FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by jjwiseman on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @01:49PM (#9647626)

The 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.

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by god_bless_texas on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @02:53PM (#9648123)

JJ,

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!

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by jjwiseman on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @03:05PM (#9648198)

Yes, I use dump1090 which can decode Mode S/ADS-B with or without location and Mode A/C.

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by upofadown on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @03:37PM (#9648390)

Since you can look up the aircraft based on the N number using the same transponder code doesn't really make much difference.

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by jjwiseman on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @05:16PM (#9649066)

Yes, 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.

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by cagey_vet on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @07:07PM (#9649599)

you 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.

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by jjwiseman on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @08:41PM (#9649947)

Read my link from the parent comment: 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.

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by RyJones on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @02:55PM (#9648132)

almost like they weren't trying with that last point.

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