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A Mysterious Military Spy Plane Has Been Flying Circles Over Seattle for Days
- QAPereo 9y agoIt doesn't sound like that much of the mystery at the end of the day, as the article concludes that it's probably a USAF/JSOC/CIA training mission.
- ISL 9y agoAs they're flying out of Boeing Field, I'd tend to agree. Plenty of aircraft go through rounds of testing and qualification there. The following, though, does remain the law of the land: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
- pdonis 9y agoSurveillance of publicly visible areas is not the same as search and seizure of your person, house, papers, or effects.
- CamperBob2 9y agoThat depends heavily on what tools are being used for the surveillance.
- schoen 9y agoWhile this might feel counterintuitive, it's supported by Supreme Court precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States I think the future of this doctrine is unclear.
- pdonis 9y agoThe "bright line" here is "at the entrance to the home". But there is no indication in the article that the plane in question is seeing things inside people's homes, or imaging heat given off from inside the home (which was the issue in the Supreme Court case). It's just (the article speculates) observing activites outside people's homes, in public spaces. So I don't think the precedent you cite is relevant.
- CamperBob2 9y agoPoint being, if the aircraft is looking at private residences using sensors that reveal things that couldn't ordinarily be perceived by humans, its activities may be legally iffy. But that's what parallel construction is for, I guess...
- unethical_ban 9y agoOne cop on a street corner observing the public is one thing. A group of people with a warrant gathering detailed routines of a suspect is one thing. An apparatus that can observe the detailed activities and whereabouts (location AND behavior) of all people in a metro area is a completely different thing, and one our courts and Constitution have not yet handled.
- meddlepal 9y agoWhat's the difference other than technology makes it more efficient. I'm sure the courts will weigh in eventually but this seems like a legislative issue.
- flogic 9y agoEfficiency is a problem in it's own right. It drives down cost. Which means that surveillance will be used more often and for less important reasons. It's not uncommon for people to need to skirt the law from time to time. This is particularly true of people in the lower classes of society. Is it fair to ding a retail worker whose car registration just expired but needs a few days to get it all straightened out? That's something modern surveillance could easily handle nearly perfectly.
- meddlepal 9y agoWe could also just write laws that allow grace periods to cover problems like that. It is already common legislative practice to do that in many cases... My original point was I find the "It's too efficient" argument to be a very weak attack angle on the use of technology in surveillance.
- pdonis 9y ago> one our courts and Constitution have not yet handled. Exactly. It's one thing to say our laws and Constitution should place strict limitations on this kind of surveillance. I agree with that. But it's another thing to say they already do, when they don't.
- ajarmst 9y agoThere's lots of possible reasons that aren't nefarious. Could be training of pilot or crew (I once watched a passenger aircraft orbitting the base I was stationed at for most of a day. Turned out it was commercial pilot training and check rides). Could be test flights of equipment and systems for airworthiness certfication. Could be DoT testing navigation aids, etc. If the government wanted to surveil Seattle residents for some reason, I expect the NSA could come up with something a little more subtle.
- partisan 9y agoOne possibility plucked straight from a thriller: a nuke or dirty bomb is somewhere in the area and they are scanning for it.
- nl 9y ago"scanning for it"
- angstrom 9y agoCue head explosion...
- partisan 9y agoThe lack of sense of humor here is stunning. Other comments here are deep in conspiracy-land. Forgive me for contributing a differing, humorous viewpoint.
- yodon 9y agoYou might want to read up on Poe's law[0] before spending too much more time constructing clever ironic posts for threads like this. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
- cr4ig_ 9y agoActually, the government (NNSA, https://nnsa.energy.gov/ https://nnsa.energy.gov/) trains for that on a pretty regular basis. They scan cities for known sources of radiation (hospitals, certain types of industries, natural sources) and map it all out. They'll also go back and conduct drills using those maps to see if they can locate planted radiation sources. A real-life thriller...
- coin 9y ago> Nobody at the DoD seems to know who the aircraft belongs to or what exactly it is doing flying so many missions over the Seattle area. No. They know they just aren't disclosing it.
- hellofunk 9y agoSource?
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoYou think the DoD would stand by and do nothing while a completed unidentified military surveillance plane circled a major city for days? Whatever this thing is doing, it's cleared at a high level. Maybe the people answering the phones for journalists don't know.
- hellofunk 9y agoIt was supposed to be a joke; of course I don't expect that. By definition, if it is undisclosed, then there is no source.
- archgoon 9y agoNot to mention that the last few days the Navy's been conducting an air show. http://komonews.com/news/local/blue-angels-air-show-begins-takes-off-as-planned-despite-hazy-skies http://komonews.com/news/local/blue-angels-air-show-begins-t...
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- bsder 9y agoPut a drone up next to it and you will find out real fast who it belongs to.
- forkLding 9y agoIs this the same plane flying around Vancouver, BC, Canada as well? Mention of an army plane(s?) kept appearing on r/Vancouver today. Although I could be very well mistaken and its a coincidence.
- na85 9y agoThe Rcaf just bought new Search and Rescue aircraft and the training centre is in Comox. Could be them.
- Animats 9y ago"You guys are going to go up there and circle until you can replicate that failure." (Much of what test pilots really do is stuff like that.)
- ozfive 9y agoI can attest to this. I was a systems engineer for a (In-Flight Entertainment System) company and I can't count the amount of hours I have held a plane in the air just to read the bits over the ARINC bus from the FMS. No documentation.
- greedy_buffer 9y agoWhat is there about entertainment systems that can't be tested on the ground?
- detaro 9y agoData from the flight management system via an undocumented protocol?
- drdeadringer 9y agoI might be dense here: Why would the protocol be undocumented? Entertainment to toilets to guidance, it's still a flight system.
- derefr 9y agoPerhaps because it was spurious traffic "leaking" over the bus that wasn't actually intended to be there, and would be removed if anyone in the flight control systems department were told they were exposing it. And yet, that leaking data was the only way to build a cute view of travel-time or somesuch to differentiate their software for their bid, so they had to use it, and had to not mention it or request assistance with it. In software terms, it's a bit like Windows software that relies on OS-private APIs or registry keys. Sure, the data is there to use, but it wasn't intended to be used by anything other than the OS itself, and if they could (without impacting performance), they would have made it inaccessible to userland. But, in both of these scenarios, the platform owner always seems to be happy to see the program using "their API" once the app is released and gains traction and draws attention to the platform. That doesn't mean they do anything about the API; if it's private, it stays private; if it's deprecated, it stays deprecated. But they don't tell the company to stop once the app is out, and may even feature them in advertisements about their amazing platform.
- mjevans 9y agoAnother possible reason is the unusual smoke in the area from the BC Fires. It's been horrid viability quality for almost the last week.
- 35bge57dtjku 9y agoBut you get a nice red moon.
- joshuaheard 9y agoThe annual SeaFair air show is over Seattle this weekend with many different military aircraft circling overhead all weekend. http://www.seafair.com/events/2017/seafair-weekend http://www.seafair.com/events/2017/seafair-weekend Also, McChord Air Force base, North America's largest air force base, is about an hour south of Seattle.
- known 9y agoIt's NSA
- honestoHeminway 9y agoTeaching criminal startups to track such planes with lasers from drones, to prevent surveilance? Also, i guess for gangs the somali option of burning tires is viable.
- cyberferret 9y agoIs it a US military asset?? It's a CASA (European made aircraft). What is the possibility that it is a foreign military aircrat on joint exercise, or testing out integration of US made ECW equipment installed at Boeing field?
- manarth 9y ago"the only visible markings being a USAF serial on its tail"
- mkstowegnv 9y agoI think the theories in the other comments are more likely and I would prefer that this one was not correct: Seattle is one of the largest sanctuary cities close to the US border and a spy plane would be one way to try to gather evidence of illegal immigrants and to try to intimidate city officials (who might be unofficially alerted to the reason for the plane's presence).
- golergka 9y agoHow dare American government gather evidence on someone meaning the law! Despicable thing indeed.
- Trundle 9y agoYou're fine with the police using military surveillance equipment?
- X86BSD 9y agoSadly this country has become just fine with many things that will bring its doom. Fiat currency, militarized police, warrantless wiretapping and spying on citizens by the NSA whose charter was to spy on those outside the US, secret rendition to torture people, this will all bloom to end the American experiment.
- matt4077 9y agoHow (tf) would you gather "evidence of illegal immigrants" from the air?
- codezero 9y agoOne of the main things these aircraft do is to record video over long periods of time. It could follow vehicles from known work sites back to their origin, pinpointing the homes of day laborers. That's one thing I can think of, there are probably a lot more. Like sigint on certain types of mobile phones calling internationally etc.
- mkstowegnv 9y agoI think the theories in the other comments are more likely and I would prefer that this one was not correct: Seattle is one of the largest sanctuary cities close to the US border and a spy plane would be one way to try to gather evidence of illegal immigrants and to try to intimidate city officials (who might be unofficially alerted to the reason for the plane's presence).
- flashman 9y ago> very unique sigh
- boot13 9y agoStopped reading after the third word.
- leroy_masochist 9y agoSIGINT platform providing support to a training exercise for ground-based assets. There is no substitute for a big city with a whole bunch of different signal sets emitting in and around the spectrum of the actual selector you are looking for.
- binarytransform 9y ago>> selector Found the former SIGINT guy.
- EADGBE 9y agoMy clue was their use of "SIGINT".
- angstrom 9y agoBingo. You should see the patterns near Newark. There's drone circles like this constantly. http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/FBI-Mysterious-Low-Flying-Surveillance-Planes-Over-US-Cities-305832091.html http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/FBI-M...
- kazagistar 9y agoWouldn't they be willing to disclose the purpose then? Why would they keep a training excercise like that secret.
- 1_2__4 9y agoBecause in general the military in the US is far more secretive than they used to be. In the past there was a certain expectation that the DOD had at least some obligation to keep the public informed of what was happening within our borders unless it needed to be heavily classified. Over time that's changed to where now they keep secret even mundane things that directly impact Americans, and even when the information is highly generalized and/or well known because we have things like radios and cameras too. On one hand I kind of understand it - the world is slowly coming to the realization that information is the most important weapon in both war and peacetime, and no matter how inconsequential any piece of data may seem the ability to aggregate, cross-reference, and so on mean any shred of information could be dangerous. But at the same time that approach to the world doesn't really allow for a free society. I think the US government has made pretty clear they're happy to subvert or ignore American ideals to protect it (hell, the whole western world is like that now - see May's bald statement that no human right is too important to throw away in pursuit of bad guys).
- criddell 9y agoMaybe it's one of those rigs with a huge-sensor camera that records the entire city. RadioLab did a story about this technology. So, for example, if a gas station is robbed, they can go to the video and play it backwards from the time of the robbery and follow the criminals back to their homes.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 9y agoRelated to a threat from North Korea?
- hordeallergy 9y agoAny embassies, foreign properties in those circles?
- matt4077 9y agoThere are no embassies in Seattle. ...unless some insanely stupid government somewhere got the Washingtons mixed up.
- Godel_unicode 9y agoThere are 7 consulates (diplomatic mission representing the embassy in the capital) in Seattle: Canada, Japan, Mexico, Russia, El Salvador, the PRC, South Korea https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diplomatic_missions_in_the_United_States#Seattle_.287.29 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diplomatic_missions_...
- EADGBE 9y agoDon't you just love how people post on the internet with such confidence in what they believe.
- Godel_unicode 9y agoGetting facts is hard!
- EADGBE 9y agoHey! Is that a dig at Washington State/Washington DC team locales? I may or may not have lived that lie for an embarrassingly long time before I was clued in.
- 1_2__4 9y agoHere's something I think about sometimes: we're not far from a future where it would be trivial for every major city to have drones flying over it 24x7, collecting everything - license plates, faces, electronic signals, and so on. Cost and technological ability are basically there already, if we're willing to budget the money (as in, it wouldn't cost fifty trillion a year or whatever, its within the realm of financially possible). And all our laws say that is totally legal, even to share every bit of that data with every police department everywhere. Are we ready for that? How would the world respond? How would American respond? Would we collectively decide this is not something we want and pass laws to stop it? How would those work, when the same laws that protect those methods also protect citizens right to photograph anything they want from a public location? Is there any degree of surveillance that Americans would reject, and would the government accept that rejection? Or has the world changed so much now that that's our inevitable future? Honestly I think it's the latter.
- endianswap 9y agoCan't they already do that with cameras and fixed position sensors? Why drones?
- cr4ig_ 9y agoYep, for example they continuously scan license plates with police/parking enforcement vehicle-mounted cameras. Just do a data dump at the end of shift (saves on those pesky mobile data usage fees) for later processing and aggregation into a stored location history.
- eldavido 9y agoI'm reminded of an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that our our data privacy laws need to be based on use rather than collection, e.g. even if you know someone goes to the bar every week, it's illegal to predicate a credit or insurance decision on that knowledge. Might be worth considering.
- QAPereo 9y ago
- apozem 9y agoReminds me a lot of a persistent surveillance program they've tested in other cities. The idea is if you record all movements in a city from the air, you can trace where criminals come from or where they go. This system has not been implemented in a major American city, to my knowledge, because of the privacy issues. Excellent Radiolab episode about it: http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/
- slm_HN 9y agoSeattle has been blanketed in smoke during the last week from forest fires in British Columbia. The flyovers may be related to this or the Seafair airshow. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/why-so-much-smoke-from-b-c-fires-natures-air-conditioning-is-broken-weather-service-says/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/why-so-much...
- flaque 9y agoThis reads like a broadcast from Night Vale.
- cr4ig_ 9y agoWhy does it have to be a DoD/CIA mission? It's quite possible it is Homeland Security gathering information on illegal immigrants, or possibly the FBI conducting surveillance. I've seen these sorts of overflights regularly in the Baltimore/DC area. Most of the time it is Cessnas over a specific area (usually the FBI, judging from the shell company associated with the aircraft no.), but recently there was an umarked/blocked info aircraft canvasing Baltimore for a couple hours -- just the city, a very specific grid flight pattern. It was flying out of a commercial facility in Delaware. My money is on surveillance targeted at locating illegal immigrants, using ELINT and photographic evidence together.
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>It's quite possible it is Homeland Security gathering information on illegal immigrants How would it do that using this plane?
- 1001101 9y agoThis is AF training exercise Mobility Guardian. Nothing to see here.
- alkonaut 9y agoIs Boeing making any military systems at Boeing WA, or only airliners? I'd assume they make at least the military versions of civilian airframes (e.g P-8 Poseidon) there? If that's the case, won't Boeing often be doing long test flight campaigns for various subsystems out of Boeing field?
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