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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

#91
post #88

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…

not only in that context worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

Absolutely

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

#92
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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/isis-bur...

"Amid all the atrocities carried out by Isis — its massacres of civilians, its beheading of hostages, its pillaging of antiquities — the systematic violence the jihadists have carried out against countless enslaved women and girls never fails to shock. For months now, we've heard appalling testimony from women who escaped Isis's clutches, many of whom endured rape and other hideous acts of violence."

"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. The youngest, and those considered the prettiest virgins fetch higher prices and are sent to Raqqa, the IS stronghold."

"We heard about one girl who was traded 22 times, and another, who had escaped, told us that the sheikh who had captured her wrote his name on the back of her hand to show that she was his 'property'."

"Estimates vary, but there are believed to be somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 women enslaved by the Islamic State. Many are Yazidis, a persecuted minority sect that the extremist Islamic State considers to be apostate "devil-worshippers," in part because of the Yazidis' ancient connection to the region's pre-Islamic past. The jihadists' treatment of Yazidi women, in particular, has been marked out by its contempt and savagery."

Here's Bangura again: "They commit rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution and other acts of extreme brutality. We heard one case of a 20-year-old girl who was burned alive because she refused to perform an extreme sex act. We learned of many other sadistic sexual acts. We struggled to understand the mentality of people who commit such crimes."

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

#93
post #50
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…

It's scary because the US government has such a history of suppressing dissenting ideas, especially when it comes to anti-war activists, environmental activists, or any domestic groups which express opposition to the United States' form of capitalism. The FBI has a long history of infiltrating and undermining such groups. I understand what you're saying, but it also means that many possibly beneficial ideas and/or mo…

If the government wanted to stomp out dissent, it wouldn't take aerial surveillance. People loudly and openly dissent under their real name with no consequences.

Wanting to outlaw any technology that could conceivably be used against you is silly.

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

#94
post #31
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It falls squarely within California v. Ciraolo, which says there is no expectation of privacy in anything visible from the air. It also common sense. Any shmuck with a general aviation license can take up an ultralight and see what he can see. So can the government. Jones involved a trespass on the suspect's property. Totally different situation.

Without knowing the details, it seems like they shouldn't really distil 'expectation of privacy' down a simple binary "could someone not breaking the law observe them or not" test. IMO, the efforts to which that hypothetical person would have to go should influence just how much privacy a person could 'expect' to have. Otherwise why do people bother putting up privacy fences around their garden, when anyone could jus…

The Illustrated Guide to the Law has some discussion of this question here: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2201

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

#95
To me it makes sense that the FBI needs a fleet of surveillance planes for investigations. It also makes sense that these aircraft carry civilian livery to be low-profile (same idea as an unmarked pursuit car).

What seems f-ked up are the shell companies. Why not come out and say "we have surveillance planes; we need them for investigations; here's how much money we've allocated in our budget to operate them."

The FBI shouldn't need to hide this.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It also common sense. No it isn't. Any Schmuck has no authority to enforce laws.

Are you arguing the enforcing the law is a bad thing? I think it's clear people arguing this line of thinking aren't pro privacy, they just want people to get away with crimes.

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.

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

#97
post #95

To me it makes sense that the FBI needs a fleet of surveillance planes for investigations. It also makes sense that these aircraft carry civilian livery to be low-profile (same idea as an unmarked pursuit car). What seems f-ked up are the shell companies. Why not come out and say "we have surveillance planes; we need them for investigations; here's how much money we've allocated in our budget to operate them." The FB…

The FBI using front companies for aerial surveillance of suspects seems fine to me; That's just doing their job of criminal investigation.

The worrying part is seeing their planes overhead for hours at a time, which looks more like potential persistent surveillance, or a dragnet that sweeps up hundreds or thousands of people into whatever video/cellphone recording they're doing.

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

#98

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?

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_stare

Those links don't support the ability to active track a million people. It's just a 360 degree camera used to track insurgents during combat. It's not tracking every person in a city over a period of time.

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

#99

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...

The surprising thing was how easy it was to do this. Really, all you had to do was look: These planes seem to literally use (unencrypted, easily decoded) transponder codes that mean "FBI surveillance", the public records show company names that mostly fit a simple regex, and one of the front companies even has the exact same address as the U.S. Dept of Justice.

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

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

#100

As mentioned in a previous thread on this topic - they don't have to register surveillance blimps, tethered or free-flying. Based on altitude I think.

They do, they appeared on sectionals as obstacles https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2010/10/28/2010-272...
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