Interesting article! Now, I am not interested in the government surveillance aspect of all of this... I mean, you have a city like L.A. where statistically, y

Interesting article! Now, I am not interested in the government surveillance aspect of all of this... I mean, you have a city like L.A. where statistically, you'll have a higher incidence of crimes than say, a corn field in Nebraska, and you have the ability to be an "eye in the sky" (looking down at a city from the sky is technically a public view -- that is, not opposed by the 4th Amendment) -- so why wouldn't [city/state/federal] governments -- use that as a means for preventing/understanding/solving crimes? I don't endorse it -- but I don't oppose it... (could I, even if I wanted to?) I'll let the civil liberties lawyers and politicians and social philosophers and podcasting pundits -- have that debate -- but to me it's a waste of time. All of that being said, here's my key takeaway from the article: >"But then this amazing thing happened: Someone figured out the RTL dongle for receiving digital TV transmissions could be used as a wideband SDR and pick up all sorts of stuff, including the aircraft transponder packets on 1090 MHz that sometimes include aircraft position." Now, that is interesting and useful information! In other words, if someone wanted to -- they could potentially track (you might ask, "who's surveilling who?" in this scenario! <g>) all aircraft moving around a certain vicinity of space, anywhere in the world -- via transponder radio packets, and transponder radio packets alone! Oh sure, they might miss one or two stealth aircraft(!) <g> -- but for the most part it should work! Also, another related idea here might be to use SDR to implement a home-brewed version of radar... Like, I didn't think of either of these two things before reading this article(!) -- but now that I read this article, I think to myself: "yeah, either of those things might be possible!" So, a thank you to the author for expanding (and pardon the pun here! <g>) -- my horizon! <g>