Maps Showing Where FBI Planes Are Watching from Above (2016) | Hacker News Reader

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

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172 pointscolinprince37 comments

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?

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.

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-...

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.

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?

They're doing it because knowledge is power. And power in a dangerous world is necessary to keep us all safe.

We need to worry about keeping the government focused on protecting us from the right things, not destroying its ability to protect us.

> They're doing it because knowledge is power. And power in a dangerous world is necessary to keep us all safe.

But the world is safer than ever before. It isn't a dangerous world. It is the safest world we know of...

I think we are at least partially at fault here. We demand action everytime the is a tragedy but perhaps sometimes the best course of action is to stay the course with no change in plan. I don't know. I'm just making assumptions tbh.

It is safe relative to some lawless past, but crime still occurs. You as a law abiding citizen just don't come in contact with it very often. The people defending you and the nation from criminals do. Don't be naive in thinking that just because you can't see it, it isn't there.

I wouldn't call the 80's some lawless past under anything but the most strict definition of past, and we're much safer now than we were then.

The authorities are becoming more of a danger than any criminal as well. This is shown directly with assets stolen under civil forfeiture rules being greater than assets stolen by criminals in the US. Anecdotally, even in the bad neighborhoods I've lived in where I wouldn't go outside at night, the worst I would expect from a criminal is a mugging or beating. With cops I have to worry about that as well as being put in jail and possibly having my life ruined depending on what they decide to charge me with.

I don't really see the cops or FBI as defending me or anyone else from criminals. At this point they are just one group of criminals fighting other groups of criminals for dominance

You have a very misguided view then. Unless you're committing a crime or are associated with criminals you really don't have much of anything to fear

I mean, that's provably false with all of the innocent people who end up in jail or things like civil forfeiture which are used to take money from anyone. How about the people who get attacked by cops who no knock raid the wrong house?

Saying that cops only go after criminals and their associates is a view that can only exist in ignorance of the mountain of evidence showing the opposite

> 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.

But your analysis of the situation is wrong. When we talk about power we necessarily speak of relative power. While this represents an escalation of FBI intelligence gathering capabilities, the average civilian has more ways to discretely communicate and congregate now than ever before.

Viewed in this light, the government improving its intelligence gathering capabilities is simply a response to the citizenry's increasing ability to avoid detection. And it goes without saying - or perhaps you need to be reminded - that bad actors' ability to work in the shadows increases in parallel with everyone else's.

> Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments

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

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

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.

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.

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

Data storage and interpretation. A single officer on every street corner can't aggregate data to learn of geographical trends, social connections, and aberrations from the norm in location, behavior, political thoughts, etc.

Iirc CIA study seems to suggest that there is a point of diminishing with data. At some point, it starts to make a human agent overconfident and over reliant on the data to the point where it is worse than having less data. Now, add the fact that we have nation states as well as other actors working hard to influence us. How difficult wood it be to plant data into a mass surveillance system? Even assuming every politician and every government employee has perfect ethical and moral standing, can we completely trust our surveillance system?

My thought is this: likely whatever your trying to keep secret, out adversaries have seen it.

Are you seriously suggesting mass, untargeted, constant surveillance is equivalent to putting a cop on every corner?

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

There's only one way to respond to this:

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

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

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.

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...

> 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.

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.

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.

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