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FBI Forced To Release 18 Hours of Spy Plane Footage (vice.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a report from Motherboard:
It's been just over a year since amateur aviation sleuths first revealed the FBI's secret aerial surveillance of the civil unrest in Baltimore, Maryland. Now, in response to a FOIA request from the ACLU, the Bureau has released more than 18 hours of aerial footage from the Baltimore protests captured by their once-secret spy planes, which regularly fly in circles above major cities and are commonly registered to fake companies.
The cache is likely the most comprehensive collection of aerial surveillance footage ever released by a US law enforcement agency... The footage shows the crowds of protesters captured in a combination of visible light and infrared spectrum video taken by the planes' wing-mounted FLIR Talon cameras. While individual faces are not clearly visible in the videos, it's frighteningly easy to imagine how cameras with a slightly improved zoom resolution and face recognition technology could be used to identify protesters in the future.
The FBI says they're only using the planes to track specific suspectds in serious crime investigations, according to the article, which adds that "The FBI flew their spy planes more than 3,500 times in the last six months of 2015, according to a Buzzfeed News analysis of data collected by the aircraft-tracking site FlightRadar24."
The cache is likely the most comprehensive collection of aerial surveillance footage ever released by a US law enforcement agency... The footage shows the crowds of protesters captured in a combination of visible light and infrared spectrum video taken by the planes' wing-mounted FLIR Talon cameras. While individual faces are not clearly visible in the videos, it's frighteningly easy to imagine how cameras with a slightly improved zoom resolution and face recognition technology could be used to identify protesters in the future.
The FBI says they're only using the planes to track specific suspectds in serious crime investigations, according to the article, which adds that "The FBI flew their spy planes more than 3,500 times in the last six months of 2015, according to a Buzzfeed News analysis of data collected by the aircraft-tracking site FlightRadar24."
I guess law enforcement shouldn't be able to use aircraft or cameras. Maybe they shouldn't be able to use cars or computers, either.
I'll say it again: it is not the technology or capability that is at issue. In a free society governed by the rule of law, it is the LAW that is paramount.
Many of these planes also have Stingray's (cell site simulators) so they ID everyone they fly over by their smartphones, they don't need to visually ID the people with the camera's. I am a pilot and saw one of these planes orbiting the Gurnee Mills Mall (Northern Chicago suburbs - could tell as it had the odd ball (where the camera is) sticking out behind one the main wheels on the 182), just cruising around and around at low altitude a couple of months ago. Felt very disconcerting to know my and my wife's phone ID had probably been swept up in that - turned them off but was obviously too late. Land of the free...