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Spies In The Skies: FBI Planes Are Circling US Cities (buzzfeed.com) 194

Posted by msmash from the don't-feel-lonely,-FBI-is-watching-you dept.
Peter Aldhous, and Charles Seife, reporting for BuzzFeed News: Each weekday, dozens of U.S. government aircraft take to the skies and slowly circle over American cities. Piloted by agents of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the planes are fitted with high-resolution video cameras, often working with "augmented reality" software that can superimpose onto the video images everything from street and business names to the owners of individual homes. At least a few planes have carried devices that can track the cell phones of people below. Most of the aircraft are small, flying a mile or so above ground, and many use exhaust mufflers to mute their engines -- making them hard to detect by the people they're spying on. [...] The government's aerial surveillance programs deserve scrutiny by the Supreme Court, said Adam Bates, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. "It's very difficult to know, because these are very secretive programs, exactly what information they're collecting and what they're doing with it," Bates told BuzzFeed News.
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Spies In The Skies: FBI Planes Are Circling US Cities More

Spies In The Skies: FBI Planes Are Circling US Cities

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  • Just wait for one to fail and have to land on LSD (the road)

    • Just wait for one to fail and have to land on LSD (the road)

      You're not supposed to land on LSD, you're expected to take off it.

    • A mile is a mere 5,280 feet. not really very high for a light plane. Typical cross country flights are in the 8k foot range.

      Even small planes can readily be seen identified at that altitude.

      Altitude is life.

      • Even small planes can readily be seen identified at that altitude.

        "seen" and "identified" are events that follow the crucial event "noticed". If you don't notice the plane (or drone - same argument applies), then "seeing" and "identifying" don't follow.

  • Lets replace some words in the headline (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Spies In The Skies: FBI Planes Are Circling U.S. Cities

    Now replace this with:

    Spies in on the Roads: FBI Cars are Circling U.S. Cities

    How is this any different? Is the FBI not allowed to fly planes now? Don't get me wrong, I don't trust the FBI as far as I can throw them, but..I'm not sure what they are doing here is illegal?

    • Re:Lets replace some words in the headline (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:31AM (#51859875)

      Spies In The Skies: FBI Planes Are Circling U.S. Cities

      Now replace this with:

      Spies in on the Roads: FBI Cars are Circling U.S. Cities

      How is this any different? Is the FBI not allowed to fly planes now? Don't get me wrong, I don't trust the FBI as far as I can throw them, but..I'm not sure what they are doing here is illegal?

      Flying is not illegal. Large scale surveillance of cities and us citizens might be.
      The FBI really is the new SA/SS.

      • Re:Lets replace some words in the headline (Score:4, Insightful)

        by tnk1 ( 899206 ) on Thursday April 07, 2016 @11:45AM (#51860407)

        The FBI really is the new SA/SS

        Proving only that you have no idea what the SA or the SS actually were.

    • Re:Lets replace some words in the headline (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RabidReindeer ( 2625839 ) on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:59AM (#51860055)

      Two things:

      First, inherently aerial surveillance can be (unobtrusively) broad. That plays into the NSA-we're-logging-everyone's-calls-innocent-or-not concern.

      Secondly - and this is an area open to debate - there's the reasonable expectation of privacy. Something that has been used to justify a lot of surveillance in these un-private times.

      A person who stands at one end of a block and shouts at a person at the other end of the block cannot reasonably expect privacy. People are going to hear whether they want to or not.

      A person who stands next to another person and talks in a normal voice doesn't have a true expectation of privacy, but common courtesy typically comes into play here unless they have reason to suspect bystanders.

      If the people are being overhead from the other end of the block because someone has unobtrusively trained a shotgun microphone on them, that's exceeding reasonable expectations because people who go around with live shotgun mikes are not the norm and because individuals are being spied on. That's about the same degree as aerial surveillance with an unmuted plane.

      A person who's in a house talking to another person does have a reasonable expectation of privacy because even though I could bounce a laser off the window from a hidden location and pick up what was being said, that's something that needs a warrant, or at least provable justification. More or less the same level for a muted plane. Other similar acts incude attaching a GPS to someone's vehicle. or hijacking phone calls with a Stingray.

      If instead of actively aiming a spy beam at the house in question, I set up a cosmic ray detector equipped with an audio demodulator, I'm outside all bounds of reasonable expectation. This where stuff like tracking your cellphone's location lies.

      Note that these examples have no legal weight. What courts rule as "reasonable" can be quite unreasonable, but once you get into that territory, you're risking a legislative backlash or at least domestic discontent.

      The reasonable expectation of privacy in un-private situations isn't a new issue. The Federal Communications Act of 1934 allowed persons to monitor any radio-wave transmissions that they could capture, but communications not explicitly directed as public broadcasts or to the listener were not be be repeated or exploited. When Reagan "got the government off the backs of the people", they narrowed that, making it against the law to monitor selected frequencies, but regardless, private radio conversations were expected to remain private, whether intercepted legally or not.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tnk1 ( 899206 )

        If the people are being overhead from the other end of the block because someone has unobtrusively trained a shotgun microphone on them, that's exceeding reasonable expectations because people who go around with live shotgun mikes are not the norm and because individuals are being spied on. That's about the same degree as aerial surveillance with an unmuted plane.

        Perhaps, but I think it is entirely legal to do so. The question is what the data is being put to use for and whether they should be collecting it.

        In this sense, I think it is entirely legal to do what they are doing. To me that means that there needs to be a law that controls that more closely. And I'd prefer a law. I tire of having the judiciary actually doing the legislation in the country. Whether or not it is the right thing to do, I think this country needs to re-engage in actually following the

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fnj ( 64210 )

          Perhaps, but I think it is entirely legal to do so.

          "Legal" in terms of governmental activity and policies is simply defined by whatever laws that government has passed to authorize its actions and policies. Please don't get hung up on the concept of legality when evaluating governmental actions and policies. It was perfectly "legal" for the Nazis to round up arbitrarily-selected victims and work them to death as slave labor, or murder them in extermination facilities. It was "legal" because they passed laws

          • Re:Lets replace some words in the headline (Score:5, Insightful)

            by KGIII ( 973947 ) <uninvolved@outlook.com> on Thursday April 07, 2016 @02:58PM (#51861967) Journal

            Once upon a time there was an Amendment to the Constitution. It was rather specific, it basically said that the powers that weren't granted to the federal government (by the Constitution) were left to the people or to the individual States. Why do I mention that?

            What that Amendment meant was that it was, at one time, interpreted to mean that if the Constitution did not specifically allow for it that it was not something that the Federal Government was allowed to do. In other words, if the Constitution did not give them permission then it was not allowed and the rights were reserved for the individual or for the State.

            Somewhere along the road that changed. Now, the interpretation is the other way around. Now, it's read that if the Constitution doesn't expressly disallow it that it's allowed. It's pretty much exactly the opposite of the intent and we, the citizens, have not only allowed this misinterpretation but have actively cheered it on when it was "our side" that was doing it.

            I don't know exactly how or when it happened but there are a few key places to look. I think it was over several events and has gotten progressively worse.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Bob_Who ( 926234 )

              Yeah. But the good news is I'm not insane or hallucinating, after all!

              I've been watching conventional aircraft, lit and level, hovering the skies at night over the mountains, and the bay for years.

              On any clear night, without too much moon, the sky panorama includes at least one aircraft that is not about transportation or highway management. I ALWAYS SEE THEM. This is the first I'm hearing about it in the press. FFO's : Federal (or Frickin') Flying Objects.

              Its not aliens, its your tax dollars entertaini

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by KGIII ( 973947 )

                It's been a couple of years since I tripped last. Hmm... My mind could use a vacation, the chance to reground, and the introspective nature of it is something I appreciate. There's no such thing as a bad trip, they're only more interesting.

      • A person who's in a house talking to another person does have a reasonable expectation of privacy because even though I could bounce a laser off the window from a hidden location and pick up what was being said, that's something that needs a warrant, or at least provable justification. More or less the same level for a muted plane.

        We came dangerously close to losing that expectation in 2001. 5-4 Supreme Court decision [wikipedia.org]. It's something I would've expected to be 9-0 or 8-1, or maybe 7-2 at worst. That it c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      How is this any different? Is the FBI not allowed to fly planes now?

      It emphasizes the government's power and our weakness (so all the /. statists should have no problem with it). It plays into all the classic paranoia about an overreaching government, hiding dark secrets. The general feeling that the X-files played to. As the song [youtu.be] goes:

      Unmarked helicopters - hovering
      The Lord is coming soon
      Unmarked helicopters - hovering
      They said it was a weather balloon
      I know the truth
      I know the whole shebang
      I know the names of men they had to hang

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tnk1 ( 899206 )

        The government, at any time, has a huge treasure trove of secrets and information at its disposal. That's bothersome, but the reality is that half the time, they can't even coordinate with each other enough to make any use out of it at all, good or bad. What tends to matter is who in the government has the data and how it can affect you.

        Having huge amounts of information on file with the government is absolutely guaranteed if we maintain our trajectory of having the government have to take care of everyth

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          So many Americans are now fine with a totalitarian state - oh they don't like the word, but they always trust the government with more power, always find that better than the alternative. Even blatant corruption (corporation buying influence openly) is seen as a problem that only more government power (regulate the corporations) can solve. It's, frankly, frightening.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by ooloorie ( 4394035 )

      but..I'm not sure what they are doing here is illegal?

      Almost nothing the FBI or the government does is "illegal". We can still discuss whether these activities are wise or whether we should limit them.

      How is this any different?

      It may not be any different: the FBI shouldn't "circle cities" and collect data on millions of innocent people that way either.

      More importantly, any such programs should be out in the open: that is, the FBI should be required to detail what exactly they were doing, why, and how. They

    • They are circling cities for hours on end with unwarranted stingrays, collecting tens of thousands of innocent civilians data and communications in the process isn't legal whether in a car in a boat or a plane. That is only one set of sensors they are using in these aircraft while circling cities with unregistered (unrecorded flights). Take an SDR radio tune into ADS-B and start plotting the flights. You'l see them circling above LA or NY or wherever they feel like flying, without reasonable suspicion for

  • Come November, be sure to vote for a Democrat so as to finally end the KKKonservative grip on the White House and restore our privacy!

    “This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists."

    Oh, wait...

    (Troll my tail [buzzfeed.com]...)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Just how detached from reality are you?
      I don't suppose you realize that the Cato Institute (which you seem to be agreeing with) is about as conservative as you get, and Obama is Democrat?
      Until you see that you'll find both enemies and allies in both parties, you're a lost cause, just playing cheerleader. You might as well say: "I support Good. I oppose Evil!" - you'd be saying something just as vapid, but at least you wouldn't be both offensive and nonsensical while you do it.

  • Eye in the Sky (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fuseboy ( 414663 ) on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:21AM (#51859761) Homepage

    There's a great Radiolab episode about the sorts of capabilities these planes can have. Essentially, they're doing pre-emptive surveillance - they take high-resolution snapshots every second, so when there's a crime of some sort reported (e.g. a robbery, a drive-by, a getaway vehicle), they can follow the cars involved backwards in time to see where they started out, or where they went afterwards.
    http://www.radiolab.org/story/... [radiolab.org]

    • I had thought about that episode as well. Being able to track you everywhere and also *everywhen* is quite the feat.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pr0t0 ( 216378 )

      Given all the mass surveillance we've been alerted to (thank you Edward Snowden!) in the supposed effort of combating terrorism, I've always been a "he who trades freedom for security deserves neither" type of guy. But the RadioLab podcast brings it to a much more personal level because instead of fighting terrorism, which seems far removed from my reality, it looks at mass surveillance as a way to combat crime. And it's really pretty effective and cost-efficient.

      The biggest problem with a system like this,

      • The problem is the potential abuse of the system -- what political operative wouldn't love to track where and who an opponent is visiting? This is the same reasoning the warrantless metadata tracking of phone calls is bad: just knowing who they talk to is valuable political information allowing counter-planning to.

        They need some uncorruptible tracking and logging of all access to the system for review by judges and elected officials.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KGIII ( 973947 )

        Who the hell moderated you -1? It appears that someone's fixed it (I've been on the page for a while - off doing other things and just clicked your score) but how the fuck is your post 'trolling?' Did anyone, besides me, actually watch the video? Well, I didn't watch it but it was on and I listened while I was working on a project. (It's kind of strange whenever I see a familiar face at a TED talk, by the way. I'd no idea Adam had done one.)

        At any rate, it's not a bad video and I know the presenter personal

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      they can follow the cars involved backwards in time to see where they started out,

      So the trick to avoid being traced is to drive backwards. Like rot13, but for surveillance.

    • It's more than one high resolution snapshot. It's many cameras and capable of monitoring large areas simultaneously.. It's called the ARGUS-IS [wikipedia.org] and it was featured on Nova and it's been around for several years. Here's a link to the video [youtube.com]

  • How long until you update your anthem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wardrich86 ( 4092007 ) on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:21AM (#51859763)
    Seems to me you guys end your anthem with something about "land of the free"? I think it's pretty safe to remove any references to that one.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      eh, free to what ?

      Free to be spied on? Done.

      It's funny, the most free place I've lived is Singapore, known to be a police-state - but because no one breaks the law, you're free to do whatever the fuck you want. (Aside from break the law) - and even then - unless it's a law that hurts someone else ? No one gives a shit.

    • Re:How long until you update your anthem? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Thursday April 07, 2016 @11:49AM (#51860445) Homepage

      Seems to me you guys end your anthem with something about "land of the free"? I think it's pretty safe to remove any references to that one.

      For the last 15 years it's been the land of the scared and desperate who will happily give up their rights and freedoms and believe that is helping protect their rights and freedoms.

      The extent to which the average American seems to accept "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is absolutely alarming.

      They'll still tell you they're free, because you won't get hauled off for criticizing the government (yet), but they're ignoring that the FBI et al have decided the Constitution is just too damned inconvenient, and that the only way to have a "free" society is to live in a police state.

      And pretty much all political parties are pushing for the massive surveillance society to protect them from the terrorists. Sadly, if the goal was to destroy the way of life, the battle has been lost.

  • Enough Money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mikkeles ( 698461 ) on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:29AM (#51859835)

    This suggests that the FBI and DHS have more funding than they need. Perhaps it can be applied to some useful activity (such as making teacups; breaking and crushing them; mixing with water; and making more teacups).

  • Just kidding, J Edgar.

  • Damn you, George W. Bush! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:35AM (#51859905)

    Once we replace George W. Bush with a true progressive, all this crap will stop.

    I hear there's this young Senator from Illinois that so progressive, open-minded, and well-thought-of. Joe Biden even said he's well-spoken.

  • those arent mufflers (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    it's an extended exhaust stack to get the exhaust away from the optics, the heat would screw the IR band and the soot makes the glass dirty.

  • A few years ago I was watching the Killer landslide [pbs.org] documentary. There was a brief shot of video from inside a (national guard?) helicopter than panned over the instrument panel. In that brief moment I noticed that there was video display on the instrument panel that was overlaid with a road map of the area and that the map kept correct orientation with the outside world as the helicopter banked around (which given that the roads hand been obliterated by the landslide would have been a handy thing for the

  • That explains it... (Score:3, Funny)

    by NetAlien ( 2855345 ) on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:43AM (#51859961)
    Was in Baltimore on Monday and saw a couple of planes circling... they had trailing advertising banners -- what a great cover to hide their real intent...

  • Churchill navigation provides the software. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:49AM (#51860009)

    The flights are almost entirely for immigration, organized crime, and drug crimes. Only a tiny sliver is related to any terrorism missions, and those are really not done with the small planes but a citation jet or two and some PC12's. The hostage rescue team runs those mostly. They crisscross the country all the time.

    The software essentially knows where it is looming, and the officer can type in an address or parcel number or any other piece of info to point the camera. It can track moving objects reasonably well at times. There are two to three cameras typically, and includes high zoom optics for a color (electro-optical or daylight) channel and a MWIR camera. The data is simply audio, location and camera orientation data, and video feeds moved to some SSD's that are offloaded after flight. The software places the actual mapping info, notes, etc right on the video.

    The stingray units are often broken, and are widely considered by the operators to be useless POS that cost too much money. They are not useful for high flights, and are generally targeted at specific perps. The fears that they vacuum up a lot of data are well-founded, and the only thing that prevents misuse is filtering the data by an operator. Misuse happens.

    Seeing posts about patriots keeping us safe from terrorism with these planes is hilarious. The jobs are boring...ex military pilots droning around for hours, TFO staring at large monitors in the back. The missions hardly have anything to do with terrorism...just everyday law enforcement needs like a team of cops in cars on the ground. The truth is a lot more boring than the mouth breathing posts.

    Source: I installed all of the above, ride along, fix, train, etc all the way across the spectrum.

    • The flights are almost entirely for immigration, organized crime, and drug crimes.

      The most organized crime family is housed in the Capital building in DC.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Return on investment ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:59AM (#51860047) Homepage

    This must cost a lot. What is being gained, does it make economic sense ? If the actual results don't financially justify it - then they should not do it.

    Plenty of other reasons why they should not do it, but just another slant.

    • Re:Return on investment ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by crtreece ( 59298 ) on Thursday April 07, 2016 @11:30AM (#51860301) Homepage
      It makes economic sense for the agency involved. "Look, we spent all of our budget, we need to request MORE money for next year."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      This must cost a lot. What is being gained, does it make economic sense ? If the actual results don't financially justify it - then they should not do it.

      At what point do you measure the "actual results"? Any time you take that measurement, you're implicitly assuming that no further benefits will ever be obtained, and therefore the value of all potential future benefits is zero.

      By that logic, nobody would ever go to school, since you can't bring in any income by studying. After the first semester, everybody would drop out because it doesn't make economic sense when you could be making money working full time at McDonald's instead.

      (Note that I'm not saying

  • We are actually paying for this crap? We are paying for thousands of pilots and operators to fly around all day doing nothing? With no measurable results?

  • Do these planes have ADS-B transponders? You can receive and plot flights yourself in real time with a $10 RTL dongle from eBay. Google the RTLSDR project.

  • C'mon, they couldn't be doing anything bad or illegal or nefarious or whatever. I mean, when has the FBI ever done anything like that??

    Never mind their warrantless GPS tracking, targeting WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning supporters, spying on children while using 'Roving Wiretaps', entrapment of certain Muslims, the 2008 Amendments to the Attorney General’s Guidelines, their war on whistleblowers, proxy detentions outside the US, use of the No Fly List to harass Americans, exaggerating and manufacturing

  • It all comes together now. Google maps and a myriad of other information gathered by Google (and others) available to the US government.

    Julian Assange covered this well in the book "When Google Met WikiLeaks". When Eric Schmidt met to interview Assange he took 3 other people with him. All with ties to the Department of State.

    What could go wrong?

  • This is completely wrong (Score:3)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Thursday April 07, 2016 @12:22PM (#51860671)
    We were told we were getting black helicopters, not Cessnas!
  • MI-5 and by cooperation the NSA, were doing this in the 1950's, looking for local oscillators in HF radios. They were basically hunting down Soviet spies. They used airplanes and vans. What's happening today is not a new idea, just updated with better technologies. link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I got a tour of a camera built exactly for this purpose by MIT-Lincoln Labs a few years back: the camera was a carefully aligned collection of large-format CCDs, allowing real-time movie frame-rate imaging in the gigapixel range. plus advanced jpg-like compression to relay to ground stations in real time.
    So to those comparing this w/ surveillance from cars: imagine this aircraft a km or so from your position but able to resolve your face. -- and track your exact position. Once a target's acquired, it's r

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