Maps Showing Where FBI Planes Are Watching from Above (2016)

https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/spies-in-the-skies

by colinprince • 9 years ago

172 37 9 years ago

zhan_eg• 9 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465978

mankash666• 9 years ago

Tone of this article is unfairly critical of DHS & FBI. When data and statistics underpin our decisions in everything - speech recognition to pricing and suggestions on Amazon, apparently the government's use of it to go after suspected terrorists is unfair.

The surveillance apparently shifted to a mosque after the San Bernardino shooting, not because the FBI hates mosques, but because data on individuals attending the mosque tagged them as suspects.

jstanley• 9 years ago

The problem isn't that they're trying to track down terrorists. The problem is that this method involves recording everything that happens within a large radius of their actual target.

wildrhythms• 9 years ago

How different is this from putting a police officer on the street corner?

emveeoh• 9 years ago

This seems like a reasonable way to police. My only issue is if the drones can be 'heard' flying over a location. For example, buzzing over a specific house or business. Neighbors would automatically assume danger or guilt. If they drone, they should stay out of ear-range from anyone on the ground. Nobody should hear surveillance.

Fnoord• 9 years ago

As for your issue, hearing the sound is a form of noise pollution. Its generally acceptable to have that during 9 to 5 but not during the night. Because it interferes with people's sleep, you can call the cops for a complaint. Not sure what they'd do if the drone owner is the FBI though.

As for the long term health effects of surveillance, we got Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives Of Others) [1] already but additionally I'm anticipating seeing that covered in the documentary The Feeling of Being Watched about Operation Vulgar Betrayal. Quoting the About page [2]:

"In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where director Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Assia uncovers hundreds of pages of declassified FBI documents that prove her hometown was the subject of one of the largest counterterrorism investigations ever conducted in the U.S. before 9/11 – code-named “Operation Vulgar Betrayal.”

With unprecedented access, The Feeling of Being Watched weaves the personal and the political as it follows the filmmaker’s examination of why her community fell under blanket government surveillance. Assia struggles to disrupt the government secrecy shrouding what happened to her neighborhood in the 90’s and probes why her community feels like they’re still being watched today. In the process, she confronts long-hidden truths about the FBI’s relationship to her community.

The Feeling of Being Watched follows Assia as she pieces together this secret FBI operation, while grappling with the effects of a lifetime of surveillance on herself and her family."

Documentary is scheduled for 2018. Kickstarter page [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others

[2] http://www.feelingofbeingwatched.com/about

[3] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beingwatched/the-feelin...

patcheudor• 9 years ago

My only issue is if the drones can be 'heard' flying over a location.

Surveillance drones are quiet and fly high enough they can't be heard and are hard to spot. The only reason to fly them low enough to be heard or seen is for intimidation.

StanislavPetrov• 9 years ago

What, then, is an unreasonable way to police? Is it okay with you that many of these flights have infrared and other technology that lets agents of the state monitor and listen to you in your own home, in addition to ubiquitous tracking? If the enforcement of law is all that matters, why stop at 24/7 surveillance of all people, all the time? Without freedom and privacy, what good is the law? If physical safety is your only concern surely we'd all be more safe if we were locked in our own individual cells, all the time.

Houshalter2• 9 years ago

I have no problem with surveillance if it stops crime. Private surveillance cameras are already pretty much everywhere and no one seems to mind. My ideal form of surveillance would be passive though. The data would be recorded, but no human would have access to it without something like a search warrant. And everything would be deleted after a week. Just like with private surveillance cameras.

iiiggglll• 9 years ago

There's only one way to respond to this:

http://i.imgur.com/lfcUz.jpg

iamthirsty• 9 years ago

I'm usually happy to not see these kinds of comments of Hacker News, but this one was funny as hell, I must admit.

ethbro• 9 years ago

Surprising how positive the initial comments here are.

Do you really believe any incidental collection that isn't specifically prohibited by law (which is to say, most) doesn't end up in a database mined for unrelated reasons?

TheAdamAndChe2• 9 years ago

IMO it almost definitely happens, but it's bad for my mental health if I stress over everything I have no control over. Political activism has failed, and our government is practically an oligarchy at this point.

To me, it's like yelling at a tornado. I can yell all I'd like, but at the end of the day, that tornado will do its thing. All I can do is either hide or move out of Tornado Alley.

SockPuppeteer• 9 years ago

There is no need to stress about surveillance nor what else you cannot control.

I like to cite the heat list (i) that utilizes artificial intelligence to determine who is most likely to be shot in a top 400 ranking system by their association with previous people who have been shot. Volunteers then reach out to these people and suggest ways to stay alive.

I still enjoy knowing that I pay for my tracking chip (cellular phone), entertainment advertising supported delivery with tracking (television), a multi step filtration system with bi-monthly checks for clean water (5gallon fill up), and roll the dice with what is in the soil that grows the food I eat.

If the ground water is not safe to drink, is the food safe to eat?

i. https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/chicago-police-...

meri_dian5• 9 years ago

Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person? More than governments have always had over the common person?

Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.

vageli2• 9 years ago

If it didn't give the government more power it would not be a pursued strategy. Reverse your comment: if it didn't give the government more power, then just why are they doing it?

jancsika• 9 years ago

Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person?

That's a truism. If we play Battleship and you can see my battleships but I can't see yours, who is going to win?

But your questioning of a truism makes me think you don't agree with a hidden premise of civic life: that there will be times where the citizenry will be rightfully at odds with law enforcement tasked with protecting it. Many stripes of civil disobedience depend on that hidden premise.

Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Trusting a future elected "good government" to keep the FBI honest with their black box capabilities-- capabilities which they reflexively claim are necessary as currently implemented to combat terrorism-- isn't a viable solution in a democracy.

A "good" government itself includes a fearless press and a strong judicial branch which citizens can use to force the FBI to be more transparent about what it does. That strong judicial branch can also be used to revise the capabilities of LE if they are found to be ripe for abuse and corruption.

Our ability to do this at all is itself a measure of how "good" our government is.

King-Aaron• 9 years ago

Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments

Thus far, no population on Earth has truly succeeded with this.

mkcsquared• 9 years ago

I apparently missed the memo where BuzzFeed started doing real reporting. When did that start happening?

soared• 9 years ago

I don't know when it started, but they've got some history of real reporting. It's odd, but I think if you still down just to the news section of the site, there is lots of high quality long form content.

eli• 9 years ago

Since at least 2012 when they had reporters embedded in the Obama campaign.

Take a look: https://www.buzzfeed.com/investigations

wjn0• 9 years ago

Looking at the map, outside the big cities, it seems mostly concentrated on highways. Does anyone know if it's realistic for a plane flying a mile high to grab, say, license plates and driver photos? Would this be legal? How close to the highway on the map would they have to be, hypothetically?

DigitalJack• 9 years ago

I think it would be feasible with a stabilized mounted camera.

Car chase video from news choppers can be a mile away.

spy_sat• 9 years ago

I don't have any doubts. The BBC reported, in 2014, that spy satellites had a 10cm resolution. This is good enough to see if you are holding a cell phone or not.

Houshalter2• 9 years ago

Sure, but you have to zoom in on one car at a time. You can't just mass collect the plates on every car in the city instantly.

paintchipluvr• 9 years ago

Most definitely there was a very good video about lead engineer (I think) talking in front of a hexagon spy satellite from the 1970s a lot of the information on it is declassified now, but he did say that the resolution on them still was and all he could say was that in the 1970s "I could read a newspaper on a table" and that's all he'd say on the matter. imagine how far technology has come along since then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtmtYlcPYYA The video.

UneasySausage• 9 years ago

Wow check above Tampa Bay; there's an immense level of activity there versus other areas of Florida - What gives

Maps Showing Where FBI Planes Are Watching from Above (2016)

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