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Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

I don't think people have internalized the fact that the US gov has surveillance drones in holding patterns over most US metropolitan areas. Every time I've seen someone poke around one of those persistence ADSB/radar maps, they have gone through the stages of discovery: "What are those circles?" "Surveillance drones." "Haha, no, really, what are they? Planes circling the airport?" "No, that (points to thin circle) is a plane circling the airport. The heavy circles are surveillance drones. Really." "Uhh.... (shifts uncomfortably) so where do you want to go for lunch today?"

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Have an example of this? Would be interesting to see it.

Seconded.

BuzzFeed News had a big feature and analysis here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/spies-in-t...

This isn't about drones, but here is an article from last year about the DoD using surveillance balloons that use radar from 65,000 ft to generate high-res images of the ground:

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-government-testing-survei...

It's so funny how you can whip up conspiracy theories just by adding superfluous adjectives. Instead of just saying "radar" you say "wireless radar device", as if prior radars used wires, and then you say it creates "high-resolution images using radio pulses", as if this did not apply to every radar ever built.

We have been using aircraft to track vehicles since the invention of aircraft. The people and their government have a legitimate interest in doing so. Nobody has a right to go about in a vehicle anonymously and privately.

https://www.modbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/bee-inv...

Where did I say there was no legitimate interest to do this? I am in agreement with you in saying this surveillance is not new and is not a conspiracy.

It's possible for something to be not new and not a conspiracy but also not good and not right, all at the same time.

Then it should have been posted in technology, security, or news subreddits.

We shouldn't expect the centuries old philosophical/legal/procedural balance we've crafted between investigatory powers and personal rights to remain valid and correct in the face of a 99.999% decrease in the cost of surveillance and corresponding explosion in scope.

Naturally, authorities didn't object to the technological expansion of their power. It's up to us to figure out if/when/how to push back. Step zero is admitting that it actually happened, admitting that we should reset our heuristics, and calling out the ludicrous argument "this is how it's always been," because, well it isn't.

Not a map but it being done openly in Baltimore.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-c...

This book is the best source on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Sky-Secret-Gorgon-Stare/dp/05449...

There are twitter bot accounts that post live when they detect aircraft flying in circles:

@SkyCirclesSF @SkyCirclesLA @SkyCirclesDC

I don't think people really think about it.

Another example: most cities have systems that can pinpoint a gunshot to a block radius anywhere in the city so that police can respond quickly.

It's funny. I remember a court case where Shotspotter had a pinprick on one block and the news said "the shooting actually occurred a block away". Haha, that's nuts. Crazy accurate.

The expert testimony did have the engineer saying "The accuracy is invented by sales and marketing. The pinpoint is just a starting point. It's in a radius around that." Which I found amusing because it seemed obvious to me.

It did improve my ability to sell, though. These caveats are useless when you're selling. You can always explain afterwards.

Oakland has shotspotter and my understanding is that it's been considered a failure

Really? Why?

In DC, I think it's been pretty successful because lots of gunshots do not result in police calls.

Looking into it more it's less clear than I remembered. OPD considered scrapping it in 2014 saying the costs weren't justified and they'd rather have more money for their helicopter. Other cities have said they're not confident in its effectiveness but that doesn't seem to be a large factor here. They ended up keeping it.

https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-cops-aim-to-scr...

This is an interesting system. I have worked with this technology on large and small scales, and it's a lot less accurate than you'd think. You have no hope of sending a police cruiser to check out a single gunshot based on the outputs of this system. But a single gunshot won't generate a police call in many cities as it is, so no change there. But a gang war? Sure, that will get the phone lines going and also generate many data points to help pinpoint the location using this system. So many factors affect the speed of sound through air, that the problem becomes one of those logarithmic "How many more microphones do you want to install to eke out this tiny bit of accuracy?" kinds of things. I'm not sure it's useful to point to what cities are saying about it, either. The technology itself is a Hard Problem, but I'm also 100% sure many law enforcement bureaucrats will use any excuse to keep money flowing into their budgets, even if the money is earmarked for something that doesn't work (or doesn't work well).

Hm, I'm not so sure. Take this for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#Shooting_a...

Officers were able to locate and respond within a minute because of a system like this.

There is a very big difference between a system that can localize gunshot sounds and surveillance drones.

Assuming, of course, that the gunshot detectors are in fact special gunshot detectors and not a giant array of normal microphones with some algorithms applied to them.

> Assuming, of course, that the gunshot detectors are in fact special gunshot detectors and not a giant array of normal microphones with some algorithms applied to them.

Why is your statement based at all on that assumption?

I don't see what makes surveillance drones necessarily worse than human cops flying helicopters overhead with cameras (which I know for a fact occurs in my city). What makes the "drone" part problematic?

Scale, oversight. Would you mind if we had one cop per person and followed them around in public at 20 foot distance everywhere they went?

I mean, a human in a helicopter is NOT the same as Gorgon Stare[0]. That's what's problematic, to me, anyhow.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare

But if a human is piloting a helipcopter with a "gorgon stare"-esque technology attached, seems pretty much the same.

I guess I'm unsure what about the autonomous flying is what draws people ire, rather than just overhead surveillance as a concept.

Looks like they have an app for law enforcement. It does provide some audio.

>gunshot audio to gain situational awareness, and; precise location of the gunshot to search for evidence.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shotspotter-respond/id10968200...

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