7 ms·

Haven't they always done this? They've always used surveillance vans parked outside of suspect's houses with listening equipment, for example. They even used

Haven't they always done this? They've always used surveillance vans parked outside of suspect's houses with listening equipment, for example. They even used fake company names on the sides of the vans. Why should we be surprised they're using airplanes too?

higherpurpose 11y ago
Because now they can spy on millions vs 1. I think that makes the difference.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- josefresco 11y ago
  What if the target (being monitored by said van) took off and "lost" the van in the sidestreets of US city? The FBI would be criticized for it's ineffective surveillance techniques. The plan is just an upgrade - the laws and controls (or lack thereof) are what is important - not so much the tech.
  - Retric 11y ago
    The FBI can easily follow one suspect, but it's an expensive provision. The issue is when you decrease the costs you can start following thousands of suspects for the same net cost so it takes a much lower standard of evidence to start. Suspect > suspect’s friend > friend of friend and you quickly hit the point where everyone is being watched. Worse large lists quickly become meaningless. Both the 9/11 hijackers and the Boston Marathon bombers where on a list, but that list was simply too large to be useful because 99.9% of everyone on those lists ended up doing nothing. Now consider something like a DNA database. With 100 million random people on it a 99.999% accurate test going to report a false positive every single time and most tests are nowhere near that accurate.
    - genericuser 11y ago
      Getting from the admitted targeted surveillance with to 'everyone is being watched' seems like a bit of a slippery slope argument to me. I think, as you point out, that the overwhelming quantity of Data that would be produced by such an approach prevents this by creating a cost/benefit equilibrium for the FBI on the number of people they monitor with any regularity to build their cases.
      - Retric 11y ago
        License plate scanners are actually just scanning everyone so there is no slippery slope involved. Right now we are all being watched. It's a pure cost issue; camera + OCR + database lookup is really cheap so just tag everyone.
        genericuser 11y ago
        How did we go from the FBI flying aircraft with video cameras to license plate scanners which scan 'everyone'? I ask because there is no mention of license plate scanners in any of the parent comments to this, or the article. Also while I assume by everyone you mean everyone who passes through the field of view of the scanner, and not actually everyone; phrasing things in false absolutes like that does not further your point.
        Retric 11y ago
        It's hard to directly read a license plate from an aircraft. However that's not necessary as the plates are being recorded as part of a separate system all it takes is continuous footage of a car from aircraft and you are recording everyone. https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-tracking/automatic-license-plate-readers https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-trac... Basically, aircraft follows car X, it passes by a scanner, you now know every car with timestamp that passed by the scanner and can look it up on the video. Doing this automatically is just a question of having enough video coverage and some fairly basic video analysis. They don’t even need to do this in real time as you can write the software after the fact. In other words because they already have license plate scanners and are doing OCR + lookup they just need a video of the cars after that point. Note: I doubt they have nearly enough footage to track everyone right now, but the cheaper it is to add one more camera and archive the footage the closer you get to that point. PS: You can even back track cars so if you have a lot of footage of a car that then passes near a scanner you then know its path from wherever the footage starts.
- linkregister 11y ago
  > Because now they can spy on millions I didn't see that part of the article, can you link me to some resources for the planes having that level of camera and computer vision technology?
  - nosuchthing 11y ago
    [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/01/AR2011010102690.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_stare
    - rhino369 11y ago
      Those links don't support the ability to active track a million people. It's just a 360 degree camera used to track insurgents during combat. It's not tracking every person in a city over a period of time.
      - nosuchthing 11y ago
        The array of cameras on the aircraft that flew over Compton can record high-resolution images of a 25-square mile area for up to six hours. It can track every person and vehicle on the ground, beaming back the pictures in real time. It’s city-wide surveillance on an unprecedented scale. What we essentially do is a live version of google earth only with a full TIVO capability, it allows us to rewind time and go back and see events that we didn’t know occurred at the time they occurred. [0] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/new-police-surveillance-techniques-raise-privacy-concerns/#.U16acyARnIg.twitter http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/new-police-surveillance-techn...
  - awch 11y ago
    ARGUS-IS "ARGUS is an advanced camera system that uses hundreds of cellphone cameras in a mosaic to video and auto-track every moving object within a 36 square mile area. ARGUS is a form of Wide Area Persistent Surveillance that allows for one camera to provide such detailed video that users can collect 'pattern-of-life' data and track individual people inside the footage anywhere within the field of regard." [0] https://youtu.be/QGxNyaXfJsA?t=51s https://youtu.be/QGxNyaXfJsA?t=51s [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS
josefresco 11y ago
I think HN and the public are extra sensitive to the concepts of "mass surveillance" by the government. A van parked out of a house doesn't seem like mass surveillance (even though it probably could be) but a plane "circling US cities" for some reason, raises these concerns to a higher level. Also, the story is just ripe for the viral nature of the current news cycle: Mix in one part government entity (FBI), one part privacy (seeming mass surveillance) and one part secrecy (hidden corps) and you've got yourself a recipe for media success in 2015! In all seriousness, if the planes were "drones" you'd have a social media sharing grand slam.
beamatronic 11y ago
Also in 5 years those vans will be self-driving.
snowwrestler 11y ago
Which suspects are they parking the surveillance planes over? The fear is that the answer is "none"--they're flying planes continuously to see what they can see across the whole city. What if they started parking a surveillance van with listening equipment outside of EVERY single house in the city? Still ok? Americans are ok with surveillance technology as long as its use is limited. The American system for limiting it has always been focused on the exclusion of evidence. If the state violated the 4th Amendment (like parking a listening van without a warrant), the evidence could be excluded from trial and the surveilled person is less likely to convicted. The government is now pivoting to the concept of national security to get around all these limitations. If the FBI is not investigating a crime, it does not care about the 4th Amendment. Terrorism is defined as an act of war--not a crime--so as long as the FBI is doing "counter-terrorism" it can just collect all information about whatever it wants, whenever it wants, with no limitations. And it can keep the entire process secret.
binarymax 11y ago
Definitely reminds me of this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v111/suspense/flowers_by_irene_los_simpson_thumb.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v111/suspense/flowers_by_i...

higherpurpose 11y ago

Because now they can spy on millions vs 1. I think that makes the difference.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
josefresco 11y ago
What if the target (being monitored by said van) took off and "lost" the van in the sidestreets of US city? The FBI would be criticized for it's ineffective surveillance techniques. The plan is just an upgrade - the laws and controls (or lack thereof) are what is important - not so much the tech.
- Retric 11y ago
  The FBI can easily follow one suspect, but it's an expensive provision. The issue is when you decrease the costs you can start following thousands of suspects for the same net cost so it takes a much lower standard of evidence to start. Suspect > suspect’s friend > friend of friend and you quickly hit the point where everyone is being watched. Worse large lists quickly become meaningless. Both the 9/11 hijackers and the Boston Marathon bombers where on a list, but that list was simply too large to be useful because 99.9% of everyone on those lists ended up doing nothing. Now consider something like a DNA database. With 100 million random people on it a 99.999% accurate test going to report a false positive every single time and most tests are nowhere near that accurate.
  - genericuser 11y ago
    Getting from the admitted targeted surveillance with to 'everyone is being watched' seems like a bit of a slippery slope argument to me. I think, as you point out, that the overwhelming quantity of Data that would be produced by such an approach prevents this by creating a cost/benefit equilibrium for the FBI on the number of people they monitor with any regularity to build their cases.
    - Retric 11y ago
      License plate scanners are actually just scanning everyone so there is no slippery slope involved. Right now we are all being watched. It's a pure cost issue; camera + OCR + database lookup is really cheap so just tag everyone.
      - genericuser 11y ago
        How did we go from the FBI flying aircraft with video cameras to license plate scanners which scan 'everyone'? I ask because there is no mention of license plate scanners in any of the parent comments to this, or the article. Also while I assume by everyone you mean everyone who passes through the field of view of the scanner, and not actually everyone; phrasing things in false absolutes like that does not further your point.
        Retric 11y ago
        It's hard to directly read a license plate from an aircraft. However that's not necessary as the plates are being recorded as part of a separate system all it takes is continuous footage of a car from aircraft and you are recording everyone. https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-tracking/automatic-license-plate-readers https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-trac... Basically, aircraft follows car X, it passes by a scanner, you now know every car with timestamp that passed by the scanner and can look it up on the video. Doing this automatically is just a question of having enough video coverage and some fairly basic video analysis. They don’t even need to do this in real time as you can write the software after the fact. In other words because they already have license plate scanners and are doing OCR + lookup they just need a video of the cars after that point. Note: I doubt they have nearly enough footage to track everyone right now, but the cheaper it is to add one more camera and archive the footage the closer you get to that point. PS: You can even back track cars so if you have a lot of footage of a car that then passes near a scanner you then know its path from wherever the footage starts.
linkregister 11y ago
> Because now they can spy on millions I didn't see that part of the article, can you link me to some resources for the planes having that level of camera and computer vision technology?
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/01/AR2011010102690.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_stare
  - rhino369 11y ago
    Those links don't support the ability to active track a million people. It's just a 360 degree camera used to track insurgents during combat. It's not tracking every person in a city over a period of time.
    - nosuchthing 11y ago
      The array of cameras on the aircraft that flew over Compton can record high-resolution images of a 25-square mile area for up to six hours. It can track every person and vehicle on the ground, beaming back the pictures in real time. It’s city-wide surveillance on an unprecedented scale. What we essentially do is a live version of google earth only with a full TIVO capability, it allows us to rewind time and go back and see events that we didn’t know occurred at the time they occurred. [0] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/new-police-surveillance-techniques-raise-privacy-concerns/#.U16acyARnIg.twitter http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/new-police-surveillance-techn...
- awch 11y ago
  ARGUS-IS "ARGUS is an advanced camera system that uses hundreds of cellphone cameras in a mosaic to video and auto-track every moving object within a 36 square mile area. ARGUS is a form of Wide Area Persistent Surveillance that allows for one camera to provide such detailed video that users can collect 'pattern-of-life' data and track individual people inside the footage anywhere within the field of regard." [0] https://youtu.be/QGxNyaXfJsA?t=51s https://youtu.be/QGxNyaXfJsA?t=51s [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS

josefresco 11y ago

I think HN and the public are extra sensitive to the concepts of "mass surveillance" by the government. A van parked out of a house doesn't seem like mass surveillance (even though it probably could be) but a plane "circling US cities" for some reason, raises these concerns to a higher level. Also, the story is just ripe for the viral nature of the current news cycle: Mix in one part government entity (FBI), one part privacy (seeming mass surveillance) and one part secrecy (hidden corps) and you've got yourself a recipe for media success in 2015! In all seriousness, if the planes were "drones" you'd have a social media sharing grand slam.

beamatronic 11y ago

Also in 5 years those vans will be self-driving.

snowwrestler 11y ago

Which suspects are they parking the surveillance planes over? The fear is that the answer is "none"--they're flying planes continuously to see what they can see across the whole city. What if they started parking a surveillance van with listening equipment outside of EVERY single house in the city? Still ok? Americans are ok with surveillance technology as long as its use is limited. The American system for limiting it has always been focused on the exclusion of evidence. If the state violated the 4th Amendment (like parking a listening van without a warrant), the evidence could be excluded from trial and the surveilled person is less likely to convicted. The government is now pivoting to the concept of national security to get around all these limitations. If the FBI is not investigating a crime, it does not care about the 4th Amendment. Terrorism is defined as an act of war--not a crime--so as long as the FBI is doing "counter-terrorism" it can just collect all information about whatever it wants, whenever it wants, with no limitations. And it can keep the entire process secret.

binarymax 11y ago

Definitely reminds me of this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v111/suspense/flowers_by_irene_los_simpson_thumb.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v111/suspense/flowers_by_i...