A Mysterious Military Spy Plane Has Been Flying Circles Over Seattle for Days | Hacker News Reader

A Mysterious Military Spy Plane Has Been Flying Circles Over Seattle for Days

thedrive.com

160 pointspera88 comments

> Nobody at the DoD seems to know who the aircraft belongs to or what exactly it is doing flying so many missions over the Seattle area.

No. They know they just aren't disclosing it.

Source?

You think the DoD would stand by and do nothing while a completed unidentified military surveillance plane circled a major city for days? Whatever this thing is doing, it's cleared at a high level. Maybe the people answering the phones for journalists don't know.

Not to mention that the last few days the Navy's been conducting an air show.

http://komonews.com/news/local/blue-angels-air-show-begins-t...

It was supposed to be a joke; of course I don't expect that. By definition, if it is undisclosed, then there is no source.

Put a drone up next to it and you will find out real fast who it belongs to.

No. That simply results in a TCAS warning and a couple of irritated pilots.

No one is tracking a small drone on radar. There will be no TCAS warnings.

"You guys are going to go up there and circle until you can replicate that failure."

(Much of what test pilots really do is stuff like that.)

I can attest to this. I was a systems engineer for a (In-Flight Entertainment System) company and I can't count the amount of hours I have held a plane in the air just to read the bits over the ARINC bus from the FMS. No documentation.

What is there about entertainment systems that can't be tested on the ground?

Data from the flight management system via an undocumented protocol?

I might be dense here: Why would the protocol be undocumented? Entertainment to toilets to guidance, it's still a flight system.

Perhaps because it was spurious traffic "leaking" over the bus that wasn't actually intended to be there, and would be removed if anyone in the flight control systems department were told they were exposing it. And yet, that leaking data was the only way to build a cute view of travel-time or somesuch to differentiate their software for their bid, so they had to use it, and had to not mention it or request assistance with it.

In software terms, it's a bit like Windows software that relies on OS-private APIs or registry keys. Sure, the data is there to use, but it wasn't intended to be used by anything other than the OS itself, and if they could (without impacting performance), they would have made it inaccessible to userland.

But, in both of these scenarios, the platform owner always seems to be happy to see the program using "their API" once the app is released and gains traction and draws attention to the platform. That doesn't mean they do anything about the API; if it's private, it stays private; if it's deprecated, it stays deprecated. But they don't tell the company to stop once the app is out, and may even feature them in advertisements about their amazing platform.

That's what they were trying to find out :)

Some in flight entertainment systems offer live news and sporting events. I guess receiving that on a plane in flight is very different than a plane on the ground.

Here's one example from NASA: https://c3.nasa.gov/dashlink/static/media/other/ObservedFail...

Here's something I think about sometimes: we're not far from a future where it would be trivial for every major city to have drones flying over it 24x7, collecting everything - license plates, faces, electronic signals, and so on. Cost and technological ability are basically there already, if we're willing to budget the money (as in, it wouldn't cost fifty trillion a year or whatever, its within the realm of financially possible). And all our laws say that is totally legal, even to share every bit of that data with every police department everywhere.

Are we ready for that? How would the world respond? How would American respond? Would we collectively decide this is not something we want and pass laws to stop it? How would those work, when the same laws that protect those methods also protect citizens right to photograph anything they want from a public location? Is there any degree of surveillance that Americans would reject, and would the government accept that rejection? Or has the world changed so much now that that's our inevitable future?

Honestly I think it's the latter.

Can't they already do that with cameras and fixed position sensors? Why drones?

Yep, for example they continuously scan license plates with police/parking enforcement vehicle-mounted cameras.

Just do a data dump at the end of shift (saves on those pesky mobile data usage fees) for later processing and aggregation into a stored location history.

I'm reminded of an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that our our data privacy laws need to be based on use rather than collection, e.g. even if you know someone goes to the bar every week, it's illegal to predicate a credit or insurance decision on that knowledge.

Might be worth considering.

When in history have "chinese walls" like that ever worked?

Even if I personally know that by happenstance, I'm not allowed to use it? Laws that try to regulate my private thoughts are much scarier than surveillance.

That's not a private thought. You would be taking action against another person.

Yes, deciding whether to enter into a contract affects the other person, just like everything else. That's a red herring. The point is, my motives should be my own. Do you really want a court second-guessing every decision you make in the marketplace because it constitutes "taking action against another person"?

I suspect London will be the first there, simply because of the level of existing surveillance

Similar services already exist and are sold to cities; I've seen articles about them for a year at least (in serious publications). I'm not sure they are 24x7 or that they have the resolution to read faces or license plates, though obviously that tech exists, but it's happening now.

In one article, they talked about how they record the video, and that later if they are investigating something that happened at location X, they can go back and track all the cars and people that came and went.

> How would the world respond? How would American respond? Would we collectively decide this is not something we want and pass laws to stop it?

You can see the response of Americans right now, which is nothing. My hypothesis is that the public is reactive to sensational issues (real or not), and is almost never proactive. The public lacks the time, understanding, attention and wisdom to be proactive about even a tiny fraction of public issues; that's why we need experts and "elites" in representative government, not pure democracy. Right now those elites are letting us down, badly, and on many issues.

The "Eye in the Sky" episode of Radiolab is definitely worth a listen.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/

They already have some up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-military-airships-g...

https://youtu.be/WShv8ckdgE4?t=80

Aren't we there yet?

Here in Norway I took a summer trip from Oslo to the children's park Hunderfossen north of Hamar. We drove through about 7+ motorway toll stations, all automated, all collecting license plate info used to bill us (and what else?). There are also cameras on poles beside the road to 'monitor traffic'.

Norway wants a cashless society, govt. clearly stating it's because they want to put an end to businesses who do cash work and don't declare it, thus avoiding tax (but this is because tax is high, and a lot of people can't afford to get a carpenter in if they have to pay an extra 25% on work and materials). A cashless economy is a traceable economy/individual.

There's more, for example cars going fully digital and traceable. You can guess the effects of an 'always on', zero analog society. I personally have not carried cash for about 18 months. I remember going on a trip at the advent of the mobile phone era, and the joy of 'being lost' until I decided not to be. No more.

It's enough to make one paranoid.

You mean something like this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS

The annual SeaFair air show is over Seattle this weekend with many different military aircraft circling overhead all weekend.

http://www.seafair.com/events/2017/seafair-weekend

Also, McChord Air Force base, North America's largest air force base, is about an hour south of Seattle.

SIGINT platform providing support to a training exercise for ground-based assets.

There is no substitute for a big city with a whole bunch of different signal sets emitting in and around the spectrum of the actual selector you are looking for.

>> selector

Found the former SIGINT guy.

My clue was their use of "SIGINT".

Bingo. You should see the patterns near Newark. There's drone circles like this constantly.

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/FBI-M...

Wouldn't they be willing to disclose the purpose then? Why would they keep a training excercise like that secret.

Because in general the military in the US is far more secretive than they used to be. In the past there was a certain expectation that the DOD had at least some obligation to keep the public informed of what was happening within our borders unless it needed to be heavily classified. Over time that's changed to where now they keep secret even mundane things that directly impact Americans, and even when the information is highly generalized and/or well known because we have things like radios and cameras too.

On one hand I kind of understand it - the world is slowly coming to the realization that information is the most important weapon in both war and peacetime, and no matter how inconsequential any piece of data may seem the ability to aggregate, cross-reference, and so on mean any shred of information could be dangerous. But at the same time that approach to the world doesn't really allow for a free society. I think the US government has made pretty clear they're happy to subvert or ignore American ideals to protect it (hell, the whole western world is like that now - see May's bald statement that no human right is too important to throw away in pursuit of bad guys).

It doesn't sound like that much of the mystery at the end of the day, as the article concludes that it's probably a USAF/JSOC/CIA training mission.

As they're flying out of Boeing Field, I'd tend to agree. Plenty of aircraft go through rounds of testing and qualification there.

The following, though, does remain the law of the land:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Surveillance of publicly visible areas is not the same as search and seizure of your person, house, papers, or effects.

That depends heavily on what tools are being used for the surveillance.

While this might feel counterintuitive, it's supported by Supreme Court precedent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States

I think the future of this doctrine is unclear.

The "bright line" here is "at the entrance to the home". But there is no indication in the article that the plane in question is seeing things inside people's homes, or imaging heat given off from inside the home (which was the issue in the Supreme Court case). It's just (the article speculates) observing activites outside people's homes, in public spaces. So I don't think the precedent you cite is relevant.

Point being, if the aircraft is looking at private residences using sensors that reveal things that couldn't ordinarily be perceived by humans, its activities may be legally iffy.

But that's what parallel construction is for, I guess...

One cop on a street corner observing the public is one thing.

A group of people with a warrant gathering detailed routines of a suspect is one thing.

An apparatus that can observe the detailed activities and whereabouts (location AND behavior) of all people in a metro area is a completely different thing, and one our courts and Constitution have not yet handled.

What's the difference other than technology makes it more efficient. I'm sure the courts will weigh in eventually but this seems like a legislative issue.

Efficiency is a problem in it's own right. It drives down cost. Which means that surveillance will be used more often and for less important reasons. It's not uncommon for people to need to skirt the law from time to time. This is particularly true of people in the lower classes of society. Is it fair to ding a retail worker whose car registration just expired but needs a few days to get it all straightened out? That's something modern surveillance could easily handle nearly perfectly.

We could also just write laws that allow grace periods to cover problems like that. It is already common legislative practice to do that in many cases...

My original point was I find the "It's too efficient" argument to be a very weak attack angle on the use of technology in surveillance.

> one our courts and Constitution have not yet handled.

Exactly. It's one thing to say our laws and Constitution should place strict limitations on this kind of surveillance. I agree with that.

But it's another thing to say they already do, when they don't.

There's lots of possible reasons that aren't nefarious. Could be training of pilot or crew (I once watched a passenger aircraft orbitting the base I was stationed at for most of a day. Turned out it was commercial pilot training and check rides). Could be test flights of equipment and systems for airworthiness certfication. Could be DoT testing navigation aids, etc. If the government wanted to surveil Seattle residents for some reason, I expect the NSA could come up with something a little more subtle.

One possibility plucked straight from a thriller: a nuke or dirty bomb is somewhere in the area and they are scanning for it.

"scanning for it"

Cue head explosion...

The lack of sense of humor here is stunning. Other comments here are deep in conspiracy-land. Forgive me for contributing a differing, humorous viewpoint.

You might want to read up on Poe's law[0] before spending too much more time constructing clever ironic posts for threads like this.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Actually, the government (NNSA, https://nnsa.energy.gov/) trains for that on a pretty regular basis.

They scan cities for known sources of radiation (hospitals, certain types of industries, natural sources) and map it all out. They'll also go back and conduct drills using those maps to see if they can locate planted radiation sources.

A real-life thriller...

Indeed, it can be anything, but fyi the government is already surveilling Seattle residents:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/fbi-says-utility...

Why does it have to be a DoD/CIA mission? It's quite possible it is Homeland Security gathering information on illegal immigrants, or possibly the FBI conducting surveillance.

I've seen these sorts of overflights regularly in the Baltimore/DC area. Most of the time it is Cessnas over a specific area (usually the FBI, judging from the shell company associated with the aircraft no.), but recently there was an umarked/blocked info aircraft canvasing Baltimore for a couple hours -- just the city, a very specific grid flight pattern. It was flying out of a commercial facility in Delaware.

My money is on surveillance targeted at locating illegal immigrants, using ELINT and photographic evidence together.

>>It's quite possible it is Homeland Security gathering information on illegal immigrants

How would it do that using this plane?

This is AF training exercise Mobility Guardian. Nothing to see here.

Is it a US military asset?? It's a CASA (European made aircraft). What is the possibility that it is a foreign military aircrat on joint exercise, or testing out integration of US made ECW equipment installed at Boeing field?

  "the only visible markings being a USAF serial on its tail"

Reminds me a lot of a persistent surveillance program they've tested in other cities. The idea is if you record all movements in a city from the air, you can trace where criminals come from or where they go. This system has not been implemented in a major American city, to my knowledge, because of the privacy issues.

Excellent Radiolab episode about it: http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/

I think the theories in the other comments are more likely and I would prefer that this one was not correct: Seattle is one of the largest sanctuary cities close to the US border and a spy plane would be one way to try to gather evidence of illegal immigrants and to try to intimidate city officials (who might be unofficially alerted to the reason for the plane's presence).

How dare American government gather evidence on someone meaning the law! Despicable thing indeed.

You're fine with the police using military surveillance equipment?

How (tf) would you gather "evidence of illegal immigrants" from the air?

One of the main things these aircraft do is to record video over long periods of time. It could follow vehicles from known work sites back to their origin, pinpointing the homes of day laborers. That's one thing I can think of, there are probably a lot more. Like sigint on certain types of mobile phones calling internationally etc.

Another possible reason is the unusual smoke in the area from the BC Fires. It's been horrid viability quality for almost the last week.

But you get a nice red moon.

Seattle has been blanketed in smoke during the last week from forest fires in British Columbia. The flyovers may be related to this or the Seafair airshow.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/why-so-much...

> very unique

sigh

Stopped reading after the third word.

Maybe it's one of those rigs with a huge-sensor camera that records the entire city. RadioLab did a story about this technology. So, for example, if a gas station is robbed, they can go to the video and play it backwards from the time of the robbery and follow the criminals back to their homes.

Is Boeing making any military systems at Boeing WA, or only airliners? I'd assume they make at least the military versions of civilian airframes (e.g P-8 Poseidon) there?

If that's the case, won't Boeing often be doing long test flight campaigns for various subsystems out of Boeing field?

Is this the same plane flying around Vancouver, BC, Canada as well? Mention of an army plane(s?) kept appearing on r/Vancouver today.

Although I could be very well mistaken and its a coincidence.

The Rcaf just bought new Search and Rescue aircraft and the training centre is in Comox. Could be them.

Related to a threat from North Korea?

Any embassies, foreign properties in those circles?

There are no embassies in Seattle.

...unless some insanely stupid government somewhere got the Washingtons mixed up.

There are 7 consulates (diplomatic mission representing the embassy in the capital) in Seattle: Canada, Japan, Mexico, Russia, El Salvador, the PRC, South Korea

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diplomatic_missions_...

Don't you just love how people post on the internet with such confidence in what they believe.

Getting facts is hard!

Hey! Is that a dig at Washington State/Washington DC team locales?

I may or may not have lived that lie for an embarrassingly long time before I was clued in.

This reads like a broadcast from Night Vale.

It's NSA

Teaching criminal startups to track such planes with lasers from drones, to prevent surveilance?

Also, i guess for gangs the somali option of burning tires is viable.

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