
Surveillance planes spotted in the sky for days after West Baltimore rioting - bootload
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/surveillance-planes-spotted-in-the-sky-for-days-after-west-baltimore-rioting/2015/05/05/c57c53b6-f352-11e4-84a6-6d7c67c50db0_story.html
======
rayiner
As someone who lives in Baltimore, the riots reminded me why I'm less afraid
of the police than of my neighbors. Police flying overhead to capture publicly
visible events didn't try to throw a chair through the window of the
restaurant I was eating at with my family, or vandalize the drug store by my
house, or break the door of my favorite fro-yo place.

It's not that I'm not sympathetic to the general idea the ACLU and EFF are
pushing here. It was just a reminder of why the public gives the police so
much power and benefit of the doubt.

~~~
dasil003
On the other hand rioters won't break into your residence while you're asleep
and maim your toddler with a flashbang on the flimsiest of evidence and
conjecture.

~~~
Rangi42
I think most people don't expect the police to do that to _them_ either. No-
knock raids are something that happens to _other_ people. Riots could affect
anyone. (Not commenting on the accuracy of this view, just its existence.)

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'm 32, white, male, and I still get nervous whenever I get pulled over. I can
do everything right and still end up dead on the ground with the officer
walking away from the situation unscathed.

~~~
ionwake
How many times have you been pulled over?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Its actually been about a year, as I drive a bit more conservatively now, but
probably around 18 times in my entire life (early 20s, tech worker money
single guy expenses, high performance sports cars).

My point is, you should never have to worry that you might be killed during a
traffic stop.

~~~
ionwake
I live in the UK. Around a decade driving, have never been pulled over once.
Thanks for your reply, it was interesting. Higher than I anticipated.

------
stevecalifornia
Radiolab did a show about these surveillance aircraft. In the show the host
turns from skeptic to believer-- and here's why:

The plane flies in a circle and records activity. Later on a crime is
discovered, say a garage break in . The police call the surveillance team and
say 'Look at this spot' and the team rewinds the video and see a blue van pull
up and break in. Then the play the video forward and find where the blue van
went. Then the cops are dispatched to the blue van's spot and an arrest is
made.

Personally, I see the value in that system and am ok with it being deployed.
Especially to places like West Baltimore.

~~~
dalke
Surveillance can certainly be used to solve crimes. But one of the issues is
to get right the level of oversight, transparency, and trust in the system to
minimize abuse. Because we have a long experience that these systems are
abused.

For examples: police have sold information -
[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22465173](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22465173) .
Intelligence people have spied on love interests -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT)
. City workers have used cameras to spy on a naked woman in her house -
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/460974...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/4609746.stm)
.

This extends to companies as well, as when HP chair Dunn 'authorised the
surveillance of board members and journalists' \-
[http://www.alphr.com/news/enterprise/93590/hp-chairman-
resig...](http://www.alphr.com/news/enterprise/93590/hp-chairman-resigns-in-
phone-tap-scandal) . (I use that as a proxy for a likely scenario; should a
government whistleblower send documents to the press about an illegal coverup,
then the same surveillance technology used to find criminals can easily be
repurposed to find the leaker.)

~~~
rand334
It's not about oversight. They don't need to be spying on citizens whom are
neither suspected of a crime nor have a warrant against them. I don't give a
fuck it it solves crimes; I'd rather the criminals get away with it if this is
the cost. It needs to stop.

~~~
dalke
This debate is decades old, and history shows that complaining about "spying"
is not an effective method to keep new technology out of police hands.

If the police use a search light for better visibility a night? Not spying.
Use binoculars? Not spying. Fly overhead? Not spying. Look into the windows of
a barn which is "accessible only after crossing a series of "ranch-style"
fences and situated one-half mile from the public road"? Not spying.

At least, not according to the US Supreme Court. There are of course many who
object.

~~~
bigiain
It's not even so much about "keeping technology out of the hands of police",
it's about having appropriate safeguards against misuse and accountability for
people granted the power to use (and abuse) it.

If we can't even indict police who shoot people in the back to go to trial(1),
how can anyone believe cops won't use this to stalk ex girlfriends or anyone
else they feel randomly curious about?

(1) [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-30339943](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30339943)

~~~
dalke
(Which is what I started off with, two comments upwards, with the statement
'one of the issues is to get right the level of oversight, transparency, and
trust in the system to minimize abuse'.)

------
dogma1138
Is it too conspiratorial to think that this have likely had zero law
enforcement value but rather just a a real world benchmark or acceptance test
for surveillance tech that will end up being used in much more high valued
arenas?

If you built some kick ass new sensor you'll probably want to test it in an
environment that won't put it at much risk, Baltimore rioting aside isn't
exactly Pakistan or Nicaragua.

~~~
aburan28
These airplanes are flying every single day circling the same cities every
single day. These systems are used to crush dissent and crush any form of
protest, that's the problem.

~~~
dogma1138
They aren't there to crush any form of protest that's absurd, should they be
there probably not but take the orwelianess level down a notch or three.

~~~
rand334
The FBI planes circle cities for hours and hours, equipped with Stingrays and
FLIR cameras. This has no place in a free society, period. The "orwelianness"
is pretty dead-on-balls fucking accurate.

~~~
dogma1138
How much different is this from metro, traffic, and transportation CCTV
systems that we've had for decades?

~~~
rand334
They use thermal cameras and stingrays. This is not technology that the public
has access to. If traffic and CCTV cameras had thermal and cell-interception
capabilities, people might be a bit more concerned. If I'm in my house, no one
should be able to look inside it or intercept the signals from my phone. Do I
need to thermally-insulate my house to get some fucking privacy?

~~~
dogma1138
Neither Thermographic nor SWIR cmeras can actually see through house walls,
any internal heat source will be diffused, and bodies won't be picked up at
all this isn't Hollywood.

Most modern CCTV cameras have SWIR mode for night operations.

Cell-interception is more easily achieved on a metro scale through carrier or
base station based interception. In any case Stingray is a brand name for an
IMSI catcher made by Harris, they sell many other IMSI catchers to local law
enforcement agencies.

Miami PD for example bought their hand-held version back in 2006.

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1282625-06-11-29-200...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1282625-06-11-29-2006-harris-
kingfish-sole-source.html)

They are quite often used in raids to pin point a specific house or an
apartment.

Local police units have had this tech since the late 90's, in many places this
was used in counter-drug and counter-organized crime operations, you had
patrol cars with IMSI catchers that would drive through a neighborhood
catching all cell-id's and matching them to known numbers of drug dealers and
gang members.

So no this isn't really new.

------
rhino369
What is the big deal. Anything you can see from a Drone isn't really private
anyway. And what you do as part of a violent mob real really isn't private.

I think the Taliban has proved that any sort of dystopian fears are wildly
over blown.

Plus we already have police helicopters.

~~~
hugh4
And police choppers are loud and annoying, while drones are presumably quiet.

On the other hand, what if we scaled if up? It would be very useful for the
police to have a constant fleet of drones in the sky ready to swing their
cameras around to focus on anything. Report of a mugging at fifth and D? Get
visual on it in seconds. Which as a potential mugging victim I'm all for, but
still, the idea of constant airborne surveillance gives me the heebie-jeebies.

That said, this, along with many other potentially useful crime- fighting
tools, is about to become technologically possible, and we're going to need
rules about every new thing that comes along. Right now we have no useful
framework for making rules, apart from seeing what people shout loudest about.
Personal heebie-jeebies aren't a good guide to sensible decisionmaking.

~~~
rhino369
>Which as a potential mugging victim I'm all for, but still, the idea of
constant airborne surveillance gives me the heebie-jeebies.

There are 220 million smartphones in America. How many of them are set up to
send location data? 80-90%? Shit, Android reads through my texts/email and
gives me directions to where I'm going to meet someone for dinner before I
even ask for them.

Privacy is dead.

~~~
rmxt
Is the distinction between a private entity collecting semi-consented to
location data, and the government/law enforcement collecting such data lost on
you?

I say "semi-" because I'd wager that less than 5% of people read and
understand the implications of the TOS they click through.

 _Your_ privacy might be dead, but don't think that everyone else's is as
well.

------
urlgrey
I recommend listening to the 'Eye in the Sky' episode of of Radiolab:
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-
sky/)

It features an interview with Ross McNutt, also interviewed in the Washington
Post story. McNutt describes aerial surveillance technology he developed for
the US military operations in Iraq & Afghanistan, in use for over 10 years.
The primary reason for not introducing it here is the US is opposition from
privacy groups, despite having been used successfully abroad to counter
terrorism and organized crime.

~~~
pyre
> The primary reason for not introducing it here is the US is opposition from
> privacy groups, despite having been used successfully abroad to counter
> terrorism and organized crime.

No offence, but do you really think that giving the ability to to mass scans
like this to police officers won't be abused? What's our track record on
_actually_ punishing police officers that can have provably (and demonstrably)
abused their powers?

I'd almost trust the military _more_ with that technology than local police
departments and/or the FBI.

Edit: Also, what are the chances that this technology will spend a lot of time
in the field at local police departments before there are any meaningful
rules/regulations on how they can use it? During that period no one will get
punished for "abuses" because without rules and regulations _any_ use is
valid.

~~~
urlgrey
No offense taken; I too do not trust US law enforcement to use this technology
in a manner that respects the privacy and rights of law-abiding citizens.

Nonetheless, it is a fact that this technology has been used to trace the
location of people responsible for the placement of roadside bombs in warzones
abroad, and has been used to locate the headquarters of an organized crime
group in Juarez, Mexico, a place that averaged 8.5 killings per day in 2010.

I highly recommend listening to the Radiolab story, it raises some interesting
points.

~~~
mattmanser
_law-abiding citizens_

So it's OK in your book to trample the rights of criminals?

Because I bet we could find a crime you've unintentionally committed in the
last week or so...

------
duaneb
TBH this isn't surprising or creepy. This could be a great chance to try out
counting more dynamic crowds, for instance, so not all applications are
inherently creepy.

Who has oversight for this kind of thing? It's crazy we can't get a straight
answer about this kind of thing.

~~~
bantunes
Isn't not knowing who has oversight for this kind of thing creepy?

~~~
duaneb
I think it has the potential to be creepy. I don't necessarily see aerial
observation, something over a century old, no worse than street cameras or
cops: a necessary evil, to some people.

------
kps
Linked article is from May. Previously on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504825)

------
awqrre
While most people appear to think that is not a problem, I think that it is...
even more so because of some of the sensors/imagery that they use can see much
more then what the naked eye can see (unless they obtain a warrant for
searching all homes in the area that is being scanned).

------
gnu8
This is 100% illegal unless a judge signed a warrant for each individual the
plane observed. Is there any way of identifying the airplane and lodging a
criminal complaint against the ones who were flying it?

------
pc2g4d
A few weeks ago at around midnight I could hear a helicopter hovering over a
nearby neighborhood for a long time (10-15 minutes) apparently not moving very
much. (The sound didn't change direction much.)

It was loud and obnoxious, but also troubling. Why were they up there? We have
lots of helicopter fly-bys around here, but I had never noticed a long-term
hover before.

~~~
awqrre
Around here, the sheriff's dept. have a website that list current active
calls... if you have something similar in your area, it might give you some
clue to what is going on. But ours don't get updated in real time and they
don't list all calls. A police scanner might give more accurate information
but is often hard to understand with all the codes that they use and the audio
quality can be really bad.

------
ngwhist
SWIR/MWIR footage was captured for two subsequent experiments:

* Crowd detection: algorithmic detection of clusters containing greater than five person objects * Automatic backtrace: designate a cluster and see the paths its members took to arrive at the location (including linking people to vehicles travelled in to the scene)

