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.
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
Did anyone NOT think it was the FBI?
I would've guessed NSA first. Actually FBI would be my fourth, after DEA and DHS.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
...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.
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)
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!?
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!
You just hit the nail right on the head. The "real" terrorists are the TLAs. History clearly shows that governments are the most prolific torturers and abusers. The State is using every tool at it's (shall we say, overly generous) disposal to keep us cowed. Foreign terrorists are a bogeyman. The "real" target of .gov's anti-terrorist activities are the citizens of the United States. Welcome to "The Great Society".
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
Dude, your moniker is a reference to the Navy.
The Navy isn't hiding its entire fleet of war planes behind shell corps and surveilling US cities with them. There is a big difference between the sovereign armed forces of a nation and a creepy, clandestine, unaccountable government operation to surveil its citizens, and I make exactly that distinction, so this supposed "hypocrisy" is nothing more than your fevered imagination.
I'm no conspiracy nutter; this whole kerfuffle is nothing more than what happens when you employ way too many government employees and fund them with way too much money; attributing some dark conspiracy to it is probably giving it way more credit than it deserves.
But there certainly is no better way to fuel the black helicopter crowd then actually finding a fucking fleet of black helicopters. And yeah, I know they are fixed wing. Fuck off.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!