
Maps Showing Where FBI Planes Are Watching from Above (2016) - colinprince
https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/spies-in-the-skies
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ethbro
Surprising how positive the initial comments here are.

Do you really believe any incidental collection that isn't specifically
prohibited by law (which is to say, most) doesn't end up in a database mined
for unrelated reasons?

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meri_dian
Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more
power than it already has over the common person? More than governments have
always had over the common person?

Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities
they develop to defend us from criminals.

~~~
jancsika
> Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any
> more power than it already has over the common person?

That's a truism. If we play Battleship and you can see my battleships but I
can't see yours, who is going to win?

But your questioning of a truism makes me think you don't agree with a hidden
premise of civic life: that there will be times where the citizenry will be
rightfully at odds with law enforcement tasked with protecting it. Many
stripes of civil disobedience depend on that hidden premise.

> Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities
> they develop to defend us from criminals.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Trusting a future elected "good
government" to keep the FBI honest with their black box capabilities--
capabilities which they _reflexively_ claim are necessary as currently
implemented to combat terrorism-- isn't a viable solution in a democracy.

A "good" government itself includes a fearless press and a strong judicial
branch which citizens can use to force the FBI to be more transparent about
what it does. That strong judicial branch can also be used to revise the
capabilities of LE if they are found to be ripe for abuse and corruption.

Our ability to do this at all _is itself_ a measure of how "good" our
government is.

~~~
meri_dian
But your analysis of the situation is wrong. When we talk about power we
necessarily speak of relative power. While this represents an escalation of
FBI intelligence gathering capabilities, the average civilian has more ways to
discretely communicate and congregate now than ever before.

Viewed in this light, the government improving its intelligence gathering
capabilities is simply a response to the citizenry's increasing ability to
avoid detection. And it goes without saying - or perhaps you need to be
reminded - that bad actors' ability to work in the shadows increases in
parallel with everyone else's.

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zhan_eg
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465978)

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mankash666
Tone of this article is unfairly critical of DHS & FBI. When data and
statistics underpin our decisions in everything - speech recognition to
pricing and suggestions on Amazon, apparently the government's use of it to go
after suspected terrorists is unfair.

The surveillance apparently shifted to a mosque after the San Bernardino
shooting, not because the FBI hates mosques, but because data on individuals
attending the mosque tagged them as suspects.

~~~
jstanley
The problem isn't that they're trying to track down terrorists. The problem is
that this method involves recording _everything_ that happens within a large
radius of their actual target.

~~~
wildrhythms
How different is this from putting a police officer on the street corner?

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TheAdamAndChe
Data storage and interpretation. A single officer on every street corner can't
aggregate data to learn of geographical trends, social connections, and
aberrations from the norm in location, behavior, political thoughts, etc.

~~~
mcny
Iirc CIA study seems to suggest that there is a point of diminishing with
data. At some point, it starts to make a human agent overconfident and over
reliant on the data to the point where it is worse than having less data. Now,
add the fact that we have nation states as well as other actors working hard
to influence us. How difficult wood it be to plant data into a mass
surveillance system? Even assuming every politician and every government
employee has perfect ethical and moral standing, can we completely trust our
surveillance system?

My thought is this: likely whatever your trying to keep secret, out
adversaries have seen it.

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wjn0
Looking at the map, outside the big cities, it seems mostly concentrated on
highways. Does anyone know if it's realistic for a plane flying a mile high to
grab, say, license plates and driver photos? Would this be legal? How close to
the highway on the map would they have to be, hypothetically?

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spy_sat
I don't have any doubts. The BBC reported, in 2014, that spy satellites had a
10cm resolution. This is good enough to see if you are holding a cell phone or
not.

~~~
paintchipluvr
Most definitely there was a very good video about lead engineer (I think)
talking in front of a hexagon spy satellite from the 1970s a lot of the
information on it is declassified now, but he did say that the resolution on
them still was and all he could say was that in the 1970s "I could read a
newspaper on a table" and that's all he'd say on the matter. imagine how far
technology has come along since then

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtmtYlcPYYA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtmtYlcPYYA)
The video.

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UneasySausage
Wow check above Tampa Bay; there's an immense level of activity there versus
other areas of Florida - What gives

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mkcsquared
I apparently missed the memo where BuzzFeed started doing real reporting. When
did that start happening?

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eli
Since at least 2012 when they had reporters embedded in the Obama campaign.

Take a look:
[https://www.buzzfeed.com/investigations](https://www.buzzfeed.com/investigations)

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iiiggglll
There's only one way to respond to this:

[http://i.imgur.com/lfcUz.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/lfcUz.jpg)

~~~
iamthirsty
I'm usually happy to not see these kinds of comments of Hacker News, but this
one was funny as hell, I must admit.

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emveeoh
This seems like a reasonable way to police. My only issue is if the drones can
be 'heard' flying over a location. For example, buzzing over a specific house
or business. Neighbors would automatically assume danger or guilt. If they
drone, they should stay out of ear-range from anyone on the ground. Nobody
should _hear_ surveillance.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
What, then, is an unreasonable way to police? Is it okay with you that many of
these flights have infrared and other technology that lets agents of the state
monitor and listen to you in your own home, in addition to ubiquitous
tracking? If the enforcement of law is all that matters, why stop at 24/7
surveillance of all people, all the time? Without freedom and privacy, what
good is the law? If physical safety is your only concern surely we'd all be
more safe if we were locked in our own individual cells, all the time.

~~~
Houshalter
I have no problem with surveillance if it stops crime. Private surveillance
cameras are already pretty much everywhere and no one seems to mind. My ideal
form of surveillance would be passive though. The data would be recorded, but
no human would have access to it without something like a search warrant. And
everything would be deleted after a week. Just like with private surveillance
cameras.

