I found a secret US Government surveillance program (2019)
docs.google.com
docs.google.com
IIRC the term the FBI used to describe these activities was "confidential", which is why they registered the planes to front companies they made up. Congress wanted to know more, so the FBI gave them a confidential briefing (https://apnews.com/article/1240a8a42edf4a86aff72a0246525a95):
The FBI assured Congress in an unusual, confidential briefing that
its plane surveillance program is a by-the-books operation short
on high-definition cameras — with some planes equipped with
binoculars — and said only five times in five years has it tracked
cellphones from the sky.
The FBI would not openly answer some questions about its planes,
which routinely orbit major U.S. cities and rural areas. Although
the FBI has described the program as unclassified and not secret,
it declined to disclose during an unclassified portion of a
Capitol Hill briefing any details about how many planes it flies
or how much the program costs. In a 2009 budget document, the FBI
said it had 115 planes in its fleet.
Since then, I've done some other stuff in a similar vein.
I created the Advisory Circular network of twitter bots that post, in real-time, whenever they see aircraft circling (https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1294002338215034880). The code is all open source. The bots have helped me (and hopefully other people) discover all sorts of interesting things that aircraft are doing, often right over our heads: power line inspections, dropping sterile fruit flies, tests of new military technologies over the Mojave desert, retired attack helicopters fighting fires, and more.
ADS-B data includes information about navigation accuracy, and it turns out it's pretty easy to see when an aircraft is experiencing GPS/GNSS interference, and even map it. I created GPSJam (https://gpsjam.org) to make that data accessible to the public (instead of, say, paying tens of thousands of dollars to geospatial intelligence companies). On that map you can see things like conflict zones, U.S. military tests and training in the Southwest, and Russia's concern over increased risk of drone strikes deep into their territory.
The coolest thing about all this stuff is that it's not really very hard to do. It turns out as soon as you start paying attention to aircraft over the course of days, and weeks, you immediately find mysteries to solve.
Level 1 prompt engineering for Whisper is simply using a prompt like "Let's pretend we're air traffic controllers" or something to prime it to expect the specialized ATC lingo vs. any other thing people might be talking about. This prompt is specific to ATC, but is otherwise very general.
Level 2 becomes specific to the frequency you're transcribing: "Cessna, El Monte Tower, cleared for the option runway 01." Now Whisper knows that it's ATC, and that the name of the tower (which it will hear a lot) is El Monte, and that there's a runway numbered 01.
Level 3 is where you add additional time- and situation-dependent prompting to increase accuracy. If you look at ADS-B data, you can figure out which aircraft are/were in the area when the audio was recorded, that might be communicating on the radio. You can create prompts using those call signs, greatly increasing accuracy of transcription. (Some researchers have done work along these lines, pre-Whisper.)
An example of what Whisper makes possible: Here's a "supercut" of all the times either a pilot or ATC mentioned "laser", across multiple frequencies, across multiple days: https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1578516727549153280 Here's an example of what I'd like to be able to do (I created it manually, but I don't think it's too far out of reach), a video showing the aircraft map synchronized with ATC audio across frequencies, from a few days ago when a Cessna busted the presidential TFR near Philadelphia: https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1605293275333607424
Not Whisper-related, but just a fun proof-of-concept of a browser extension that lets you click on aircraft on the map and listen to them on the radio: https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1521551159206416384
Plane trackers have discovered secret government surveillance programs, sparking congressional inquiries. They have tracked dictators and criminals. They did help uncover the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. They did track a Saudi kill squad's movements, after the fact.
There is no evidence that anyone has ever been killed, injured, or threatened using plane tracking data.
Ars Tech has "Why was there GPS jamming for 2 days in Dallas", From October, but your tool shows multiple consistent spots of Interference at San Antonio going back MONTHS and MONTHS https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/cause...
And I see it in a previous HN post, but no answers, just "Military". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32245346
EDIT: The Ars Technica article is about GPS Interference of Dallas, to the north. It has in image showing a LARGE swath of "Medium" interference between San Antonio and Dallas, in October 2022. Your tool now shows ZERO Interference for October 2022.
EDIT: I guess that Randolph Airforce Base has two Military Operating Zones, is the explanation for why these two areas have been under GPS Interference for all of 2022. The October thing in Dallas is still bizarre, and maybe the US military had one these GPS jammers on the Mexico border as in the article?
The -two bubbles- of Medium interference are on Highways to the -West- and -Southeast- of the city.
EDIT: Yea, that Weather Map does show big "MOA"s nearby. I guess it was silly to assume MOAS would be nearer Dallas, Texas, as the MOAS are really further from the capitol city.
Here's the two Interference bubbles near San Antonio https://gpsjam.org/?lat=29.17662&lon=-98.43553&z=8.4&date=20...
1. gpsjam.org has useful permalinks. Copy and paste one here and I can see exactly what you’re talking about.
2. You’ve described exactly where some Randolph MOAs are. It makes me wonder if you looked at a map before claiming my explanation wasn’t plausible. See https://skyvector.com/?ll=29.61580898428276,-98.562377924644...
Original episode (2015): https://radiolab.org/episodes/eye-sky
Follow-up (2016): https://radiolab.org/episodes/update-eye-sky
On top of that, if the FBI was showing these tapes to cops for crimes as common as burglary you'd think somebody would have spilled the beans by now.
Many of these planes simply capture high resolution panorama timelapses of a large portion of the city.
The police can then wait for a crime to happen (e.g. a burglary), and then if they have coverage of the time, they can just play their timelapse in reverse to figure out where the vehicles involved came from or went.
Then, they use "parallel construction" to erase the fact that they used persistent mass surveillance to catch the criminals. They already know whodunit, so it's just a matter of coming up with a "lucky break" or an "anonymous tip" or whatever to explain how they caught someone, without ever exposing the surveillance to the scrutiny of the court.
If we're speculating baselessly, my guess would be that, like all cops, the FBI has a bloated surveillance budget and loves trinkets. Why waste shoe leather or sit in a car for hours when you can justify a joy ride in a plane while you watch the bad guys?
https://www.techdirt.com/2014/02/03/parallel-construction-re...
Especially when, to prevent abuse or mistakes, that isn't sufficient on its own to justify police action?
First, what is the ideal amount of crime? It's not zero. Zero-crime is a police state. The people must have some power to inflict damage on the government and elements of society.
I think it would be rather difficult to conduct the civil rights movement today. Monitoring protests and targeting not just the leaders but even the participants is just too easy now.
Second, parallel construction is the most corrosive concept to ever enter US law enforcement. It completely runs around the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine. When the DEA gets a tip-off from the NSA, that obviously illegal abuse of power never gets a debate in a court-room, because a "routine police stop" lucked upon the evidence.
Similarly, with the combo of demographic and location databases, they can rule out everyone with an alibi.
This seems to be a PowerPoint? Rather uncomfortable to read.
Lots of provocative flight paths to look at.
If you really want to see some wild stuff then lookup the Baltimore aerial DVR program.
Also, the link returns an error to me presumably because of traffic. Can somebody double-post this elsewhere?
Just think of all the taxpayer money you're saving!
It might also be legitimate surveillance orders, issued by a judge (hence DoJ), that allows for lawful communications interception, external surveillance, etc on a particular subject. The planes tracks look like they mostly circle some single spot or a driving car, or search for something.
I don't argue it's legitimate. I argue there's no evidence the other way.
Transparency is essential to rule of, by, and for the people.
Now, I am not interested in the government surveillance aspect of all of this...
I mean, you have a city like L.A. where statistically, you'll have a higher incidence of crimes than say, a corn field in Nebraska, and you have the ability to be an "eye in the sky" (looking down at a city from the sky is technically a public view -- that is, not opposed by the 4th Amendment) -- so why wouldn't [city/state/federal] governments -- use that as a means for preventing/understanding/solving crimes?
I don't endorse it -- but I don't oppose it... (could I, even if I wanted to?)
I'll let the civil liberties lawyers and politicians and social philosophers and podcasting pundits -- have that debate -- but to me it's a waste of time.
All of that being said, here's my key takeaway from the article:
>"But then this amazing thing happened: Someone figured out the RTL dongle for receiving digital TV transmissions could be used as a wideband SDR and pick up all sorts of stuff, including the aircraft transponder packets on 1090 MHz that sometimes include aircraft position."
Now, that is interesting and useful information!
In other words, if someone wanted to -- they could potentially track (you might ask, "who's surveilling who?" in this scenario! <g>) all aircraft moving around a certain vicinity of space, anywhere in the world -- via transponder radio packets, and transponder radio packets alone!
Oh sure, they might miss one or two stealth aircraft(!) <g> -- but for the most part it should work!
Also, another related idea here might be to use SDR to implement a home-brewed version of radar...
Like, I didn't think of either of these two things before reading this article(!) -- but now that I read this article, I think to myself: "yeah, either of those things might be possible!"
So, a thank you to the author for expanding (and pardon the pun here! <g>) -- my horizon! <g>
Always cool to see this stuff.
Is that a browser issue, or are there embedded links to now-dead resources in the deck...?
(For instance, slides 51 and 52 are supposed to have content per the speaker's notes, but are just black in my version of the deck.)
Slide 51: https://d.pr/i/PgQfqf
Slide 52: https://d.pr/i/a0bt3E
It's community practice to add (YYYY) to items that are not from the current year
(kidding)
I know there were other HN threads related to this work/topic, but I don't know how to find them exactly, so if anyone wants to bring up some links, that would be great.
We have to be the ones to make it crumble.
Go look at something like the data that has come out (ten years ago, now!) about the RQ170 program if you want "secret".
I'm glad the author investigated, documented, and pointed this out. And as a former Imagineer I'm not at all surprised that they followed their curiosity.
(And what do you want, a cookie? I've been told that finding a secret US surveillance program is like an etymologist finding a new bug -- the amount of work that goes into formalizing it is such that often folks leave it for someone newer to the field to make their mark rather than focus on something that won't deliver them income when they're fairly certain if they went through the rigamarole they could name some new... thing.)