
A Mysterious Military Spy Plane Has Been Flying Circles Over Seattle for Days - pera
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13154/this-mysterious-military-spy-plane-has-been-flying-circles-over-seattle-for-days
======
coin
> Nobody at the DoD seems to know who the aircraft belongs to or what exactly
> it is doing flying so many missions over the Seattle area.

No. They know they just aren't disclosing it.

~~~
hellofunk
Source?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
You think the DoD would stand by and do nothing while a completed unidentified
military surveillance plane circled a major city for days? Whatever this thing
is doing, it's cleared at a high level. Maybe the people answering the phones
for journalists don't know.

~~~
archgoon
Not to mention that the last few days the Navy's been conducting an air show.

[http://komonews.com/news/local/blue-angels-air-show-
begins-t...](http://komonews.com/news/local/blue-angels-air-show-begins-takes-
off-as-planned-despite-hazy-skies)

------
Animats
"You guys are going to go up there and circle until you can replicate that
failure."

(Much of what test pilots really do is stuff like that.)

~~~
ozfive
I can attest to this. I was a systems engineer for a (In-Flight Entertainment
System) company and I can't count the amount of hours I have held a plane in
the air just to read the bits over the ARINC bus from the FMS. No
documentation.

~~~
greedy_buffer
What is there about entertainment systems that can't be tested on the ground?

~~~
detaro
Data from the flight management system via an undocumented protocol?

~~~
drdeadringer
I might be dense here: Why would the protocol be undocumented? Entertainment
to toilets to guidance, it's still a flight system.

~~~
derefr
Perhaps because it was spurious traffic "leaking" over the bus that wasn't
actually intended to be there, and would be removed if anyone in the flight
control systems department were told they were exposing it. And yet, that
leaking data was the only way to build a cute view of travel-time or somesuch
to differentiate their software for their bid, so they had to use it, and had
to _not_ mention it or request assistance with it.

In software terms, it's a bit like Windows software that relies on OS-private
APIs or registry keys. Sure, the data is there to use, but it wasn't intended
to be used by anything other than the OS itself, and if they could (without
impacting performance), they would have made it inaccessible to userland.

But, in both of these scenarios, the platform owner always seems to be happy
to see the program using "their API" once the app is released and gains
traction and draws attention to the platform. That doesn't mean they _do_
anything about the API; if it's private, it stays private; if it's deprecated,
it stays deprecated. But they don't tell the company to stop once the app is
out, and may even feature them in advertisements about their amazing platform.

------
1_2__4
Here's something I think about sometimes: we're not far from a future where it
would be trivial for every major city to have drones flying over it 24x7,
collecting everything - license plates, faces, electronic signals, and so on.
Cost and technological ability are basically there already, if we're willing
to budget the money (as in, it wouldn't cost fifty trillion a year or
whatever, its within the realm of financially possible). And all our laws say
that is totally legal, even to share every bit of that data with every police
department everywhere.

Are we ready for that? How would the world respond? How would American
respond? Would we collectively decide this is not something we want and pass
laws to stop it? How would those work, when the same laws that protect those
methods also protect citizens right to photograph anything they want from a
public location? Is there any degree of surveillance that Americans would
reject, and would the government accept that rejection? Or has the world
changed so much now that that's our inevitable future?

Honestly I think it's the latter.

~~~
eldavido
I'm reminded of an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that our our data
privacy laws need to be based on use rather than collection, e.g. even if you
know someone goes to the bar every week, it's illegal to predicate a credit or
insurance decision on that knowledge.

Might be worth considering.

~~~
andrewflnr
Even if I personally know that by happenstance, I'm not allowed to use it?
Laws that try to regulate my private thoughts are much scarier than
surveillance.

~~~
geon
That's not a private thought. You would be taking action against another
person.

~~~
andrewflnr
Yes, deciding whether to enter into a contract affects the other person, just
like _everything else_. That's a red herring. The point is, my motives should
be my own. Do you really want a court second-guessing every decision you make
in the marketplace because it constitutes "taking action against another
person"?

------
joshuaheard
The annual SeaFair air show is over Seattle this weekend with many different
military aircraft circling overhead all weekend.

[http://www.seafair.com/events/2017/seafair-
weekend](http://www.seafair.com/events/2017/seafair-weekend)

Also, McChord Air Force base, North America's largest air force base, is about
an hour south of Seattle.

------
leroy_masochist
SIGINT platform providing support to a training exercise for ground-based
assets.

There is no substitute for a big city with a whole bunch of different signal
sets emitting in and around the spectrum of the actual selector you are
looking for.

~~~
binarytransform
>> selector

Found the former SIGINT guy.

~~~
EADGBE
My clue was their use of "SIGINT".

------
QAPereo
It doesn't sound like that much of the mystery at the end of the day, as the
article concludes that it's probably a USAF/JSOC/CIA training mission.

~~~
ISL
As they're flying out of Boeing Field, I'd tend to agree. Plenty of aircraft
go through rounds of testing and qualification there.

The following, though, does remain the law of the land:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized.

~~~
pdonis
Surveillance of publicly visible areas is not the same as search and seizure
of your person, house, papers, or effects.

~~~
unethical_ban
One cop on a street corner observing the public is one thing.

A group of people with a warrant gathering detailed routines of a suspect is
one thing.

An apparatus that can observe the detailed activities and whereabouts
(location AND behavior) of all people in a metro area is a completely
different thing, and one our courts and Constitution have not yet handled.

~~~
meddlepal
What's the difference other than technology makes it more efficient. I'm sure
the courts will weigh in eventually but this seems like a legislative issue.

~~~
flogic
Efficiency is a problem in it's own right. It drives down cost. Which means
that surveillance will be used more often and for less important reasons. It's
not uncommon for people to need to skirt the law from time to time. This is
particularly true of people in the lower classes of society. Is it fair to
ding a retail worker whose car registration just expired but needs a few days
to get it all straightened out? That's something modern surveillance could
easily handle nearly perfectly.

~~~
meddlepal
We could also just write laws that allow grace periods to cover problems like
that. It is already common legislative practice to do that in many cases...

My original point was I find the "It's too efficient" argument to be a very
weak attack angle on the use of technology in surveillance.

------
ajarmst
There's lots of possible reasons that aren't nefarious. Could be training of
pilot or crew (I once watched a passenger aircraft orbitting the base I was
stationed at for most of a day. Turned out it was commercial pilot training
and check rides). Could be test flights of equipment and systems for
airworthiness certfication. Could be DoT testing navigation aids, etc. If the
government wanted to surveil Seattle residents for some reason, I expect the
NSA could come up with something a little more subtle.

~~~
partisan
One possibility plucked straight from a thriller: a nuke or dirty bomb is
somewhere in the area and they are scanning for it.

~~~
nl
" _scanning for it_ "

~~~
angstrom
Cue head explosion...

~~~
partisan
The lack of sense of humor here is stunning. Other comments here are deep in
conspiracy-land. Forgive me for contributing a differing, humorous viewpoint.

~~~
yodon
You might want to read up on Poe's law[0] before spending too much more time
constructing clever ironic posts for threads like this.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

------
cr4ig_
Why does it have to be a DoD/CIA mission? It's quite possible it is Homeland
Security gathering information on illegal immigrants, or possibly the FBI
conducting surveillance.

I've seen these sorts of overflights regularly in the Baltimore/DC area. Most
of the time it is Cessnas over a specific area (usually the FBI, judging from
the shell company associated with the aircraft no.), but recently there was an
umarked/blocked info aircraft canvasing Baltimore for a couple hours -- just
the city, a very specific grid flight pattern. It was flying out of a
commercial facility in Delaware.

My money is on surveillance targeted at locating illegal immigrants, using
ELINT and photographic evidence together.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>It's quite possible it is Homeland Security gathering information on illegal
immigrants

How would it do that using this plane?

------
cyberferret
Is it a US military asset?? It's a CASA (European made aircraft). What is the
possibility that it is a foreign military aircrat on joint exercise, or
testing out integration of US made ECW equipment installed at Boeing field?

~~~
manarth

      "the only visible markings being a USAF serial on its tail"

------
apozem
Reminds me a lot of a persistent surveillance program they've tested in other
cities. The idea is if you record all movements in a city from the air, you
can trace where criminals come from or where they go. This system has not been
implemented in a major American city, to my knowledge, because of the privacy
issues.

Excellent Radiolab episode about it: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-
sky/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/)

------
mkstowegnv
I think the theories in the other comments are more likely and I would prefer
that this one was not correct: Seattle is one of the largest sanctuary cities
close to the US border and a spy plane would be one way to try to gather
evidence of illegal immigrants and to try to intimidate city officials (who
might be unofficially alerted to the reason for the plane's presence).

~~~
matt4077
How (tf) would you gather "evidence of illegal immigrants" from the air?

~~~
codezero
One of the main things these aircraft do is to record video over long periods
of time. It could follow vehicles from known work sites back to their origin,
pinpointing the homes of day laborers. That's one thing I can think of, there
are probably a lot more. Like sigint on certain types of mobile phones calling
internationally etc.

------
mjevans
Another possible reason is the unusual smoke in the area from the BC Fires.
It's been horrid viability quality for almost the last week.

~~~
35bge57dtjku
But you get a nice red moon.

------
slm_HN
Seattle has been blanketed in smoke during the last week from forest fires in
British Columbia. The flyovers may be related to this or the Seafair airshow.

[http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/why-so-
much...](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/why-so-much-smoke-
from-b-c-fires-natures-air-conditioning-is-broken-weather-service-says/)

------
flashman
> very unique

sigh

~~~
boot13
Stopped reading after the third word.

------
criddell
Maybe it's one of those rigs with a huge-sensor camera that records the entire
city. RadioLab did a story about this technology. So, for example, if a gas
station is robbed, they can go to the video and play it backwards from the
time of the robbery and follow the criminals back to their homes.

------
alkonaut
Is Boeing making any military systems at Boeing WA, or only airliners? I'd
assume they make at least the military versions of civilian airframes (e.g P-8
Poseidon) there?

If that's the case, won't Boeing often be doing long test flight campaigns for
various subsystems out of Boeing field?

------
forkLding
Is this the same plane flying around Vancouver, BC, Canada as well? Mention of
an army plane(s?) kept appearing on r/Vancouver today.

Although I could be very well mistaken and its a coincidence.

~~~
na85
The Rcaf just bought new Search and Rescue aircraft and the training centre is
in Comox. Could be them.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
Related to a threat from North Korea?

------
hordeallergy
Any embassies, foreign properties in those circles?

~~~
matt4077
There are no embassies in Seattle.

...unless some insanely stupid government somewhere got the Washingtons mixed
up.

~~~
Godel_unicode
There are 7 consulates (diplomatic mission representing the embassy in the
capital) in Seattle: Canada, Japan, Mexico, Russia, El Salvador, the PRC,
South Korea

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diplomatic_missions_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diplomatic_missions_in_the_United_States#Seattle_.287.29)

~~~
EADGBE
Don't you just love how people post on the internet with such confidence in
what they believe.

~~~
Godel_unicode
Getting facts is hard!

------
flaque
This reads like a broadcast from Night Vale.

------
known
It's NSA

------
honestoHeminway
Teaching criminal startups to track such planes with lasers from drones, to
prevent surveilance?

Also, i guess for gangs the somali option of burning tires is viable.

