13 ms·

Maps Showing Where FBI Planes Are Watching from Above (2016)

172 points by colinprince 9y ago

zhan_eg 9y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465978
mankash666 9y ago
Tone of this article is unfairly critical of DHS & FBI. When data and statistics underpin our decisions in everything - speech recognition to pricing and suggestions on Amazon, apparently the government's use of it to go after suspected terrorists is unfair. The surveillance apparently shifted to a mosque after the San Bernardino shooting, not because the FBI hates mosques, but because data on individuals attending the mosque tagged them as suspects.
- jstanley 9y ago
  The problem isn't that they're trying to track down terrorists. The problem is that this method involves recording everything that happens within a large radius of their actual target.
  - chronic824 9y ago
    That's better than what tech companies do. They record every good damn link you even hover over, whether you have an intent to click it or not. At least the FBI records within a radius of the target. Google, Uber, Salesforce, Orbital Insight, etc. record as much as they possibly can about everything.
  - wildrhythms 9y ago
    How different is this from putting a police officer on the street corner?
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      Data storage and interpretation. A single officer on every street corner can't aggregate data to learn of geographical trends, social connections, and aberrations from the norm in location, behavior, political thoughts, etc.
      - mcny 9y ago
        Iirc CIA study seems to suggest that there is a point of diminishing with data. At some point, it starts to make a human agent overconfident and over reliant on the data to the point where it is worse than having less data. Now, add the fact that we have nation states as well as other actors working hard to influence us. How difficult wood it be to plant data into a mass surveillance system? Even assuming every politician and every government employee has perfect ethical and moral standing, can we completely trust our surveillance system? My thought is this: likely whatever your trying to keep secret, out adversaries have seen it.
    - vageli 9y ago
      Are you seriously suggesting mass, untargeted, constant surveillance is equivalent to putting a cop on every corner?
emveeoh 9y ago
This seems like a reasonable way to police. My only issue is if the drones can be 'heard' flying over a location. For example, buzzing over a specific house or business. Neighbors would automatically assume danger or guilt. If they drone, they should stay out of ear-range from anyone on the ground. Nobody should hear surveillance.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  As for your issue, hearing the sound is a form of noise pollution. Its generally acceptable to have that during 9 to 5 but not during the night. Because it interferes with people's sleep, you can call the cops for a complaint. Not sure what they'd do if the drone owner is the FBI though. As for the long term health effects of surveillance, we got Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives Of Others) [1] already but additionally I'm anticipating seeing that covered in the documentary The Feeling of Being Watched about Operation Vulgar Betrayal. Quoting the About page [2]: "In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where director Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Assia uncovers hundreds of pages of declassified FBI documents that prove her hometown was the subject of one of the largest counterterrorism investigations ever conducted in the U.S. before 9/11 – code-named “Operation Vulgar Betrayal.” With unprecedented access, The Feeling of Being Watched weaves the personal and the political as it follows the filmmaker’s examination of why her community fell under blanket government surveillance. Assia struggles to disrupt the government secrecy shrouding what happened to her neighborhood in the 90’s and probes why her community feels like they’re still being watched today. In the process, she confronts long-hidden truths about the FBI’s relationship to her community. The Feeling of Being Watched follows Assia as she pieces together this secret FBI operation, while grappling with the effects of a lifetime of surveillance on herself and her family." Documentary is scheduled for 2018. Kickstarter page [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others [2] http://www.feelingofbeingwatched.com/about http://www.feelingofbeingwatched.com/about [3] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beingwatched/the-feeling-of-being-watched-a-documentary-film https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beingwatched/the-feelin...
- patcheudor 9y ago
iiiggglll 9y ago
There's only one way to respond to this: http://i.imgur.com/lfcUz.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lfcUz.jpg
- iamthirsty 9y ago
  I'm usually happy to not see these kinds of comments of Hacker News, but this one was funny as hell, I must admit.
ethbro 9y ago
Surprising how positive the initial comments here are. Do you really believe any incidental collection that isn't specifically prohibited by law (which is to say, most) doesn't end up in a database mined for unrelated reasons?
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  IMO it almost definitely happens, but it's bad for my mental health if I stress over everything I have no control over. Political activism has failed, and our government is practically an oligarchy at this point. To me, it's like yelling at a tornado. I can yell all I'd like, but at the end of the day, that tornado will do its thing. All I can do is either hide or move out of Tornado Alley.
  - SockPuppeteer 9y ago
    There is no need to stress about surveillance nor what else you cannot control. I like to cite the heat list (i) that utilizes artificial intelligence to determine who is most likely to be shot in a top 400 ranking system by their association with previous people who have been shot. Volunteers then reach out to these people and suggest ways to stay alive. I still enjoy knowing that I pay for my tracking chip (cellular phone), entertainment advertising supported delivery with tracking (television), a multi step filtration system with bi-monthly checks for clean water (5gallon fill up), and roll the dice with what is in the soil that grows the food I eat. If the ground water is not safe to drink, is the food safe to eat? i. https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/chicago-police-heat-list-renews-old-fears-about-government-flagging-and https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/chicago-police-...
- meri_dian 9y ago
  Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person? More than governments have always had over the common person? Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.
mkcsquared 9y ago
I apparently missed the memo where BuzzFeed started doing real reporting. When did that start happening?
- soared 9y ago
  I don't know when it started, but they've got some history of real reporting. It's odd, but I think if you still down just to the news section of the site, there is lots of high quality long form content.
- eli 9y ago
  Since at least 2012 when they had reporters embedded in the Obama campaign. Take a look: https://www.buzzfeed.com/investigations https://www.buzzfeed.com/investigations
wjn0 9y ago
Looking at the map, outside the big cities, it seems mostly concentrated on highways. Does anyone know if it's realistic for a plane flying a mile high to grab, say, license plates and driver photos? Would this be legal? How close to the highway on the map would they have to be, hypothetically?
- DigitalJack 9y ago
  I think it would be feasible with a stabilized mounted camera. Car chase video from news choppers can be a mile away.
- spy_sat 9y ago
  I don't have any doubts. The BBC reported, in 2014, that spy satellites had a 10cm resolution. This is good enough to see if you are holding a cell phone or not.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    Sure, but you have to zoom in on one car at a time. You can't just mass collect the plates on every car in the city instantly.
  - paintchipluvr 9y ago
    Most definitely there was a very good video about lead engineer (I think) talking in front of a hexagon spy satellite from the 1970s a lot of the information on it is declassified now, but he did say that the resolution on them still was and all he could say was that in the 1970s "I could read a newspaper on a table" and that's all he'd say on the matter. imagine how far technology has come along since then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtmtYlcPYYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtmtYlcPYYA The video.
UneasySausage 9y ago
Wow check above Tampa Bay; there's an immense level of activity there versus other areas of Florida - What gives

172 points by colinprince 9y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465978

Tone of this article is unfairly critical of DHS & FBI. When data and statistics underpin our decisions in everything - speech recognition to pricing and suggestions on Amazon, apparently the government's use of it to go after suspected terrorists is unfair. The surveillance apparently shifted to a mosque after the San Bernardino shooting, not because the FBI hates mosques, but because data on individuals attending the mosque tagged them as suspects.

jstanley 9y ago
The problem isn't that they're trying to track down terrorists. The problem is that this method involves recording everything that happens within a large radius of their actual target.
- chronic824 9y ago
  That's better than what tech companies do. They record every good damn link you even hover over, whether you have an intent to click it or not. At least the FBI records within a radius of the target. Google, Uber, Salesforce, Orbital Insight, etc. record as much as they possibly can about everything.
- wildrhythms 9y ago
  How different is this from putting a police officer on the street corner?
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    Data storage and interpretation. A single officer on every street corner can't aggregate data to learn of geographical trends, social connections, and aberrations from the norm in location, behavior, political thoughts, etc.
    - mcny 9y ago
      Iirc CIA study seems to suggest that there is a point of diminishing with data. At some point, it starts to make a human agent overconfident and over reliant on the data to the point where it is worse than having less data. Now, add the fact that we have nation states as well as other actors working hard to influence us. How difficult wood it be to plant data into a mass surveillance system? Even assuming every politician and every government employee has perfect ethical and moral standing, can we completely trust our surveillance system? My thought is this: likely whatever your trying to keep secret, out adversaries have seen it.
  - vageli 9y ago
    Are you seriously suggesting mass, untargeted, constant surveillance is equivalent to putting a cop on every corner?

emveeoh 9y ago

This seems like a reasonable way to police. My only issue is if the drones can be 'heard' flying over a location. For example, buzzing over a specific house or business. Neighbors would automatically assume danger or guilt. If they drone, they should stay out of ear-range from anyone on the ground. Nobody should hear surveillance.

Fnoord 9y ago
As for your issue, hearing the sound is a form of noise pollution. Its generally acceptable to have that during 9 to 5 but not during the night. Because it interferes with people's sleep, you can call the cops for a complaint. Not sure what they'd do if the drone owner is the FBI though. As for the long term health effects of surveillance, we got Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives Of Others) [1] already but additionally I'm anticipating seeing that covered in the documentary The Feeling of Being Watched about Operation Vulgar Betrayal. Quoting the About page [2]: "In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where director Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Assia uncovers hundreds of pages of declassified FBI documents that prove her hometown was the subject of one of the largest counterterrorism investigations ever conducted in the U.S. before 9/11 – code-named “Operation Vulgar Betrayal.” With unprecedented access, The Feeling of Being Watched weaves the personal and the political as it follows the filmmaker’s examination of why her community fell under blanket government surveillance. Assia struggles to disrupt the government secrecy shrouding what happened to her neighborhood in the 90’s and probes why her community feels like they’re still being watched today. In the process, she confronts long-hidden truths about the FBI’s relationship to her community. The Feeling of Being Watched follows Assia as she pieces together this secret FBI operation, while grappling with the effects of a lifetime of surveillance on herself and her family." Documentary is scheduled for 2018. Kickstarter page [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others [2] http://www.feelingofbeingwatched.com/about http://www.feelingofbeingwatched.com/about [3] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beingwatched/the-feeling-of-being-watched-a-documentary-film https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beingwatched/the-feelin...
patcheudor 9y ago

iiiggglll 9y ago

There's only one way to respond to this: http://i.imgur.com/lfcUz.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lfcUz.jpg

iamthirsty 9y ago
I'm usually happy to not see these kinds of comments of Hacker News, but this one was funny as hell, I must admit.

ethbro 9y ago

Surprising how positive the initial comments here are. Do you really believe any incidental collection that isn't specifically prohibited by law (which is to say, most) doesn't end up in a database mined for unrelated reasons?

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
IMO it almost definitely happens, but it's bad for my mental health if I stress over everything I have no control over. Political activism has failed, and our government is practically an oligarchy at this point. To me, it's like yelling at a tornado. I can yell all I'd like, but at the end of the day, that tornado will do its thing. All I can do is either hide or move out of Tornado Alley.
- SockPuppeteer 9y ago
  There is no need to stress about surveillance nor what else you cannot control. I like to cite the heat list (i) that utilizes artificial intelligence to determine who is most likely to be shot in a top 400 ranking system by their association with previous people who have been shot. Volunteers then reach out to these people and suggest ways to stay alive. I still enjoy knowing that I pay for my tracking chip (cellular phone), entertainment advertising supported delivery with tracking (television), a multi step filtration system with bi-monthly checks for clean water (5gallon fill up), and roll the dice with what is in the soil that grows the food I eat. If the ground water is not safe to drink, is the food safe to eat? i. https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/chicago-police-heat-list-renews-old-fears-about-government-flagging-and https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/chicago-police-...
meri_dian 9y ago
Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person? More than governments have always had over the common person? Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.

mkcsquared 9y ago

I apparently missed the memo where BuzzFeed started doing real reporting. When did that start happening?

soared 9y ago
I don't know when it started, but they've got some history of real reporting. It's odd, but I think if you still down just to the news section of the site, there is lots of high quality long form content.
eli 9y ago
Since at least 2012 when they had reporters embedded in the Obama campaign. Take a look: https://www.buzzfeed.com/investigations https://www.buzzfeed.com/investigations

wjn0 9y ago

Looking at the map, outside the big cities, it seems mostly concentrated on highways. Does anyone know if it's realistic for a plane flying a mile high to grab, say, license plates and driver photos? Would this be legal? How close to the highway on the map would they have to be, hypothetically?

DigitalJack 9y ago
I think it would be feasible with a stabilized mounted camera. Car chase video from news choppers can be a mile away.
spy_sat 9y ago
I don't have any doubts. The BBC reported, in 2014, that spy satellites had a 10cm resolution. This is good enough to see if you are holding a cell phone or not.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  Sure, but you have to zoom in on one car at a time. You can't just mass collect the plates on every car in the city instantly.
- paintchipluvr 9y ago
  Most definitely there was a very good video about lead engineer (I think) talking in front of a hexagon spy satellite from the 1970s a lot of the information on it is declassified now, but he did say that the resolution on them still was and all he could say was that in the 1970s "I could read a newspaper on a table" and that's all he'd say on the matter. imagine how far technology has come along since then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtmtYlcPYYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtmtYlcPYYA The video.

UneasySausage 9y ago

Wow check above Tampa Bay; there's an immense level of activity there versus other areas of Florida - What gives