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What’s Flying Above Us?
- microcolonel 6y agoCute, though I suspect the FBI have known the public knew about this, and alter their patterns for the most sensitive investigations. The real deal would be detecting when aircraft are in any cycle, regular or irregular, with similar visibility of a set of likely “targets”.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoYou might reach out to this author. Such a feature would be trivial to implement.
- microcolonel 6y agoI might just do that; though you should see my list of side projects. There only so many hours in the day.
- jcims 6y agoI believe this is the same project that surfaced a while back and the algorithm is remarkably effective for its simplicity, but I do agree that there are probably some others that would catch edge/sneaky cases. The bigger issue are planes that are't showing up anywhere. I think it would be interesting to pair some audio and computer vision resources with existing ADSB network to train what planes sound like and possibly even which altitude/direction they are traveling based on sound energy alone. Camera would be nice, also passive radar given that most of these ADSB tools are using existing software defined radios.
- gentleman11 6y agoI hope visitors are able to donate. Things have been tight this summer for a lot of people
- kanobo 6y agoThe most interesting reading is in the 'tracking police helicopters' slidedeck linked in the site: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sowJrQQfgxnLCErb-CvUV8VGXdtca6SWYWWLRPZgaHI/edit#slide=id.g5086fd3e26_0_51 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sowJrQQfgxnLCErb-CvU...
- motohagiography 6y agoWhen I was tracking flights some years ago (use case was determining whether speed monitoring aircraft were in the air, and a prediction model of their schedule) I learned that the ADS-B transmitters didn't need to broadcast GPS co-ordinates below a certain ceiling. You could get the signal that a given tail number was in the air, but if it stayed below a certain altitude, you couldn't always receive its location. The FAA has guidelines on what kind of data you can receive: https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/equipadsb/research/airspace/ https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/equipadsb/research/airspace/ I lost interest in it because I just don't speed that much and I don't have a sport bike fast enough for it to matter, but useful to know that ADS-B doesn't cover all aircraft.
- amatecha 6y agoOh that's interesting, I actually thought about that recently when I saw a "speed monitored by aircraft" sign on a highway. I wondered if an ADS-B receiver would pick it up. But... indeed, it's quite often that I see an aircraft and observe that it is not being picked up by my ADS-B receiver. Not sure whether due to low altitude , or that they are simply not transmitting..
- Scoundreller 6y ago> You could get the signal that a given tail number was in the air, but if it stayed below a certain altitude, you couldn't always receive its location. I believe trackers (like ADS-B exchange) will estimate location using mutlilateration. IE: enough receivers with GPS-sync’d time and knowing where they are can estimate origin with the differences in receipt timing. With good enough equipment, even one ground station might be able to tell a lot with Doppler shifts. Unsure if that’s don’t in practice though.
- Scoundreller 6y agoLooks like there’s much info here: http://www.multilateration.com/downloads/MLAT-ADS-B-Reference-Guide.pdf http://www.multilateration.com/downloads/MLAT-ADS-B-Referenc... (Big PDF)
- sorenjan 6y ago
- salex89 6y agoTo those who notices planes flying in circles, it doesn't have to be anything sinister. Those might be planes calibrating avionics or ground/airport equipment or doing test flights after maintenance. I have agencies in the region doing both, so you can sometimes find planes doing strange patterns which are their clients.
- MrZongle2 6y agoExactly. This doesn't mean that surveillance programs aren't taking place, but.... aspiring pilots gotta practice.
- flyinghamster 6y agoPipeline and power line inspectors in helicopters also tend to have weird flight paths.
- spyspy 6y agoCommercial flights will also enter a circular holding pattern around airports if they're not allowed to land for some reason. This video is a really cool example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdfVIdsufI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdfVIdsufI8
- nickmooney 6y agoDefinitely agree! That's why the author has explicitly filtered out patternwork by excluding "circles" that are particularly close to an airport. It doesn't mean anything is sinister, but this project is definitely aware of and disinterested in just finding student pilots beating up the pattern.
- beaner 6y agoWhat's even the point of mass FBI surveillance if our cities are just being let to destroy themselves anyway? If the point is for any type of enforcement then they're doing a really shit job. So bad that I feel it must be likely that these flights are for something benign. I'm getting downvotes but I'm sort of serious about this. Could somebody enlighten me? If the goal isn't ostensibly to protect the people then what is the point?
- mindslight 6y agoThe goal is more power and control, as always, regardless of effectiveness. It's the same reason the police have been turning protests into riots.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- iso1631 6y ago> I'm getting downvotes but I'm sort of serious about this Cities aren't "destroying themselves". Sure there will be a little change from large office blcoks where companies cram as many people as possible into each square foot, but cities aren't going anywhere.
- beaner 6y ago"destroying themselves" is certainly a characterization, and I don't mean to imply that I think cities will go away. What I'm saying is that for what purpose would the government be secretly spying on people if not to do something with that information - and rioting, looting, and widespread violence seem like the premier occasion for deploying some type of action based on that intelligence. If we don't see it happening in response to what's happening in cities now, what really is the point? What else would it be used for? I'm not saying it's right, I just don't understand the effort and the expense if it's ostensibly justified by the potential for occasions like this, which are now here, and now being effectively ignored by those doing the intelligence gathering.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
- reaperducer 6y agoI have a flight tracking app for my phone and see aircraft flying in circles over where I live all the time. Dozens and dozens of times each day. They're people in small planes practicing. Also, I live near several military bases. The interesting and loud stuff that I see flying by out my window NEVER shows up on any app. I expect this web site is similarly, deliberately, incomplete.
- rhacker 6y agoEveryone that plans on moving somewhere should do 1 of 2 things: 1. Not move there because of flight training schools. 2. Lobby to get the flight training school to practice over unpopulated areas.
- punnerud 6y agoOr live close to a prison or other place with restricted area
- NikolaNovak 6y ago#2 Doesn't seem feasible for large portions of the world though. I did some flight lessons in rural Manitoba. You got ~45 minutes of flight training for every hour you paid for. Then I considered restarting them once I moved to Toronto... you get about 20, 25 min of training for every paid hour - the rest is just getting out of restricted space. If you wanted to head to actual "unpopulated area", I think you'd need to book a 3 hour lesson in order to get any actual training. Completely unfeasible. And this is in Canada, a famously sparsely populated nation. It feels even less feasible for majority of more densely populated countries. (basically, by definition, if you only allow flight training in the unpopulated boonies, you'd deny it to a very large super-majority of population. One may view that in positive or negative light, of course)
- ysavir 6y ago> If you wanted to head to actual "unpopulated area", I think you'd need to book a 3 hour lesson in order to get any actual training. Completely unfeasible. Why is this unfeasible?
- swalsh 6y agoReminds me of a program I read about a while ago in Iraq. Planes would circle cities with a camera and some huge hard drives installed. If an IED went off they would rewind the tapes, and watch every stop the people who planted it went through before and after planting the bomb. From that they could unwind very complex networks of insurgent activity. The equipment was mostly off the shelf, and relatively cheap.
- avh02 6y ago"In Iraq" - they did it over US cities as well [0]. To be fair, I read that link a long time ago and don't remember the specifics of how long it ran and if it ran in more cities. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-surveillance/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-sur...
- threeio 6y agoStill going on... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-bal...
- coldpie 6y agoYes, such drones have been flying over US cities with unrest this year as well[1]. It's likely surveillance in the form of ARGUS-IS[2], as it was reported to be on the platform used by the Gorgon Stare project[3]. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2020/05/29/cbp-predator-drone-minneapolis-george-floyd-aclu/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2020/05/29/cbp-predato... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
- AviationAtom 6y agoCan I just say that while the tech is no doubt a privacy concern, it was insanely incredible. They literally could track down where a person from any crime scene went to.
- jcrawfordor 6y ago
- pdubs1 6y agoNow do one on chemtrails & geoengineering flights which drop lines of chemicals in the sky. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/us-geoengineering-research-gets-lift-4-million-congress https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/us-geoengineering-re...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- irrational 6y agoTIL about iOS shortcuts. This shortcut is pretty cool. But the nearest airplane comes up as private and now I’m paranoid it is an FBI surveillance plane when it is probably just going to/from the local small field airport.
- FBI4Life5 6y agoWhy worry about the FBI if you're not in any of the categories where they have a reason to act? I doubt they care about your legal activities. They've probably got better things to do.
- zingplex 6y ago"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden With regards to the FBI not caring about your legal activities, I recommend you look into the FBI blackmailing of Martin Luther King Jr. and COINTELPRO more generally. Their historic behavior doesn't exactly warrant trust.
- purplerabbit 6y agoHiding something and expressing something are so nearly opposite that I don't see how Snowden's analogy holds
- zingplex 6y agoWhat he is doing is simply restating the "I have nothing to hide" argument in the context of a different right, in this case the right to free speech. He is doing so to illustrate that the argument is not presenting a justification for the systemic violation of a human right but instead relying on an unstated assertion that the a given persons disinterest in a specific legal protection is an adequate pretext for its removal.
- 6y ago
- bengotow 6y agoOh jeez this is cool. The least we can do is get this guy a working Macbook Pro to continue his work. Donated!
- zobzu 6y agoit seem cool but it bothers me that this is a link to a donation page and that its been obviously made to request money, rather than show the service provided
- jjwiseman 6y agoHi! I made this. A few points I wanted to make, specific to the HN context (and a lot of this is in the "nerd mode" donation page at https://skycircl.es/donate-nerd-mode/ https://skycircl.es/donate-nerd-mode/): 1. This seems like a classic "low effort, high impact" project. It's super easy to detect aircraft flying in circles, in real-time, and post it to twitter. But it turns out to be an entry-point into a "strangely interesting" (according to pg) world of aircraft activity. The current #1 comment sadly only gets to see general aviation pilots practicing, but my bots have tweeted military aerial refueling, STOL practice in the wilderness, float-planes practicing on rivers and lakes, military drones flying over the desert, planes dropping sterile fruit flies as a way to reduce the fruit fly population, news helicopters following a highway pursuit, U.S. Forest Service AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters fighting fires, helicopters dropping mosquito pesticide, aerial tankers over Manhattan for the president's combat air patrol, FBI surveillance planes registered to front companies, Coast Guard helicopters doing search & rescue, crop dusters, scientists observing sea life over the ocean, planes doing Gorgon Stare-style persistent surveillance over Baltimore, sheriff's helicopters rescuing hikers, power line inspections, pipeline inspections, military aircraft doing surveillance over protestors, stealth jet test flights, a Grumman HU-16 Albatross seaplane that belongs to the USAF over the Mojave desert, a U-2 test flight, and a B-29. That is not even close to a complete list. 2. All the code is open source. See https://gitlab.com/jjwiseman/advisory-circular/ https://gitlab.com/jjwiseman/advisory-circular/ and https://gitlab.com/jjwiseman/whatsoverhead https://gitlab.com/jjwiseman/whatsoverhead 3. As far as I know, this comment on HN is the first time anyone published any significant detail about the FBI's secret aerial surveillance program: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508812
- Apylon777 6y agoThank you so much for making this. I was constantly checking it to determine what was flying above our house in Minneapolis during the recent civil unrest. I took comfort in at least know what was buzzing us and why it might be doing it.
- DaftDank 6y agoThank you for your work! We need MORE information about what our government is doing at all levels, not less.
- shanecleveland 6y agoI find it oddly satisfying to be able to use an app on my phone to identify planes above me. Do it all the time. I live across the Puget Sound from Seattle and I occasionally end up spotting a Boeing plane clearly on a test flight based on the route it has flown (geometric shapes, circles, take-off and return same airport). Also had an interesting occurrence when I awoke to the sound of a plane dive-bombing my house. We happened to be located in an area designated to be sprayed for some sort of moth. The plane was just about scraping the tops of trees. But I was able to track and see the pattern it flew to spray our area and other areas it had visited that morning.
- EvRev 6y agoRecently we had a suspect run through the yard. It was terrifying and had I not been hanging out on the back room I would not have been able to lock the door before he got in. The initial tip off that something was off was the CHP plane flying in circles above. Now when I hear the aircraft above us I instantly check its pattern and lock all the doors.
- think_about_it 6y agoSomeone needs to mention xkcd.com/1910/.
- tekkiweb 6y agoNothing!
- bhaile 6y agoI've also used Wolfram Alpha for similar information. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+planes+are+overhead+now https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+planes+are+overhe...
- ShradhaSingh 6y ago“Hey, Siri, what's overhead?”
- linhchi 6y agohey, in the slide there was a part that says that surveillance planes typically flight in a couterclockwise circle. does anybody know why and can explain to me? thanks
- iNerdier 6y agoMaybe a link to the actual bots in the page rather than to a tweet with a twitter list that doesn’t seem to work would be helpful to, you know, actually see what’s going on?
- jjwiseman 6y agoThis is the first I've heard that the twitter list doesn't work. What's the issue?
- shruubi 6y agoHow can this claim to be "all over the world" when your examples are "Los Angeles, Baltimore, Portland, Minneapolis, and London." Last I counted, four of those five are in the same country. The world does not begin and end in America.
- jjwiseman 6y agoOh my goodness, Mr. literal over here. There are currently 3 continents covered by Advisory Circular bots. There are actually more Australian cities than American cities covered. You can see the complete list of bots here: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1263724487435890688/members https://twitter.com/i/lists/1263724487435890688/members
- sbisson 6y agoI ended up using some lockdown time to put together a Pi-based ADS-B receiver, as I live close to the main low-flying helicopter route through London. I've chosen to feed data to a mix of services, including ADSBexchange which powers those bots, so some of the data there comes from my receiver; which has a surprisingly long range with a decent antenna: I'm regularly tracking aircraft 190 or so miles away... You can set up a system for under $120 with a good antenna and a 1090MHz-filtered software defined radio stick. I use the Piaware distribution, which sets up the basic software needed to feed data and to generate your own maps. An added bonus of being a feeder is that you can get free access to commercial ADS-B networks like Flightradar...
- pps43 6y agoWill probably see TACAMO relay aircraft with VLF trailing wire antennas.
- arkanciscan 6y agoI love what you're doing, but where's your website? You've got Twitter bots, but I'm not on Twitter, and a Siri integration but I don't own AAPL products. It makes me sad to see such useful data siloed in closed platforms.
- jjwiseman 6y agoI'm not happy about the dependence on twitter, either, but that's the platform that people are on, so that was my priority. Eventually I would like to run a Mastodon instance or other ActivityPub system.
- arkanciscan 6y agoBut why no website?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thatsillyqaguy 6y agoHow would you feel when criminals use this?
- jjwiseman 6y agoCriminals can go to any of the commercial flight trackers and see most of this stuff, or to adsbexchange.com.