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Surveillance planes spotted in the sky for days after West Baltimore rioting
- duaneb 11y agoTBH this isn't surprising or creepy. This could be a great chance to try out counting more dynamic crowds, for instance, so not all applications are inherently creepy. Who has oversight for this kind of thing? It's crazy we can't get a straight answer about this kind of thing.
- rayiner 11y agoAs someone who lives in Baltimore, the riots reminded me why I'm less afraid of the police than of my neighbors. Police flying overhead to capture publicly visible events didn't try to throw a chair through the window of the restaurant I was eating at with my family, or vandalize the drug store by my house, or break the door of my favorite fro-yo place. It's not that I'm not sympathetic to the general idea the ACLU and EFF are pushing here. It was just a reminder of why the public gives the police so much power and benefit of the doubt.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago> I'm less afraid of the police than of my neighbors. I guess that depends on who your neighbors are. If I lived in a city that was 63% black, I'd be more afraid of my neighbors than the cops too.
- bantunes 11y agoSorry that the repressed anger of a people being killed and imprisoned inconvenienced you.
- steve19 11y agoSpoken like someone who has never truly been afraid for his or his family's safety. I am pleased I live in a society where protests are legal, but rioting is not.
- dalke 11y agoRioting is one of the expected consequences when more peaceable ways to resolve problems - problems that threaten one's self or one's family's safety - prove ineffective. Quoting from Martin Luther King, Jr: """There's no doubt about that. I will agree that there is a group in the Negro community advocating violence now. I happen to feel that this group represents a numerical minority. Surveys have revealed this. The vast majority of Negroes still feel that the best way to deal with the dilemma that we face in this country is through non-violent resistance, and I don't think this vocal group will be able to make a real dent in the Negro community in terms of swaying 22 million Negroes to this particular point of view. And I contend that the cry of "black power" is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.""" -- CBS Reports, Sept. 27, 1966 """But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?...It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.""" -- “The Other America” 1968
- dasil003 11y agoOn the other hand rioters won't break into your residence while you're asleep and maim your toddler with a flashbang on the flimsiest of evidence and conjecture.
- Rangi42 11y agoI think most people don't expect the police to do that to them either. No-knock raids are something that happens to other people. Riots could affect anyone. (Not commenting on the accuracy of this view, just its existence.)
- toomuchtodo 11y agoI'm 32, white, male, and I still get nervous whenever I get pulled over. I can do everything right and still end up dead on the ground with the officer walking away from the situation unscathed.
- ionwake 11y agoHow many times have you been pulled over?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoIts actually been about a year, as I drive a bit more conservatively now, but probably around 18 times in my entire life (early 20s, tech worker money single guy expenses, high performance sports cars). My point is, you should never have to worry that you might be killed during a traffic stop.
- Shivetya 11y agoHave you ever thought of getting some professional counseling? At most the last time I got pulled over my only concern was, okay what did I do? Fortunately in that case when I was told I ran a stop sign I stated it was a yield sign and I was quite willing to wait for him to go check. He did. I mean you no offense, but that level of paranoia isn't healthy. Granted the media and internet are good at making people over react but unless you are just playing us you need to step back
- rhino369 11y agoWhat is the big deal. Anything you can see from a Drone isn't really private anyway. And what you do as part of a violent mob real really isn't private. I think the Taliban has proved that any sort of dystopian fears are wildly over blown. Plus we already have police helicopters.
- bantunes 11y agoDo you know what equipment was on the plane? Police are already starting to use X-ray scanners without warrants...
- hugh4 11y agoAnd police choppers are loud and annoying, while drones are presumably quiet. On the other hand, what if we scaled if up? It would be very useful for the police to have a constant fleet of drones in the sky ready to swing their cameras around to focus on anything. Report of a mugging at fifth and D? Get visual on it in seconds. Which as a potential mugging victim I'm all for, but still, the idea of constant airborne surveillance gives me the heebie-jeebies. That said, this, along with many other potentially useful crime- fighting tools, is about to become technologically possible, and we're going to need rules about every new thing that comes along. Right now we have no useful framework for making rules, apart from seeing what people shout loudest about. Personal heebie-jeebies aren't a good guide to sensible decisionmaking.
- pyre 11y agoAlso, the people making the decisions/laws (politicians) are usually the least likely to be directly affected by any of the downsides of the technology. E.g.: How many Congressmen / Congresswomen have been directly affected by the idiocy of the No Fly List?
- rhino369 11y ago>Which as a potential mugging victim I'm all for, but still, the idea of constant airborne surveillance gives me the heebie-jeebies. There are 220 million smartphones in America. How many of them are set up to send location data? 80-90%? Shit, Android reads through my texts/email and gives me directions to where I'm going to meet someone for dinner before I even ask for them. Privacy is dead.
- kps 11y agoLinked article is from May. Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504825
- urlgrey 11y agoI recommend listening to the 'Eye in the Sky' episode of of Radiolab: http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/ It features an interview with Ross McNutt, also interviewed in the Washington Post story. McNutt describes aerial surveillance technology he developed for the US military operations in Iraq & Afghanistan, in use for over 10 years. The primary reason for not introducing it here is the US is opposition from privacy groups, despite having been used successfully abroad to counter terrorism and organized crime.
- pyre 11y ago> The primary reason for not introducing it here is the US is opposition from privacy groups, despite having been used successfully abroad to counter terrorism and organized crime. No offence, but do you really think that giving the ability to to mass scans like this to police officers won't be abused? What's our track record on actually punishing police officers that can have provably (and demonstrably) abused their powers? I'd almost trust the military more with that technology than local police departments and/or the FBI. Edit: Also, what are the chances that this technology will spend a lot of time in the field at local police departments before there are any meaningful rules/regulations on how they can use it? During that period no one will get punished for "abuses" because without rules and regulations any use is valid.
- urlgrey 11y agoNo offense taken; I too do not trust US law enforcement to use this technology in a manner that respects the privacy and rights of law-abiding citizens. Nonetheless, it is a fact that this technology has been used to trace the location of people responsible for the placement of roadside bombs in warzones abroad, and has been used to locate the headquarters of an organized crime group in Juarez, Mexico, a place that averaged 8.5 killings per day in 2010. I highly recommend listening to the Radiolab story, it raises some interesting points.
- mattmanser 11y agolaw-abiding citizens So it's OK in your book to trample the rights of criminals? Because I bet we could find a crime you've unintentionally committed in the last week or so...
- stevecalifornia 11y agoRadiolab did a show about these surveillance aircraft. In the show the host turns from skeptic to believer-- and here's why: The plane flies in a circle and records activity. Later on a crime is discovered, say a garage break in . The police call the surveillance team and say 'Look at this spot' and the team rewinds the video and see a blue van pull up and break in. Then the play the video forward and find where the blue van went. Then the cops are dispatched to the blue van's spot and an arrest is made. Personally, I see the value in that system and am ok with it being deployed. Especially to places like West Baltimore.
- Nadya 11y agoThe FBI saying "Yes, of course we have spy planes" helps. >"The FBI's aviation program is not secret," spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement. "Specific aircraft and their capabilities are protected for operational security purposes." (And then he bullshits and says they aren't equipped for mass surveillance. Just like how the government doesn't keep phone records and the NSA doesn't spy on the internet.) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ap-fbi-using-low-flying-spy-planes-over-us/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ap-fbi-using-low-flying-spy-plan...
- toomuchtodo 11y agoCan we not extract aircraft details from FAA flight records, and operational capabilities from FOIA requests regarding what vendors are providing what equipment for these aircraft? Also, based on the aircraft's flight pattern characteristics (altitude, flight patterns) can we not infer equipment operating parameters?
- mikeyouse 11y agoSome blogger did pretty much that awhile back; https://medium.com/@MinneapoliSam/fleet-of-government-aircraft-flying-secret-missions-over-u-s-cities-84cbdf57dfbb#.7db0gnpzv https://medium.com/@MinneapoliSam/fleet-of-government-aircra...
- mikeyouse 11y ago
- dogma1138 11y agoIs it too conspiratorial to think that this have likely had zero law enforcement value but rather just a a real world benchmark or acceptance test for surveillance tech that will end up being used in much more high valued arenas? If you built some kick ass new sensor you'll probably want to test it in an environment that won't put it at much risk, Baltimore rioting aside isn't exactly Pakistan or Nicaragua.
- aburan28 11y agoThese airplanes are flying every single day circling the same cities every single day. These systems are used to crush dissent and crush any form of protest, that's the problem.
- dogma1138 11y agoThey aren't there to crush any form of protest that's absurd, should they be there probably not but take the orwelianess level down a notch or three.
- rand334 11y agoThe FBI planes circle cities for hours and hours, equipped with Stingrays and FLIR cameras. This has no place in a free society, period. The "orwelianness" is pretty dead-on-balls fucking accurate.
- awqrre 11y agoWhile most people appear to think that is not a problem, I think that it is... even more so because of some of the sensors/imagery that they use can see much more then what the naked eye can see (unless they obtain a warrant for searching all homes in the area that is being scanned).
- ngwhist 11y agoSWIR/MWIR footage was captured for two subsequent experiments: * Crowd detection: algorithmic detection of clusters containing greater than five person objects * Automatic backtrace: designate a cluster and see the paths its members took to arrive at the location (including linking people to vehicles travelled in to the scene)
- pc2g4d 11y agoA few weeks ago at around midnight I could hear a helicopter hovering over a nearby neighborhood for a long time (10-15 minutes) apparently not moving very much. (The sound didn't change direction much.) It was loud and obnoxious, but also troubling. Why were they up there? We have lots of helicopter fly-bys around here, but I had never noticed a long-term hover before.
- awqrre 11y agoAround here, the sheriff's dept. have a website that list current active calls... if you have something similar in your area, it might give you some clue to what is going on. But ours don't get updated in real time and they don't list all calls. A police scanner might give more accurate information but is often hard to understand with all the codes that they use and the audio quality can be really bad.
- gnu8 11y agoThis is 100% illegal unless a judge signed a warrant for each individual the plane observed. Is there any way of identifying the airplane and lodging a criminal complaint against the ones who were flying it?