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Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US
- jhayward 7y agoThe article notes that this uses the same balloon technology that Google's project loon uses.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cardamomo 7y agoPossibly. What the article specifically states is that US Southern Command (Southcom) is using the same supplier as Project Loon: > Raven Aerostar, the company that is supplying the balloons for Southcom’s tests and launching them from its facility in South Dakota, told the Guardian that it has had balloons remain aloft for nearly a month. Raven also makes balloons for the Alphabet subsidiary Loon, which uses them to help deliver internet and cellphone service from the stratosphere.
- sambull 7y agoAh so loon possibly was never about internet
- daeken 7y agoLoon didn't supply the balloons, they just have a shared supplier.
- zaroth 7y agoThat’s not usually how these supplier partnerships work. Loon needed a balloon which was probably not available off the shelf. They paid a certain amount of money to get someone to build balloons to their specification which probably involved a great deal of R&D, manufacturing tooling, real world testing, etc. Because Google didn’t develop the technology in-house, and perhaps as a consequence of how the contract was written, we cannot say how much of the technology developed for Loon could have ended up here, and if or whether Loon should have paid more for exclusivity or restrictions on how that R&D could be used, or if in fact Loon paid a lot less specifically because the supplier was able to defray development costs through expected future military applications. Or maybe the tech really was off the shelf and destined for military use and Loon just happened to use the same thing for their own Good Samaritan project. However, several of Google’s balloons crashed to Earth so it’s a pretty good bet that they were paying for prototypes and significant R&D was going into the balloons.
- davisr 7y agoI don't comment much, but I feel compelled to mention how this currently has a 36:1 vote-to-comment ratio. The kinds of thing the US military is testing on their own people is horrific, and it's our duty as American citizens to oppose this kind of surveillance. I sometimes feel I'm talking to a ghost. It is truly terrifying that my fellow Americans are selling themselves out. Ring will let the government, Amazon, and your neighbors spy on you. Grammarly will keylog and text-capture each webpage. The FBI will fly planes overhead. Balloons will be launched, always watching everyone. There is no way to opt-out of this. I can't believe how stupid the "Hacker" "News" community is--commenting on things that don't matter, then shutting up for matters of grave importance. You all deserve the tyranny that is coming.
- davisr 7y agoThe most important thing one can do is write, AND call, their legislature. Don't ever shut up about it. Does it stand a chance against corporate lobbyists? Probably not, but it leaves one with a clear conscience.
- netsharc 7y agoSeems weak.. "well, I did all I can.". Look at Hong Kong at the moment; the youth seems to be going all-in with their protests. What is their goal and can they achieve it? Forcing a regime change seems impossible, but who knows. Meanwhile, Mueller is finished, Trump is still president, and Pelosi is the 2019 version of Chamberlain...
- i_am_proteus 7y agoThere's a bit of scaremongering in the headline; these are being tested domestically by the DOD use outside of the US. The DOD isn't allowed to conduct domestic surveillance.
- cheeze 7y agoKind of ironic that they are testing them by performing domestic surveillance then, huh?
- RaptorJ 7y agowell if "fascism can best be understood as bringing the methods of imperial rule in the colonies into the metropole." Then aside from the obvious imperial attitude of 'its ok since the DOD is developing this for non-americans,' americans themselves might be worried about the future implications of this technology. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/074.html http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/074.html
- Robotbeat 7y agoThat is a very useful and succinct definition. And we did use these blimps in Afghanistan. Very apt and chilling definition.
- Spooky23 7y agoSure. They parked a visible radar blimp over I95 outside of Baltimore and operated it for a couple of years. What’s the difference between “test” and “really using it” when the tests last that long? There are many loopholes for domestic stuff too. A National Guard member controlling the thing for example.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoFull season durability testing. Developing operational procedures to deal with routine issues. These could easily take a few years.
- cherrypicker001 7y agoI saw a BBC short video while in Europe last summer. It was surreal. The video was basically showing how awesome these aerial surveillance platforms were. At one point the reporter walked out of the control center and started dancing outside. It looked like he was having a lot of fun watching himself from a few thousand feet up. If anyone manages to find it please post it. There was no talk about the privacy implications. Just a puff piece to acclimatize people into thinking this was normal. If you don't yet know what these balloons are from articles on Afghanistan, they provide very cheap ubiquitous physical surveillance on very large areas. If one of these things have LOS on you or your home, you no longer have any physical privacy. If this doesn't piss you off you need to look up what a panopticon is.
- lonelappde 7y agoHey the good news for us is the ones in the US don't have self-guided missiles attached, right?
- 20after4 7y agoAre you sure? If not yet, soon.
- debatem1 7y ago*if not, loon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_(company) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_(company)
- eitland 7y agoFWIW "Kill Decision" describes one scenario where they do have missiles attached.
- vaguesortof 7y agoAnti hypersonic missile satelittes in low earth orbit will soon tho
- goliatone 7y ago
- qserasera 7y agoGood thing Belgium already sold this NATO spec technology to China...
- Tharkun 7y agoGot a link for that?
- qserasera 7y agohttps://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/belgian-firm-sells-advanced-war-room-software-to-china/ https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/belgian-firm-sells-advanced-... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/2173593/china-matches-nato-information-arms-race-deal-ferrari-war-room https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/2173593/chi...
- andrerm 7y ago> “Obviously, there are laws to protect people’s privacy and we are respectful of all those laws,” Hartman said. “We also understand the importance of operating in an ethical way as it relates to further protecting people’s privacy.” Sure /s
- blattimwind 7y agoI can practically hear the "xD" at the end of that statement.
- jlgaddis 7y agoIt's very carefully worded. They understand the importance of operating ethically. They didn't say that they do.
- tru3_power 7y agoThis is disturbing
- snazz 7y agoAre things flying at that altitude required to have a ADS-B transponder or something like that to prevent collisions with other aircraft? I wonder if you could track the balloons tracking you.
- i_am_nomad 7y agoYes. Google Loon balloons do show up on FlightRadar24, and if you’re close enough you can detect them with a $8 RTS-SDR.
- Aaronn 7y agoAt 65,000 ft (the altitude mentioned in the article), no ADS-B will not be required because it would be above Class A airspace. Law enforcement and intelligence flights are not required to have ADS-B turned on anyway. (f) Each person operating an aircraft equipped with ADS-B Out must operate this equipment in the transmit mode at all times unless— (1) Otherwise authorized by the FAA when the aircraft is performing a sensitive government mission for national defense, homeland security, intelligence or law enforcement purposes and transmitting would compromise the operations security of the mission or pose a safety risk to the aircraft, crew, or people and property in the air or on the ground; or §91.225 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=b7f6514979a4014c173ca196f35b0020&mc=true&node=pt14.2.91&rgn=div5#se14.2.91_1225 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=b7f6514979a4014c17...
- MiroF 7y agoAt what point do we just start a non violent movement of taping over cameras wherever we see them?
- Krasnol 7y agoIt's hacker news. How about hacking them?
- LeoPanthera 7y agoWe could have a discussion about the definition of the word Hacker vs Cracker - but people have been arguing about that since the 90s.
- somebodythere 7y agoDuct tape is a hack. Low-tech hack, but a hack nonetheless.
- dpau 7y agoHong Kong has just gotten to that point. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/technology/hong-kong-protests-facial-recognition-surveillance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/technology/hong-kong-prot... https://gizmodo.com/how-hong-kong-s-protestors-are-hindering-and-hijacking-1836732933 https://gizmodo.com/how-hong-kong-s-protestors-are-hindering...
- throwaway94232 7y agoI already do this with the cameras that are in an increasing number of airplane seat backs.
- lonelappde 7y agoOh, charming: airplanes now have cameras installed against the will of the airlines operating the planes. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3022742002 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3022742002
- apo 7y ago> The new balloons promise a cheap surveillance platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. And because winds often travel in different directions at different altitudes, the balloons can usually hover over a given area simply by ascending or descending. Stepping back from the details of this story reveals a striking pattern that most public discussions on mass surveillance miss entirely. Cost has protected citizens of the world's liberal democracies from sliding into totalitarianism for a long time. Now the brakes are off. Surveillance technology costs are plunging across at the board and capabilities are skyrocketing. Regardless of size or jurisdiction, there isn't a law enforcement agency out there that doesn't want to (or actively seek to) increase its observational capability. Tumbling prices allow these organizations to indulge these urges. Suddenly, basic assumptions about what governments can and can't do go out the window. The equipment is bought and put into production. Better to ask forgiveness than permission and all that. There is no limit to the appetite for greater visibility into the private lives of citizens. Today it's the war on drugs and terror. Tomorrow it's something else. The justifications change, but these are just thin veneers over the ugly truth. Every government tends toward totalitarianism unless kept in check by something pretty damn powerful. This train has one destination, and it's not even clear if there will be any stops along the way. To understand where we're headed, try reading the Bill of Rights with the assumption that your government knows everything there is to know about you, and where those who attempt to reveal the extent of these capabilities are imprisoned or executed.
- im3w1l 7y ago> government, law enforcement The thing is when it gets cheap enough, other players start enter the game too. Companies. Criminal gangs. Or even private individuals. A situation of "if surveillance is outlawed, only outlaws will have surveillance" should be taken into account.
- mgamache 7y agoNot really. The FAA might have something to say about what floats around the sky. At least in the USA.
- m3kw9 7y agoTo those that are profound, the US has mass surveillance since the first satellite with camera was in orbit
- lonelappde 7y agoThe new balloon cameras have much higher resolution.
- brokenmachine 7y agoI found it really interesting when that link came up on HN recently of a spy telescope taken by an amateur. Can't find the story now unfortunately. I knew the Hubble was cool, but on that page it mentioned that this telescope was one of ten that the military had pointed at the Earth that are now deprecated. Imagine what they have now that is even better than ten Hubbles.
- brokenmachine 7y agoFound the link: https://www.universetoday.com/65458/spying-on-a-hubble-telescope-look-alike/amp/?PageSpeed=noscript https://www.universetoday.com/65458/spying-on-a-hubble-teles...
- thereare5lights 7y agoKinda weird that there isn’t more backlash to this
- algaeontoast 7y agoI’m somewhat against this tech. But if it means stopping drug traffickers and illegal immigrants I’m all for it. I have a similar stance on border checkpoints 100 miles inland from the border - it’s a mild inconvenience for me but I’m more thank okay with it if it stops criminals or those breaking the law.
- propogandist 7y agoIllegal immigrants in the midwestern states, crossing state boundaries? The article notes there is no known operation nor investigation this effort supporting (drug trafficking or otherwise), its a surveillance experiment.
- mirimir 7y agoSomehow I didn't think that it was OK for the US military to operate domestically. According to the Posse Comitatus Act. But I see that there's an exception for surveillance. Charming.
- ptero 7y agoI think you are spot on and I am pretty sure Pentagon bureaucrats take PC very seriously. That is why I suspect it is either a test for eventual use overseas (not operational deployment), or DHS is ready to take over
- mgamache 7y agoI am not advocating this in the US or anywhere, but how would one disable a surveillance balloon as an act of civil disobedience if necessary (without ending up in jail)?
- wmeredith 7y agoIANAL but acts of civil disobedience usually mean that you refuse to do something peacefully. I’m not sure that there’s a way to passively disarm something.
- quickthrower2 7y agoWith umbrellas and parasols. Everyone should walk around with an umbrella to make the surveillance useless. Parasols on your balcony or in your garden.
- ThrustVectoring 7y agoThat doesn't make the surveillance useless. So they see a parasol come out of your house at one time and walk to your workplace. They still have 100% of the information that they had if you didn't walk to work with a parasol.
- thinkingemote 7y agoPeople are clever and adaptable. How about walking in a crowd and exchanging umbrellas for one simple idea and I've not even had my first coffee of the day.
- nxpnsv 7y agoFinally a project for my purchased and forgotten raspberry pi and robot parts - dronebrella.
- mgamache 7y agoYou are correct. What's the term for a minimally violent act?
- ashton314 7y agoCheesy, but this reminds me of Captain America: Winter Soldier with the massive gunships that target anyone considered to be a “threat”. The government seems to make the case that this is “necessary” to stopping crime. Is it? I’m sure it makes it really easy to catch criminals—but what’s wrong with increasing the police force/improving non-technological techniques/etc.?
- maxheadroom 7y ago>...but what’s wrong with increasing the police force/improving non-technological techniques/etc.? You mean actual work? We can't be having any of that! Plus, think of the <insert some banally unimportant reason here>!
- salawat 7y agoWell, this is extremely disturbing. We're reaching a point where we're going to have to start realizing we cannot systematically apply our own laws due to the ramifications of total awareness. The availability of information will quickly outstrip the capacity of the system to crank through it. Just today I was discussing with colleagues that it's positively mortifying the way people have trivialized their own children's privacy through things like smartphones with tracking software, and hidden camera's everywhere. I don't understand how much our societal fabric has decayed that anyone could be even remotely comfortable with the magnitude of advancement in and propagation of surveillance technology, and the relative lack of progress in other verticals, or other facets of civil life. To what end? Why do this? Why enable such avenues capable of completely undermining society's capability to evolve? Once you have the capacity to track minority faction movements perfectly, the stage is set for violent suppression of politically disruptive movements. It is one thing to not have the capability to do so; it is completely another to have the capability to do so and to not use it. One can survive the overly ambitious being in a position of power. The other can't. I don't know as the path our society is going down will be even remotely feasible to course correct. One can only hope.
- m0zg 7y agoSo this is basically Google's Project Loon but with more spying? How do they deal with cloud cover? It's not much of an issue for Loon, but I suppose it would be problematic for anyone doing anything in the visual range.
- throwawaycanada 7y agoThis is a documentary clip from 2013 that shows what the cameras and systems in these blimps can do. Apparently the biggest breakthrough is their high bandwidth laser data communication system. The government should not have this much information asymmetry relative to the citizenry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA
- Tharkun 7y agoTo quote Simone Weil out of context (she was talking about political parties): > If one were to entrust the organisation of public life to the devil, he could not invent a more clever device.
- sfthrower89 7y agoMy federal tax bill is $50k per year. That means I'm spending $50k/year for my government to murder people, and spy on me, in my name. How sociopathic is that? Our money is being used to oppress is, and most people are just like "wow! neat-o tech!"
- wjn0 7y agoIs anyone else extremely bothered by the false equivalence of narcotics trafficking and the need for homeland security? This blurring of the lines between a multi-billion dollar _business_ (probably around 1% of the world's GDP) that in fact relies on the success of the state, and purported threats to the state itself strikes me as extremely dangerous. I'm contrasting this to American intelligence involvement in central America in the 1980s. During that time, the same organizations involved in cocaine trafficking and production were also extremely political, and crucial to the CIA carrying out their (in my opinion neoimperialist) "responsibilities" in the region. My point is: I am aware of absolutely no evidence that modern drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) operating within the borders of the US are political whatsoever, so can we really view them as a threat to homeland security? Is there evidence that there is some risk of groups which pose a threat to our security have infiltrated these DTOs, or are piggybacking off their operations somehow?
- wool_gather 7y agoThere seems to be a certain amount of violence that comes with the territory of illegal drug trafficking; that might not be national security per se, but it's certainly something within the government's purview. It's also not that much of a stretch to say that a public health crisis of drug addiction would be a kind of threat to national security. Of course, if that were the real thing, DHS should be going after the opioid peddlers, so...
- wjn0 7y agoWell of course it's within the government's purview, but we have to draw a line between law enforcement and military-run surveillance somewhere, and it seems to me drug enforcement (violent or not) falls staunchly within the former's purview. The blurring of that line or its movement altogether strikes me as dangerous (cf. the mosaic theory of the 4th amendment [1]). [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2032821 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2032821