Slashdot Mirror
FBI Is Behind Mysterious Flights Over US Cities
New submitter kaizendojo sends a report from the Associated Press indicating the FBI has a small fleet of planes that fly across the U.S. carrying surveillance equipment. The planes are registered with fictitious companies to hide their association with the U.S. government. The FBI says they're only used for investigations that are "specific" and "ongoing," but they're often used without getting permission from a judge beforehand. "Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they're not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is rare." The AP identified at least 50 FBI-controlled planes, which have done over 100 flights since late April. The AP adds that they've seen the planes "orbiting large, enclosed buildings for extended periods where aerial photography would be less effective than electronic signals collection."
I'm sure Obama will stop this nonsense just as soon as he's President and Bush is out of office...
Kind of sound like bad Sci-Fi but so did the NSA stuff...
Are you sure it's the FBI and not the Stasi? I'm having more and more trouble telling them apart.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Yes, FBI and NSA, you only use it for good, as opposed to Putin, who uses it for evil. The goodness in your heart will prevent your panopticon from being misused to fall into dictatorship, even though nothing in human history gives you confidence in that theory, and the Founding Fathers, who barely freed themselves from a much less intrusive entity, took great care to prevent government from doing what you are doing now, because they knew the flaw in allowing government any power like that was indeed the purity of your heart and your promise not to abuse.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone.
Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver.
Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is *wrong*.
Batman: I've gotta find this man, Lucius.
Lucius Fox: At what cost?
Batman: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be accessed by one person.
Lucius Fox: This is too much power for one person.
Batman: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.
Lucius Fox: Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job description.
Did anyone NOT think it was the FBI? I mean maybe Google, but if not Google than the FBI.
It's too bad we couldn't elect a president that promises transparency and who will work to end these practices...
Reform of the FBI, NSA, etc is unlikely, they just "keep doing it".
These guys are supposed to be the watchers, but who is watching the watchers? And even if someone was what can they do about it?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
That's a big fleet of planes. Just think, one "not secret" program inside one bureau of one branch of our Federal Government controls 50 aircraft, and we're not even allow to know what this operation is called, as they smother the whole thing under shell companies.
Isn't having a giant government great? Lets give them more money and see what they do with it.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Hide their association from who, exactly? Air traffic control? It's not like you can see who registered a plane from the ground.
This statement just screams "we are breaking the rules and don't want to get caught"
The FBI says they're only used for investigations that are "specific" and "ongoing,"
glad they're not using them for their nonspecific and already ended investigations.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Should be a &@.; .no carrier, or at least"BRB, door. I mean, large gentlemen in dark suits where the door used to [BADAMMADAMM THUNK]"
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This article is from Bristol, UK. They've been flying planes there for years.
http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/S...
One assumes in the UK it's linked to this:
http://leaksource.info/2014/09...
but that's pure speculation.
Why hide this behind shell companies if it's all above board, authorized and legal? Oh, wait, anything that law enforcement does must be legal right? /sarcasm Wouldn't it be a more effective crime deterrent if the aircraft had large bold block letter lighted signs that said FBI on them?
I'll be the first to admit that it sure seems strange that they are doing this, but does anybody really know bad things are being done here?
If they are doing electronic based collections on cell phones and such and doing so without specific warrants, that's an issue. However, if they are just up flying in circles looking at what they can see from the air, how's that a problem even without a warrant?
The article behind the Slashdot story makes a number of "leaps of faith" and implies that the FBI is somehow engaged in illegal wiretapping and performing surveillance without warrants in ways that should require a warrant. However, truth be told we don't have any real evidence this is taking place. Does it look suspicious? Yes. Could they be up to no good? Absolutely.... But all we have is a bunch of assumptions about what's really going on and a little bit od intrigue into how the FBI is trying to hide their involvement.
I'm not saying if the FBI is or isn't doing something bad, but there just might be legitimate reasons for the things uncovered so far. The FBI may have a good reason to obfuscate their involvement in these flights, and the flights may have legitimate reasons to take place to do surveillance on specific targets and locations. It is also reasonable that the FBI might have good reason to not want to talk about what's going on, who they are looking at and why.
We need more information, information that the FBI reasonably cannot share right now. So lets not jump to conclusions either way, yet...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
...cause that would just be creepy.
I usually have my tinfoil hat screwed on pretty tight, but I'm really not feeling this one. Ignore questions about the Stringray-like devices. That's a completely separate issue regardless of whether the cell tower spoofers/listeners are mounted on a plane or a rooftop or a truck. Assuming planes and cameras..so what?
1) The FBI has planes. Okay. Lots of law enforcement agencies have aircraft. Any reasonably sized city has police helicopters.
2) Does the FBI have no legitimate use for planes? I would think they could be useful in man hunts, or watching routes in wilderness areas used by drug/gun smugglers or human traffickers.
3) Is the problem that they're unmarked? Most FBI vehicles are unmarked. Agents drive around in regular cars and SUVs for investigations.
4) The shell corporations? It's the old joke about the "Flowers By Irene" van parked down the street. Is a plane with false markings different in a significant way from a van with false markings? A little shady, but not entirely unreasonable in order to protect the identity of pilots and the ownership of planes. Aren't flight paths public record? I saw an app mentioned on reddit the other day where you point your phone at a plane in the sky and it tells you all about it, including who owns it. If criminals were worried about getting spotted from the air, wouldn't they be able to pull up the current flight maps or transponder signals and see "belongs to FBI?" So, not unreasonable that they would rather have it say "belongs to XWZ Corp."
5) I don't see this being particularly useful for mass surveillance, which is the thing the government's been doing that bothers me. Swarms of drones overhead 24/7 recording everything all the time? That's a problem. But small aircraft? I don't see how those are useful for a scope larger than individuals or small groups, and only in certain areas and certain times.
I'm genuinely curious...I'm just not getting it. What's the problem with this one?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I find myself not actually caring.
It just seems like a silly waste of money, but I don't actually believe that my location while carrying my cellphone is in anyway a secret.
I'm aware that I have this big radio transponder in my pocked broadcasting my location all the time; I have been since I got it.
Stingray phone tracking has been going on in secret for a while now. Even by some local police departments.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I have been tracking this myself for the previous two weeks. I have identified 97 aircraft by N number from the FAA database that are registered to 15 non existent entities like "NG Research" and "RKT Productions". The bulk purchases of Cessna 182T aircraft started in 2010. Several sequentially serial numbered 182's are licensed to different FBI shell companies. Mostly, the fleet consists of 182's and Cessna 206's. There are also a couple of helicopters and a Cessna Citation V jet.
Personally, it has been interesting to me watching this story break in the popular media as my information is clearly more complete than what is in the AP story.
n/t
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'm sure there's already spy sats in orbit that can spy on you without being seen.
Next up, rounding up and arresting of dissenters?
And to think M*A*S*H was outraged that CIA had its own bomb (The Army-Navy Game, TV episode 29)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
On the other hand, Rand Paul just killed the worst parts of the Patriot Act. Hopefully it'll stay dead, or at least maimed. I don't know too much about Paul, but I think I'm going to find out more about him, from the most objective and reliable sources I can find.
Just because you're in a public space doesn't mean you can use *any* means to collect line of sight information. "through wall" techniques (without a warrant) are prohibited (Kyllo decision), but super long range telephoto and image enhancement is also prohibited. The general test is "would an average person be able to do it".. So binoculars and a consumer telephoto lens *might* be ok, but that 1200 mm lens on a modified low light CCD camera probably wouldn't.
Granted "reasonable people" might disagree about this, particularly in the face of rapidly advancing technology (10 years ago, you couldn't buy a multi-megapixel digital camera with image stabilization on an inexpensive drone with an autopilot for $1000; now you can).
But the courts are there just to work out these "what would a reasonable person do" questions.
Compared to conventional aircraft, drones are a LOT more unreliable. It's fine if your predator falls out of the sky over the deserts in a war zone, not so fine over a preschool in a city.
Single engine general aviation aircraft are cheap to operate, very reliable, can carry hundreds of pounds of payload, and are operated by people who can make in-situ decisions about where to land if the big fan stops turning.
They're also inexpensive: total cost, with a pilot, adding up all the burdens, especially if they use contractors, is probably in the $150/hr range (call up your local flight school and ask what it costs to rent a 172 with an instructor). There's an enormous number of companies that do aerial surveys and photography out there. One person can easily do it all: load the gear in the plane, fly the mission, etc. Pilots of such planes are poorly paid, in general ($20-30/hr). Compare to a UAS/UAV: currently, the FAA requires that you typically have 2-3 people to operate them (pilot, spotter, + extra), and those people probably aren't at the $25/hr level either.
It's time to reduce their budget.
my information is clearly more complete than what is in the AP story
They're doing what they always do; drip drip drip out the bad news, a little worse each time. Fifty?!! Wow. 97?? Well, that's only 47 more than 50 so; "no new information," as their spokes-fucks will say.
It's going on right now with the anthrax news. Yesterday the DOD revealed they sent live anthrax into Canada, in addition to the 12 US states they had already admitted to.
The Clintons have been pulling this crap since the 90's. They're dripping out Foundation donor information one foreign turd at a time; timed to run out long before the election. They've got the State Department dripping out their copies of her emails on a published schedule now.
They know there are far more than 50 aircraft. So does the AP. They'll admit to a few more in a couple news cycles. They'll probably fess up to the whole number just before Rand Paul or whomever seats the first hearing on it.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
What if ARGUS is fitted to this plane? Would you be just as happy?
The eventual plan is to float blimps all over the place with imaging sensors so dense they can identify the brand name on your jeans from 100,000ft. They want to count the hairs on your head and all heads in the entire city with 60Hz 24/7 live streamed video. They want all this video archived and stored for weeks so they can retrace your steps after the fact. When storage permits it they want this data stored indefinitely and searchable via a simple interface. Find a car at any time of day. Find out where that car was last week. Find out everywhere that car has been since it was manufactured. Find its current owner. Find everyone that person has ever talked to in broad daylight on a sidewalk.
None of this is bad from a law enforcement perspective. It's a wet dream for detective work, but we're assuming the objective of law enforcement is to catch criminals.
What is a crime these days? Oh, yeah...pretty much everything.
This statement just screams "we are breaking the *LAW* and don't want to get caught"
Do you propose we fund nasa to ensure our demise on another planet?
Tin foil won't help. You really are being spied on.
There are terrorists hiding in each and every building in the US. Don't you know?
Does anyone have any ideas as to what they're doing? I took a look at the flight paths of the plane in Phoenix and it looks like there's definitely some points of interest, they're not just flying around randomly. Looks like there's a couple near each other, one in Tempe and one a little further east, in Mesa. I can't imagine they'd fly circles around a person of interest and hope they'd not notice. Seems like a major overkill and waste of money. I did have a thought that maybe they have to keep circling the target because they're transmitting information/data to some out-of-band device located in the area. When I have some time I'm going to see if maybe they're circling cell towers or something known that could point to what they might be doing. Just curious what others might be thinking.
In case no one noticed, the previous comment was brought to you by Spanki Monki. He's KNOWS what he's talkin bout!
Dude, your moniker is a reference to the Navy. Don't sit here being all high and mighty when you were a cog in the machine. It's bullshit hypocrisy typical of conspiracy nutters. At least I know which camp you're in.
If you're not doing anything wrong, you wont have anything to worry about.