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Comment by avidiax | Hacker News Reader

The gravity of this isn't captured at all by the article/presentation.

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.

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That's a pretty complicated explanation, given that (1) every major city PD already makes ample use of street-level CCTV footage, and (2) it involves local-federal cooperation (the FBI is seemingly the ones flying these planes).

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?

I don't know why this is being talked about like it's just speculation. This technology is publicly known. RadioLab even did an episode on it a few years ago:

https://radiolab.org/episodes/eye-sky

Is this from actual investigative reporting with sources or just assumed from theoretical capability of tech? Not trying to say this isn’t happening. Just saying that what’s possible and what’s happening don’t always match up.

Parallel construction is a real thing. I would be surprised if this wasn't happening with FBI planes.

https://www.techdirt.com/2014/02/03/parallel-construction-re...

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-surv...

There was an investigative article from years ago that I recall said exactly what you're describing, complete with images from the planes demoing the ability to track suspects. Wish I could remember a way to dig that up now.

Possibly PBS - Rise of the Drones[1] about ARGUS-IS[2]?

[1] https://youtu.be/HL4WjhSy5Kc?t=1890

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-surv...

Yep, that's the one.

In what sense is it a bad thing that the government can see who drove to the scene of a crime?

Especially when, to prevent abuse or mistakes, that isn't sufficient on its own to justify police action?

Because the government also decides what are crimes.

There are two parts to this.

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.

> they can just play their timelapse in reverse

Similarly, with the combo of demographic and location databases, they can rule out everyone with an alibi.

I knew this is a thing, but thought it was primarily done in war/conflict zones (though some would probably describe US cities as such).

that sounds very expensive to do, doesn't it?

Hardly, 6-12 off the shelf digital cameras with lenses, a single engine airplane with fuel, and a laptop is all you need for this kind of system.

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