201–210 of 229 posts
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...
Anyways, great to see this stuff still so accessible even if hidden at first glance.
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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.
Interested to see what JENNA stands for.
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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 stor…
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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…
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.
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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…
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.
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What sort of "outbursts of antisocial behavior" are you talking about, and is there really a modern tendency towards it?
Oh anything really. Ranting on HN. Telling off sales clerks. Pushing to the head of the subway line. Anything you get away with because its anonymous. In the old days, you'd know every clerk, everybody in a line, and get harassed if you were antisocial.
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It's also probably a lot easier to capture a ping pong ball than a blimp. Then you'll have people reverse-engineering them and figuring out countermeasures. It'll be illegal, of course, but someone will have a way to defeat them and probably use it.
A flying ping-pong ball I find in my house, is mine to do with as I will. I expect courts eventually will find that dominion to extend to some elevation above my backyard as well.
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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.
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…
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> 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 stor…
It's the story offered to children in modern grade school history classes.