nowadays, the surrounding people end up worse off than when they started.

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

#199

Post by Zigurd »

rhino369 wrote: post #87
imglorp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a vast gulf between a random schmuck with some aerial imaging and a global, totalitarian, surveillance state with nearly omniscient powers. This stuff is merely yet another database input.

Totalitarian? Nearly omniscient? US law enforcement can't even keep bombs off airplanes, drugs out of prison, and people from getting away with murder.

Would you prefer "random and haphazardly prioritized omniscience?" Reducing corruption among prison guards and raising violent crime solution rates is hard. Buying shiny stabilized cameras and airplanes is easy and it's wicked cool. So you need to use your super-powers and arrest some people for... whatever, to show you are using your shiny toys.

It's not hard to explain how a government can have seeming omniscience in some cases, and still be bumbling in many others. That also explains the warped priorities.

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

#200

Post by jjwiseman »

skidoo wrote: post #196

This isn't exactly new. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/14/government-plan...

Yes! There are even articles from 3013 about the FBI using small planes for aerial surveillance, including IMSI-catchers. I think the reason the story might be catching on now is because of the compelling nature of seeing screenshots of multiple circle tracks over multiple cities, and even seeing photos of the planes and their camera turrets.
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