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I've written up my findings (almost 100 aircraft, 17 front companies) and how I reached them at https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillance h
by jjwiseman 11y ago
I've written up my findings (almost 100 aircraft, 17 front companies) and how I reached them at https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillance https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillan...
- jjwiseman 11y agoThe surprising thing was how easy it was to do this. Really, all you had to do was look: These planes seem to literally use (unencrypted, easily decoded) transponder codes that mean "FBI surveillance", the public records show company names that mostly fit a simple regex, and one of the front companies even has the exact same address as the U.S. Dept of Justice.
- god_bless_texas 11y agoJJ, I love your research on this, with SDR Dongle. I'm building up my ADS-B receiver with a NooTech SDR. One question, you talked about capturing squawks with your SDR - did you try for ADS-B or do you know if these aircraft employ it? This would give you location. Kudos to you, man!
- jjwiseman 11y agoYes, I use dump1090 which can decode Mode S/ADS-B with or without location and Mode A/C.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- RyJones 11y agoalmost like they weren't trying with that last point.
- upofadown 11y agoSince you can look up the aircraft based on the N number using the same transponder code doesn't really make much difference.
- jjwiseman 11y agoYes, but I did it the other way around: I found the aircraft that were using the transponder code, then looked up who they were owned by and what other aircraft they had. That's how I was able to identify potential front companies that don't fit the "XYZ Aviation w/ PO Box in VA" template.
- cagey_vet 11y agoyou do understand that flightaware data is crowdsourced, yes? the data format is trivial to fake, and subsequently upload. i am not saying thats the case here, but implicitly trusting user input makes me skeptical about the entire conclusion.
- jjwiseman 11y agoRead my link from the parent comment: https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillance https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillan... tldr: I didn't use Flightaware; I observed these aircraft directly using my own receiver, decoding their callsigns and squawk codes, and correlated with FAA records and the company confirmed by the FBI itself to be a front. But it's true, most of this evidence is still circumstantial. Just because a company with an odd name and no internet presence has the same PO Box as the DOJ doesn't prove it's a front company; but it's pretty suggestive.
- robk 11y agoSomeone on reddit claims they got a close up photo of the camera. http://postimg.org/image/hm861sw61/ http://postimg.org/image/hm861sw61/
- JoblessWonder 11y agoHi John, Had you heard about the discovery of the plane last year in Sacramento? Here [1] is the story where they figured out the "JENNA" call sign. Here is the story that started it all. [2] [1] http://www.news10.net/story/news/local/arden-lariviera/2014/03/20/college-student-discovers-secret-of-sacramento-mystery-plane/6676727/ http://www.news10.net/story/news/local/arden-lariviera/2014/... [2] http://www.news10.net/story/news/local/sacramento/2014/03/18/mysterious-plane-circles-sacramento/6591669/ http://www.news10.net/story/news/local/sacramento/2014/03/18...
- jjwiseman 11y agoHere's a reference to the FBI using "JENNA" from 2011: http://theaviationist.com/2011/05/15/the-white-fest-b757-andrews/ http://theaviationist.com/2011/05/15/the-white-fest-b757-and... I found one link that claimed he found an FAA or DOJ publication that had at one time mentioned the JENNA callsign, but was then edited to remove the reference.
- vonklaus 11y agoThis is similar to the callsigns of the Area 51 planes flying from vegas. JANET was an acronym for Just Another Non-Existent Terminal[0] Interested to see what JENNA stands for. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_(airline) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_(airline)
- ddispaltro 11y agoIt's kind of fun to read a story with tweets intertwined. It's like tweets are the new bold. Anyways, great to see this stuff still so accessible even if hidden at first glance.