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It's not just drones. Law Enforcement often flies surveillance flights, circling over locations of interest. These planes often have thermal/visual imaging vide
by spdustin 11y ago
It's not just drones. Law Enforcement often flies surveillance flights, circling over locations of interest. These planes often have thermal/visual imaging video cameras and, according to some stories, may also be carrying other tracking or signal interception hardware (think Stingray). HN user jjwiseman [0] scooped most of the press about this.
You can locate such "interesting" flights right now, using your browser. Just open up ADSB Exchange Virtual Radar [1], which doesn't filter out flights with certain squawk codes like other online virtual radar sites do. If you do, select "Menu" from the map (with the gear icon), then "Options". Select the "Filter" tab, select to "Enable filters", select "Interesting" from the dropdown listbox, and select "Add Filter". Now you can zoom out over the country, and see all the "interesting" flights using the table on the left. Note any flights with the "LE" or "FBI" or "DHS" user tag.
Right now, as I write this, an FBI-owned aircraft is circling over the Norwood/Bronx area of NYC [2], tail number N912EX, registered to OBR Leasing (one of the "shells" that the US Gov't uses for registering its law enforcement aircraft), as mentioned in an AP story last summer [3]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jjwiseman https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jjwiseman
[1]: http://www.adsbexchange.com http://www.adsbexchange.com, select "Currently Tracking [number] Aircraft on upper-right"
[2]: http://i.imgur.com/EUYqx98.png http://i.imgur.com/EUYqx98.png
[3]: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4b3f220e33b64123a3909c60845da045/fbi-behind-mysterious-surveillance-aircraft-over-us-cities http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4b3f220e33b64123a3909c60845da...
Edit: Another one, flying around NW Los Angeles, right now: http://i.imgur.com/PwRpqRe.png http://i.imgur.com/PwRpqRe.png
Edit2: Any aircraft squawking transponder beacon codes between 4401-4433 are engaged in law enforcement operations. More on the various squawk codes reserved by US Gov't operations can be found here (pdf link): http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FINAL_Order_7110_66E_NBCAP.pdf http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FINAL_Order_7...
- xredlinexx1 11y agoInteresting. There is one over northwest LA as well.
- jjwiseman 11y agoThat's N404KR, which over the past year has flown over Los Angeles on average one day in five. It's one of the top 10 planes I receive transponder pings from, in frequency.
- snowpanda 11y agoWhat do transponder pings indicate? Are those Stingrays? Thanks for all the information by the way, very informative.
- jjwiseman 11y agoThose are just the pings from the transponder that almost every aircraft carries to help air traffic controllers keep track of it. You can receive and decode them with a $20 RTL-SDR dongle and free software. There's more info on how I track aircraft and how I figured out that the FBI was flying over 100 aircraft registered to front companies, some of them doing aerial surveillance, here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zwRyuVJGaQwG6mYMSYWo8UouLCJVe2NuDHo0sEn2QN8/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zwRyuVJGaQwG6mYMSYWo...
- anonbanker 11y agoThank you for this work.
- jjwiseman 11y agoThis is one of my slides on N404KR: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zwRyuVJGaQwG6mYMSYWo8UouLCJVe2NuDHo0sEn2QN8/edit#slide=id.ga3a076b34_0_117 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zwRyuVJGaQwG6mYMSYWo...
- spdustin 11y agoI found that the adsbexchange site had a JSON feed (that adheres to the virtual radar standard, even) but couldn't find any direct guidance about permissible usage. Do you know of any aggregators of ADSB data (without filters) that one could use to set up a site for constant logging/tracking/visualization of this stuff? I'm thinking of mashing this up with geolocated tweets/pics/videos to try and figure out if the public can identify what the hell these planes are doing. Maybe also a way to get alerts when you're in an area that is being surveilled. I have a toy Python script doing some of that now with the adsbexchange feed, but I don't want to let something into the wild that uses someone else's feed without permission.
- samstave 11y agoHow much does a cessna pilot for the FBI make a year?
- crystalmace 11y agoI'd apply for that job, 172s are all I have hours on
- update 11y ago> You can locate such "interesting" flights right now, using your browser. Just open up ADSB Exchange Virtual Radar [1] This is really neat. However, it's only showing 10 flights in the Southwest (USA) area. O_o How come it shows nothing in the El Paso area? I find that hard to believe (also: There are none flying in OR, ID, UT, CO or NM?)
- spdustin 11y agoWithout the filter, it shows all aircraft broadcasting ADS-B [0]. The filter procedure I outlined restricts the aircraft shown on the map only to those that have been flagged as "interesting", usually because they're related to law enforcement, government agencies, or celebrities. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance_–_broadcast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillan...
- update 11y ago> The filter procedure I outlined restricts the aircraft shown on the map only to those that have been flagged as "interesting" Yep, and that's really neat. My point is it is obviously b.s. data. there are far too few aircraft being shown for it to be realistic.
- jjwiseman 11y agoadsbexchange.com collects data from volunteers, of which there are currently fewer than 500 around the world. One person can usually only pick up aircraft within a hundred miles or so. Many "interesting" aircraft don't broadcast their position, so you won't see them on a map unless they can be triangulated (actually multilaterated)--but that requires that multiple nearby volunteers receive their signals. That's why you don't see a lot of aircraft on the map, not a failure of realism.
- update 11y agoCool, I was just wondering why no one was mentioning the pink elephant in the room. > not a failure of realism. Actually it's exactly that. What you just said proves it. In reality, there are a lot more aircraft than being shown on that map due to the low number of volunteers and stealth nature of the aircraft.
- eric_h 11y agoThat is very cool, thanks for sharing.
- arprocter 11y agoVery interesting stuff. I remember during the San Bernardino shooting online tracking showed 2+ LEO aircraft Edit: it's showing two Hawker Hunters over CA right now...
- chillydawg 11y agoSo, presumably, there are uber-secret flights that the military and cia, etc operate which are so clandestine that they appear civilian. However, their flight plans are probably quite similar to the known law enforcement/military stuff. Eg: circling over certain places or circling/tracking a moving car. So in theory you could train a network on known civilian vs known law enforcement and then have it identify the as yet unidentified law enforcement flight plans?
- jjwiseman 11y agoI don't think you'd even need anything fancy. Here's the list of things that are true of most of the surveillance aircraft I've found: Flies in circles Flies over one region for hours Flies at around 5000 feet altitude Squawks 4414 or 4415 Uses a callsign that starts with JENA or JENNA Registered owner in Bristow VA, Greenville DE, Wilmington DE, or Manassas VA I have some simple code that highlights planes that are flying in circles so that I can take a closer look at them.
- colejohnson66 11y ago> Squawks 4415 or 4415 Typo?
- jjwiseman 11y agoYep, thanks!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zzz157 11y agoWhen does this stop?!
- deciplex 11y agoYou're better off trying to figure out how long we have until it gets a lot worse.
- joering2 11y agoThey came up with algorithm to narrow down "suspects"... http://blog.enigma.io/track-84-aircrafts-the-fbi-uses-for-surveillance/ http://blog.enigma.io/track-84-aircrafts-the-fbi-uses-for-su...
- LordKano 11y agoSimply amazing. I'm sure that there's a good reason for it but the Turkish military has a plane over Columbus, Ohio. I would have never expected to see that.
- anonbanker 11y agoForgive the tin-foil on this hat, but how does this not fit all the qualifications for a foreign invasion?
- LordKano 11y agoWe do joint military operations and training with allied countries all of the time. It's not an invasion if we invited them and they're not attacking.
- flycaliguy 11y agoI also tracked that one for a bit. It came out of a part of Ohio full of air research institutions. Probably just a routine oil change.
- unprepare 11y agorandomly found a plane registered to none other than Donald Trump using the interesting filter. N725DT CESSNA 750 Fascinating tool! thanks for sharing!