[HN Gopher] What's Flying Above Us?
___________________________________________________________________
What's Flying Above Us?
Author : zuhayeer
Score : 318 points
Date : 2020-08-17 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (skycircl.es)
(TXT) w3m dump (skycircl.es)
| pdubs1 wrote:
| Now do one on chemtrails & geoengineering flights which drop
| lines of chemicals in the sky.
|
| https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/us-geoengineering-re...
| [deleted]
| zobzu wrote:
| it seem cool but it bothers me that this is a link to a donation
| page and that its been obviously made to request money, rather
| than show the service provided
| shanecleveland wrote:
| I find it oddly satisfying to be able to use an app on my phone
| to identify planes above me. Do it all the time. I live across
| the Puget Sound from Seattle and I occasionally end up spotting a
| Boeing plane clearly on a test flight based on the route it has
| flown (geometric shapes, circles, take-off and return same
| airport).
|
| Also had an interesting occurrence when I awoke to the sound of a
| plane dive-bombing my house. We happened to be located in an area
| designated to be sprayed for some sort of moth. The plane was
| just about scraping the tops of trees. But I was able to track
| and see the pattern it flew to spray our area and other areas it
| had visited that morning.
| microcolonel wrote:
| Cute, though I suspect the FBI have known the public knew about
| this, and alter their patterns for the most sensitive
| investigations. The real deal would be detecting when aircraft
| are in any cycle, regular or irregular, with similar visibility
| of a set of likely "targets".
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You might reach out to this author. Such a feature would be
| trivial to implement.
| microcolonel wrote:
| I might just do that; though you should see my list of side
| projects. There only so many hours in the day.
| jcims wrote:
| I believe this is the same project that surfaced a while back
| and the algorithm is remarkably effective for its simplicity,
| but I do agree that there are probably some others that would
| catch edge/sneaky cases.
|
| The bigger issue are planes that are't showing up anywhere. I
| think it would be interesting to pair some audio and computer
| vision resources with existing ADSB network to train what
| planes sound like and possibly even which altitude/direction
| they are traveling based on sound energy alone.
|
| Camera would be nice, also passive radar given that most of
| these ADSB tools are using existing software defined radios.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I hope visitors are able to donate. Things have been tight this
| summer for a lot of people
| irrational wrote:
| TIL about iOS shortcuts. This shortcut is pretty cool. But the
| nearest airplane comes up as private and now I'm paranoid it is
| an FBI surveillance plane when it is probably just going to/from
| the local small field airport.
| FBI4Life5 wrote:
| Why worry about the FBI if you're not in any of the categories
| where they have a reason to act? I doubt they care about your
| legal activities. They've probably got better things to do.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| By existing in a database, not only can your data and actions
| be taken out of context to make a damning case against you,
| you run the risk of being a false positive in an
| investigation[1].
|
| In the case dragnet surveillance, you will constantly become
| a suspect in investigations based on where you were, what you
| look like, etc.
|
| If your data doesn't exist in some database, at best you
| won't be caught up in a dragnet investigation. And at worst,
| your lack of data saves you from expensive court battles and
| imprisonment over something you didn't do.
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-father-took-an-at-
| home-d...
| zingplex wrote:
| "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy
| because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying
| you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to
| say."
|
| -- Edward Snowden
|
| With regards to the FBI not caring about your legal
| activities, I recommend you look into the FBI blackmailing of
| Martin Luther King Jr. and COINTELPRO more generally. Their
| historic behavior doesn't exactly warrant trust.
| purplerabbit wrote:
| Hiding something and expressing something are so nearly
| opposite that I don't see how Snowden's analogy holds
| zingplex wrote:
| What he is doing is simply restating the "I have nothing
| to hide" argument in the context of a different right, in
| this case the right to free speech. He is doing so to
| illustrate that the argument is not presenting a
| justification for the systemic violation of a human right
| but instead relying on an unstated assertion that the a
| given persons disinterest in a specific legal protection
| is an adequate pretext for its removal.
| purplerabbit wrote:
| That actually makes sense. Thank you for your reply.
| zingplex wrote:
| My pleasure
| irrational wrote:
| Why do you assume my activities are legal?
| zionic wrote:
| Username checks out.
| kanobo wrote:
| The most interesting reading is in the 'tracking police
| helicopters' slidedeck linked in the site:
| https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sowJrQQfgxnLCErb-CvU...
| bengotow wrote:
| Oh jeez this is cool. The least we can do is get this guy a
| working Macbook Pro to continue his work. Donated!
| reaperducer wrote:
| I have a flight tracking app for my phone and see aircraft flying
| in circles over where I live all the time. Dozens and dozens of
| times each day.
|
| They're people in small planes practicing.
|
| Also, I live near several military bases. The interesting and
| loud stuff that I see flying by out my window NEVER shows up on
| any app. I expect this web site is similarly, deliberately,
| incomplete.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Have you tried https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/ ?
|
| Don't know if there is an "app", but regarding the interesting
| stuff, it's the most complete, IMO/E.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| That's where the app sources it's data. If the military
| planes do not turn on their transponders then they can only
| be picked up on radar.
|
| https://gitlab.com/jjwiseman/advisory-circular/
| beamatronic wrote:
| Try OpenADSB?
| revicon wrote:
| The web map is entertaining to watch
|
| https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| It's also good for making abstract art:
|
| https://postimg.cc/vgG3PyW4
| zymhan wrote:
| OpenADSB and ADSBExchange will definitely give you a better
| view of any military and private planes broadcasting ADSB.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I think the issue is that military is permitted to fly
| without broadcasting anything, but the airspace is restricted
| to avoid civilian collisions. Or maybe de-facto clear by
| staying in high enough altitudes?
|
| I have seen some military aircraft light up while practicing
| refueling over the pacific, but go dark when leaving or
| returning to base.
| minitoar wrote:
| This uses ads b exchange so it shows a lot more than eg
| flightradar or radarbox.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The interesting and loud stuff that I see flying by out my
| window NEVER shows up on any app.
|
| The slightly interesting stuff doesn't show up, the loud jets,
| but the really interesting stuff does. CIA rendition flights,
| police spying on protests, Air Force One, rich people
| flagrantly violating COVID rules ... they all squawk ADS-B.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Anybody halfway intelligent blocks the details that would
| otherwise be available with ADS-B, so the best you can do is
| see they exist, not identify the aircraft. This is often the
| case with corporate jets.
| llacb47 wrote:
| No, you can identify it on adsb-exchange. Sounds like
| you've been using flightaware/rb24/flightradar24 - they
| block aircrafts. https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I thought we/the usa stopped kidnapping people and torturing
| them with Bush2 leaving office. Is that not true? Any recent
| cases? I am aware we still keep people in Guantanamo and
| Obama and trump order the murder of people. But secret
| kidnapping was over I hoped. Maybe the next pres will stop
| extra-judicial killings?
| jmwilson wrote:
| Technical details are described here:
| https://gitlab.com/jjwiseman/advisory-circular/
|
| Things flying near an airport are excluded ("The centroid of
| the last 3 minutes worth of positions must be more than 2.5 km
| away from all known airports."). I've never seen it tweet about
| planes doing obvious pattern practice.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| It used to do a pretty good job of filter out pattern
| practice, but lately I feel like those false positives have
| actually become the #1 issue (maybe because my code was tuned
| for and worked fine around LA, but not other parts of the
| world). I'm working on some slightly fancier filtering to
| remove those.
| WrongThinkerNo5 wrote:
| I'm not sure you are totally correct, even though I would agree
| that some of the stuff he lists as part of the linked
| revelations about the aerial surveillance programs run by
| various FBI and DHS organizations, is not at really as
| nefarious as he makes it may seem ... at least not yet.
|
| The reason that you will likely not see certain military
| flights report on any flight tracking systems is that you are
| likely close to special military use airspace. Other times when
| military air vehicles are traversing space, they are also
| flying in special aerial corridors reserved for that purpose
| and under military flight control. It's not the military that
| any of this would involve.
|
| Something that will become more of an issue is that rather
| advanced UAVs have been authorized for use domestically now
| too, likely precisely because of the discovery of these types
| of aerial surveillance operations. They would be operating at
| altitudes that are also special use and would therefore also be
| flying blind, i.e., not signaling.
|
| That said, these types of operations would be for the
| surveillance of far more interesting people than you likely
| are, i.e., hispanic cartel operators and leaders living in the
| USA, terrorists, both muslim and likely increasingly leftist,
| etc. These are not surveillance programs that would be
| following you after running a red light.
|
| Unfortunately, the relatively low altitude aerial surveillance
| programs using eye in the sky type technology are actually very
| good crime solving tools because they allow for backtracking or
| even following perpetrators after the fact.
|
| Unfortunately too, as with most major technology transitions
| like the one we are going though, they will likely have to be
| grossly abused and misused before people wake up and realize
| the utter destruction they cause requires controlling them,
| e.g., nuclear weapons, chem/bio weapons, fire/carpet bombing,
| etc. And we are unfortunately nowhere near a necessary number
| of people realizing the awful potential of the abuses being and
| which will still be perpetrated.
| Shivetya wrote:
| Which app?
|
| Are there several? If so what was the key features you were
| looking for?
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| As a current student pilot, I have been doing a whole lot of
| circling. Hope no one thinks I'm the FBI in a ratty old C172.
| :)
|
| When it comes to military aircraft, the situation there is kind
| of interesting. There's no general exception for the military,
| military aircraft are generally "required" to transmit ADS-B
| unless they have a specific reason not to (and I believe this
| requires authorization from somewhere up the chain of command).
| I put "required" in scare quotes though as many military
| aircraft are simply not equipped... the DoD has drug its feet
| on installing ADS-B out and the FAA has basically relented by
| setting very lax objectives. FAA requested DoD to have ADS-B
| installed on 21% of aircraft by the first of this year and I
| believe they met that goal... but it's still less than a
| quarter.
|
| Over time more and more military aircraft should be appearing
| in ADS-B data, but I suspect it's going to be some years before
| it's almost all of them.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| be careful flying around homesteads. My drone's been shot at
| before, and honestly given how the country's going, I dont
| blame them.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| I believe the parent comment is referring to a Cessna
| trainer plane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_172
|
| However, if you have a full-sized drone I would love to buy
| a kit from you.
| repiret wrote:
| > Hope no one thinks I'm the FBI in a ratty old C172
|
| C172 and C182 both make fine planes for running surveillance.
| They're inexpensive (to buy and operate), reliable,
| inconspicuous, and have enough space and useful load to tack
| on specialized equipment. I used to own a 182 that was
| originally owned by the Washington State Police. While in WSP
| service, it was modified to have an automotive-style muffler
| for "stealth" surveillance.
| dpifke wrote:
| The California Highway Patrol mostly uses--or used, as of
| 10-ish years ago--206s. I know this because a member of my
| flying club was a patrolman who was trying to get enough
| hours in a C206 to switch to aerial patrols. We went on a
| couple of mountain flying trips to Colorado together.
|
| According to him, the state much preferred to take cops and
| turn them into pilots, than to take pilots and turn them
| into cops. But anyone who wanted to go that route had to
| pay for their own flight time. (Commercial rating requires
| 250 hours, and I think they wanted at least a hundred hours
| "time in type." I don't think they required an ATP rating,
| but my recollection about that could be incorrect.)
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| Just FYI, they have almost fully upgraded their fleet to
| GippsAero GA8 Airvan's.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Yeah, I'm largely joking here, as I've seen a C172 in
| livery of the state police here before, and I don't think
| it was a new one either. The cops have payments to make
| too.
| kitteh wrote:
| 206s seems to be the most popular out there. Plenty of room
| in the back for the surveillance gear and there's a few
| companies that cater to fitting in all the gear in there
| (FLIR/TV tracking pod, additional radio gear etc.).
|
| The step up are the B1900s that CBP has which have
| additional sensor capabilities.
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| B1900 is a few steps up. They have single engine
| turboprops (Pilatus PC-12 and Cessna Caravan) and the
| much more common ex-military King Air (the B1900's
| smaller ancestor.)
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| If you're on iOS you want the "OpenADSB" app. I think I paid
| $10 for it but it's awesome. It doesn't filter out the military
| planes like FlightRadar24 does. But, sometimes FlightRadar24
| has data that OpenADSB doesn't have, so both are still useful.
|
| A few weeks ago I was watching an F-35 off the coast of
| Southern California... so cool to see that stuff. It seems to
| also pick up weather balloons (or some kind of balloons that
| are above 60,000ft). Anyway, it's fun to see what's out there.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Apps usually rely on ADS-B data, rather than IFF. US military
| planes to my knowledge don't use ADS-B.
| nja wrote:
| > I expect this web site is similarly, deliberately,
| incomplete.
|
| Perhaps less incomplete than you think (and certainly more
| complete than the standard tracking websites, which outside of
| hiding planes also must honor a 5-minute data delay requested
| by the FAA).
|
| The advisory circular bots the author runs link to
| https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/ , which is run from a home-
| grown network of SDRs. It makes a point of not hiding anything
| that reports its position with ADS-B -- which all aircraft
| (over a certain size) must report by law. I've even seen Air
| Force One and its escorts on this service, something that is
| always absent from other flight tracking services.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| A lot of the commercial flight tracking services allow opt-
| outs. But some stay true to their mission.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > must honor a 5-minute data delay requested by the FAA
|
| This only applies to FAA-provided data. And I'd not be
| surprised if it's simply enforced by the FAA only providing
| 5-minute delayed data.
|
| Tracking sites that use ADS-B are definitely realtime. My
| kids and I sit outside on the patio sometimes and track the
| planes coming at our house (we're pretty close to one of the
| standard ingress routes to PDX).
| jaywalk wrote:
| FlightRadar24 certainly doesn't have a delay.
| kawsper wrote:
| They also hide certain aircrafts.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| In most cases I've personally witnessed (I have an RTL-
| SDR decoding ADS-B transmissions in the vicinity of my
| home) the interesting aircraft (e.g. fighters) are not
| operating an ADS-B transmitter at all, so there's nothing
| to hide. Some sites (adsbexchange.com comes to mind) do
| not filter anything.
| jMyles wrote:
| > must honor
|
| Is this true? Seems like an unambiguous violation of the
| first amendment. Someone can't report on raw data that they
| can receive with an SDR? Has this been litigated?
| jakub_g wrote:
| > 5-minute data delay requested by the FAA
|
| Can you expand on this for the noobs in the subject?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| so you cannot trivially go hit something with a ground-to-
| air missile.
|
| why the downvotes? this was the actual stated reason when
| this was requested
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Which is silly, because ground-to-air ordinance could
| just listen on ADS-B RF itself for the target (you too
| can listen in with a software defined radio if you're in
| the vicinity or have gear that can listen in the area).
| It's security theater, not an actual mitigation against a
| threat actor _with access to an anti aircraft weapon_.
|
| For anything not broadcasting ADS-B, you can use
| multilateration (time difference of arrival) to determine
| positioning of dumb transponders. Flightaware does this
| [1].
|
| [1] https://flightaware.com/adsb/mlat/
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Not sure why an answer to the question would be
| downvoted.
|
| Anyway, it's possible that the reason was no so much
| ground-to-air missiles but rather ground-to-air
| _weapons_. In other words, idiots trying to shooting guns
| at airplanes or put up balloons in their path.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Umm, well, there is this issue that you can actually
| _see_ the plane without a delay, so...
| kingbirdy wrote:
| Requiring a line of site makes it much more difficult
| than giving real-time tracking data away
| TerrorKing wrote:
| That's why The Rurists (Terrorists) try to hit a plane
| when it takes off or lands. Easier to hit. Even with a
| stinger. Just hang out by the airport with your favourite
| Stinger Launcher and you're good to go. No need to hit it
| at 30,000 feets. I'd hit it at landing takeoof the ground
| taxiing etc. Works for me.
| rhacker wrote:
| Everyone that plans on moving somewhere should do 1 of 2
| things:
|
| 1. Not move there because of flight training schools.
|
| 2. Lobby to get the flight training school to practice over
| unpopulated areas.
| rory096 wrote:
| >2. Lobby to get the flight training school to practice over
| unpopulated areas.
|
| This is fairly typical -- even in urban centers there's
| typically one or more "training areas" for students to
| practice maneuvers. e.g. in New York:
| https://i.imgur.com/Djum5pX.png
| punnerud wrote:
| Or live close to a prison or other place with restricted area
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| #2 Doesn't seem feasible for large portions of the world
| though.
|
| I did some flight lessons in rural Manitoba. You got ~45
| minutes of flight training for every hour you paid for.
|
| Then I considered restarting them once I moved to Toronto...
| you get about 20, 25 min of training for every paid hour -
| the rest is just getting out of restricted space. If you
| wanted to head to actual "unpopulated area", I think you'd
| need to book a 3 hour lesson in order to get _any_ actual
| training. Completely unfeasible.
|
| And this is in Canada, a famously sparsely populated nation.
| It feels even less feasible for majority of more densely
| populated countries.
|
| (basically, by definition, if you only allow flight training
| in the unpopulated boonies, you'd deny it to a very large
| super-majority of population. One may view that in positive
| or negative light, of course)
| ysavir wrote:
| > If you wanted to head to actual "unpopulated area", I
| think you'd need to book a 3 hour lesson in order to get
| any actual training. Completely unfeasible.
|
| Why is this unfeasible?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Unaffordable might be another word. Rental on the plane
| per hour, fuel for the flight, fees for the instructor
| etc are all not known for being cheap.
| motohagiography wrote:
| When I was tracking flights some years ago (use case was
| determining whether speed monitoring aircraft were in the air,
| and a prediction model of their schedule) I learned that the
| ADS-B transmitters didn't need to broadcast GPS co-ordinates
| below a certain ceiling. You could get the signal that a given
| tail number was in the air, but if it stayed below a certain
| altitude, you couldn't always receive its location.
|
| The FAA has guidelines on what kind of data you can receive:
| https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/equipadsb/research/airspace/
|
| I lost interest in it because I just don't speed that much and I
| don't have a sport bike fast enough for it to matter, but useful
| to know that ADS-B doesn't cover all aircraft.
| amatecha wrote:
| Oh that's interesting, I actually thought about that recently
| when I saw a "speed monitored by aircraft" sign on a highway. I
| wondered if an ADS-B receiver would pick it up. But... indeed,
| it's quite often that I see an aircraft and observe that it is
| not being picked up by my ADS-B receiver. Not sure whether due
| to low altitude , or that they are simply not transmitting..
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The regulations around ADS-B are pretty weird, basically
| because the FAA wants to require it of all aircraft but all the
| aircraft owners object because it's pretty expensive to install
| it. So the FAA has kind of been taking a "death by a thousand
| cuts" approach where they never quite "mandate" ADS-B but they
| require it in more and more situations...
|
| So aircraft are perfectly allowed to not transmit ADS-B as long
| as they stay out of certain types of airspaces and outside of a
| certain distance of other types of airspaces and etc. So the
| effective result is pretty much that you need to have ADS-B if
| you ever want to land at a controlled airport but the details
| get a little weird.
|
| These rules have also been changing reasonably quickly in
| federal terms. The current set of ADS-B requirements only took
| effect the first of this year. Among other things, these rules
| require that any aircraft equipped with ADS-B out have it
| turned on at all times... but that's only been the rule as of
| recently (not sure if this revision or the previous one), so
| not that long ago it was acceptable to turn it on and off if
| you were outside of areas where it was required.
| zymhan wrote:
| That's changed since 2020, you have to be far away from
| controlled airspace to just broadcast Mode-S anymore.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > You could get the signal that a given tail number was in the
| air, but if it stayed below a certain altitude, you couldn't
| always receive its location.
|
| I believe trackers (like ADS-B exchange) will estimate location
| using mutlilateration. IE: enough receivers with GPS-sync'd
| time and knowing where they are can estimate origin with the
| differences in receipt timing.
|
| With good enough equipment, even one ground station might be
| able to tell a lot with Doppler shifts. Unsure if that's don't
| in practice though.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Looks like there's much info here:
|
| http://www.multilateration.com/downloads/MLAT-ADS-B-
| Referenc...
|
| (Big PDF)
| sorenjan wrote:
| They use multilateration, but there's no GPS synced clocks
| needed. They use ADS-B messages with position as reference
| and uses the relative arrival times of those messages to
| model the clock characteristics of each receiver. That way
| all you need is an inexpensive receiver (like a RTL-SDR) and
| with enough receivers in an area you'll get pretty good
| position estimates of aircraft only transmitting Mode S
| messages.
|
| This is the most popular mlat server software, used by ADS-B
| Exchange among others: https://github.com/adsbxchange/mlat-
| server
| swalsh wrote:
| Reminds me of a program I read about a while ago in Iraq. Planes
| would circle cities with a camera and some huge hard drives
| installed. If an IED went off they would rewind the tapes, and
| watch every stop the people who planted it went through before
| and after planting the bomb. From that they could unwind very
| complex networks of insurgent activity. The equipment was mostly
| off the shelf, and relatively cheap.
| avh02 wrote:
| "In Iraq" - they did it over US cities as well [0]. To be fair,
| I read that link a long time ago and don't remember the
| specifics of how long it ran and if it ran in more cities.
|
| [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-
| sur...
| threeio wrote:
| Still going on... https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-bal...
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Can I just say that while the tech is no doubt a privacy
| concern, it was insanely incredible. They literally could
| track down where a person from any crime scene went to.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yes, such drones have been flying over US cities with unrest
| this year as well[1]. It's likely surveillance in the form of
| ARGUS-IS[2], as it was reported to be on the platform used by
| the Gorgon Stare project[3].
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2020/05/29/cbp-
| predato...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| Here is one vendor who is trying to sell the technology to
| police forces in the US:
|
| https://www.pss-1.com/
| SaberTail wrote:
| This is a good example of the "boomerang" effect[1] in which
| control techniques and developed for and used on imperial
| colonies, and are eventually brought back and used in the
| homeland.
|
| [1] sometimes called the imperial boomerang, the colonial
| boomerang, or Foucault's boomerang
| exhilaration wrote:
| They used balloons:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/world/asia/in-afghanistan...
| salex89 wrote:
| To those who notices planes flying in circles, it doesn't have to
| be anything sinister. Those might be planes calibrating avionics
| or ground/airport equipment or doing test flights after
| maintenance. I have agencies in the region doing both, so you can
| sometimes find planes doing strange patterns which are their
| clients.
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| Exactly. This doesn't mean that surveillance programs aren't
| taking place, but.... _aspiring pilots gotta practice._
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Pipeline and power line inspectors in helicopters also tend to
| have weird flight paths.
| spyspy wrote:
| Commercial flights will also enter a circular holding pattern
| around airports if they're not allowed to land for some reason.
|
| This video is a really cool example:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdfVIdsufI8
| beaner wrote:
| What's even the point of mass FBI surveillance if our cities are
| just being let to destroy themselves anyway? If the point is for
| any type of enforcement then they're doing a really shit job. So
| bad that I feel it must be likely that these flights are for
| something benign.
|
| I'm getting downvotes but I'm sort of serious about this. Could
| somebody enlighten me? If the goal isn't ostensibly to protect
| the people then what is the point?
| mindslight wrote:
| The goal is more power and control, as always, regardless of
| effectiveness. It's the same reason the police have been
| turning protests into riots.
| [deleted]
| iso1631 wrote:
| > I'm getting downvotes but I'm sort of serious about this
|
| Cities aren't "destroying themselves". Sure there will be a
| little change from large office blcoks where companies cram as
| many people as possible into each square foot, but cities
| aren't going anywhere.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well... the protests are (initially) about police violence. Too
| much police vigor in controlling them is likely
| counterproductive. But ignoring the violent element within the
| protestors _also_ isn 't a good idea. But if the police are
| going to do anything about the violent ones among the
| protestors, it almost certainly is going to have to involve an
| element of violence. That creates more claims of police
| violence, and more videos, which leads to more protests...
|
| This creates a very difficult environment for law enforcement.
| It's not completely clear what the best strategy is for dealing
| with all this.
| catnzhat wrote:
| "But if the police are going to do anything about the violent
| ones among the protestors, it almost certainly is going to
| have to involve an element of violence" - I do not believe
| this to be true. Most of the 'violence' of the protestors is
| directed at property, not people. I think most people would
| agree that it's not worth violently injuring an individual to
| prevent a broken window or a stolen pair of shoes. For
| violence of the protestors directed at the police. They're
| showing up and tear-gassing people. Directly attacking their
| own citizens with chemical weapons, baton rounds fired from
| shotguns, sting grenades, etc...
|
| I think it's pretty easy for law enforcement to do the right
| thing: Don't show up.
|
| When cops don't show up there is little to no violence
| against people or property. When cops show up to protests
| more often than not they initiate violence against people and
| retaliate for violence against property (or their reputation)
| with violence against people. This is some fuuuuuuked up
| behavior and why the protests continue.
|
| Responding to protests against police brutality by violently
| brutalizing protestors is like a really sad joke.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Vandalism is a crime like any other. If my business or car
| or house were destroyed, you better believe I'd want the
| people responsible arrested. Responding to police brutality
| (a serious problem, to be sure) with more brutality is also
| a sad joke.
| mindslight wrote:
| The appropriate strategy is deescalation and regaining the
| public trust through the rule of law. The first step is
| putting criminal cops in jail to show that the "bad apples"
| haven't spoiled the whole bunch. Stop allowing police to
| create battle lines to "control crowds" by attacking
| protesters. Once there is some semblance of public trust that
| police officers will be held accountable under the rule of
| law, deploy small units of police _into_ crowds to stop
| troublemakers. The units should be sized such they can deal
| with a few violent aggressors, but are otherwise at the mercy
| of the crowd (eg to make citizen arrests) - remember that the
| right dynamic is that the police ultimately serve the
| citizenry. I 'm not saying that it's easy for control-fallacy
| politicians to accept this strategy, but it is the only way
| forward.
| jariel wrote:
| This comment implies a lack of understanding of the nature
| of protestors, mobs, and what it takes to clear them.
|
| Both answers here mischaracterise the nature of protests
| and the cops.
|
| First, most police actions during protests are legit and
| don't require some kind of condemnation, certainly not
| 'jail'. You don't require someone to use force to control a
| situation then put them in jail if the step one inch over
| an ambiguous line.
|
| Second, even if there were excessive penalties, it would do
| absolutely nothing to quell protests. Protestors absolutely
| do not care about the specifics, they're not even playing
| that much attention. They're not reading the research on
| relative levels of violence per arrest etc.. It's a mob.
| They're angry. Anger is not rational.
|
| Moroever, the most emotionally aggrieved parties _do not
| care about reality_. It doesn 't matter how professional
| the police are, they will live their lives on Twitter
| condemning the 'police state'.
|
| The Police in the US are generally not brutal - they use
| too much force, but it's not a fascist state. They're not
| grabbing people randomly and beating them to a pulp as in
| authoritarian states. Most examples of grievances are
| relative minor: someone provokes a cop by walking up to
| them and saying something, the cop pushes the person, they
| fall down. Not appropriate, but this is not the Stasi. A
| cop shoots his paintball gun at a reporter - on purpose.
| Again, not appropriate. But it's a paintball gun, they're
| used on people - for fun - all the time. If you're going to
| have 100000 people involved in a physical confrontation,
| there's going to be some crossing of lines. So yes, make
| sure the cops who step across the line are punished
| appropriately - but by and large, it won't make a
| difference.
|
| Fourth, this idea that there are specific groups of
| specific trouble makers is generally not the case. It's a
| _mob_ , emotions sway back and forth. And FYI if this is
| the obvious case, sometimes police can move in a little bit
| but otherwise it's not possible. If there is any agitation
| at all, then this can't really happen because it's
| extremely dangerous. A group of 100 people could tear a
| small team of cops limb from limb if they wanted to, not
| that it would happen to that extent, but remember that mobs
| are usually much greater in size than the cops.
|
| Fifth - it's not the 'violent' elements. It's everyone. You
| don't have the right to block a road every day because you
| want to. Sorry - not in the constitution. You don't get to
| break the law because you think your cause is legit.
| Usually, protests are observed and nothing happens if they
| peter out. But eventually either due to the length of the
| engagement, or 'night time' protests which turn violent,
| then things need to be broken up. This is when regular
| people need to go home. But they won't. So it becomes a
| problem.
|
| There's no doubt that some police tactics are just too
| much, and that should change. But for the most part, I
| don't think it would move the needle on anything. People
| gather in large numbers, don't want to to home, it's going
| to get dangerous sometimes, and, they can't continue to
| stay forever.
|
| If anything the 'real' concern should be around actual
| policing, i.e. unnecessary police shootings.
| mindslight wrote:
| It seems like what you consider "understanding" is just
| accepting the police narrative that has been fueling the
| protests.
|
| > _You don 't require someone to use force to control a
| situation_
|
| Protests are not something to be "controlled" with force.
| That's authoritarianism.
|
| > _Protestors absolutely do not care about the specifics,
| they 're not even playing that much attention. They're
| not reading the research on relative levels of violence
| per arrest etc.. It's a mob_
|
| Simple dehumanizing. There have been plenty of protests
| that have remained peaceful when they're not attacked by
| police.
|
| > _someone provokes a cop by walking up to them and
| saying something, the cop pushes the person, they fall
| down_
|
| It is illegal to attack someone because you don't like
| what they've said. This is criminal violence and needs to
| be prosecuted as such.
|
| > _A cop shoots his paintball gun at a reporter - on
| purpose. Again, not appropriate. But it 's a paintball
| gun, they're used on people - for fun - all the time_
|
| It is illegal to shoot random people with paintballs.
| This is criminal violence and needs to be prosecuted as
| such.
|
| > _You don 't have the right to block a road every day
| because you want to_
|
| Roads are _public ways_. People do have the right to use
| public ways to peaceably assemble.
|
| > _If anything the 'real' concern should be around actual
| policing, i.e. unnecessary police shootings._
|
| That's exactly what these protests are about. Instead of
| accepting the message and submitting to accountability
| under the rule of law, police departments are escalating
| the protests so they can paint the protestors in a bad
| light, just as you are doing.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Roads are public ways. People do have the right to use
| public ways to peaceably assemble.
|
| Do they have the right to block the road while doing so?
| For hours?
|
| More big-picture, I don't buy either your narrative or
| jariel's. I don't think the protesters are a mob. I also
| don't think that the violence is mostly because of the
| police.
|
| I see it like this: There are two groups, the protesters
| and the troublemakers. There is some overlap, but they
| are largely two distinct groups. A protest happens. It's
| usually in the daytime. The population is mostly
| protesters. Things are mostly peaceful. There is probably
| a police presence, watching the protest, but they usually
| don't do much.
|
| Time passes. Around sunset, many of the protesters go
| home. More troublemakers show up. It looks like the same
| protest, but the nature of the population has changed.
| There starts to be some acts of vandalism, maybe some
| assaults, maybe some throwing things at the police.
| Eventually the police say that it's enough. They either
| order the crowd to disperse, or try to arrest someone.
| The crowd, being by this time mostly troublemakers, won't
| disperse peacefully and won't accept having one of their
| members arrested without going the rounds with the cops.
| You now get videos with the starting point very carefully
| chosen to make the cops look like the instigators.
|
| Now, I am _not_ saying that the cops never start the
| violence. I am _not_ saying that only troublemakers are
| around after sundown. I am _not_ saying that all videos
| of police violence are refusing to show the antecedent
| /buildup. I am _not_ saying that everyone the cops get
| physical with had it coming.
|
| I _am_ saying that the _majority_ of the action follows
| the scenario I described.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| The state has its own interests and does far more than just
| protect the people. Also in places like Portland a great deal
| of the destruction is coming from the state via the police. The
| state is not a benign entity here to protect us but a powerful
| force with its own motivations. I learned a lot about this from
| listening to talks by Noam Chomsky but there's other authors
| that talk about this if he's not your type.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| Hi! I made this.
|
| A few points I wanted to make, specific to the HN context (and a
| lot of this is in the "nerd mode" donation page at
| https://skycircl.es/donate-nerd-mode/):
|
| 1. This seems like a classic "low effort, high impact" project.
| It's super easy to detect aircraft flying in circles, in real-
| time, and post it to twitter. But it turns out to be an entry-
| point into a "strangely interesting" (according to pg) world of
| aircraft activity.
|
| The current #1 comment sadly only gets to see general aviation
| pilots practicing, but my bots have tweeted military aerial
| refueling, STOL practice in the wilderness, float-planes
| practicing on rivers and lakes, military drones flying over the
| desert, planes dropping sterile fruit flies as a way to reduce
| the fruit fly population, news helicopters following a highway
| pursuit, U.S. Forest Service AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters
| fighting fires, helicopters dropping mosquito pesticide, aerial
| tankers over Manhattan for the president's combat air patrol, FBI
| surveillance planes registered to front companies, Coast Guard
| helicopters doing search & rescue, crop dusters, scientists
| observing sea life over the ocean, planes doing Gorgon Stare-
| style persistent surveillance over Baltimore, sheriff's
| helicopters rescuing hikers, power line inspections, pipeline
| inspections, military aircraft doing surveillance over
| protestors, stealth jet test flights, a Grumman HU-16 Albatross
| seaplane that belongs to the USAF over the Mojave desert, a U-2
| test flight, and a B-29. That is not even close to a complete
| list.
|
| 2. All the code is open source. See
| https://gitlab.com/jjwiseman/advisory-circular/ and
| https://gitlab.com/jjwiseman/whatsoverhead
|
| 3. As far as I know, this comment on HN is the first time anyone
| published any significant detail about the FBI's secret aerial
| surveillance program:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508812
| Apylon777 wrote:
| Thank you so much for making this. I was constantly checking it
| to determine what was flying above our house in Minneapolis
| during the recent civil unrest. I took comfort in at least know
| what was buzzing us and why it might be doing it.
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