FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities

Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by awch on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @04:10PM (#9648600)

ARGUS-IS

"ARGUS is an advanced camera system that uses hundreds of cellphone cameras in a mosaic to video and auto-track every moving object within a 36 square mile area.

ARGUS is a form of Wide Area Persistent Surveillance that allows for one camera to provide such detailed video that users can collect 'pattern-of-life' data and track individual people inside the footage anywhere within the field of regard."

[0] https://youtu.be/QGxNyaXfJsA?t=51s

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by linkregister on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @05:38PM (#9649207)

So I did the deep dive of the ARGUS-IS wikipedia article. The majority of sources were regarding the possibilities of such a system. The one authoritative source, from fbo.gov, was an RFP. It appears that such capability doesn't exist, though it is interesting that a government agency is actively working toward the capability.

However, since you asserted that such a thing could happen, your link supports your point. I think it should have been qualified that the technology doesn't exist yet in the interest of full disclosure.

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by awch on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @07:38PM (#9649713)

I'm a little confused about what you're trying to say.

Light googling indicates that this is an extant system that has been fitted to aircraft since 2009:

"DARPA, working in partnership with the Army Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate, Air Force, Air Force Research Laboratory and National Geospatial Agency, conducted its first test flights using the ARGUS system last year [2009]."

The DoD indicates that the system was operationally deployed to Afghanistan in Q1 2011. [0]

LLNL has an article describing the system's optics, technical specs, and their work on processing the data streams it generates. [1]

BAE released an IR upgrade in 2010:

"BAE System's first flight tests of ARGUS-IR's predecessor, ARGUS-IS, concluded last October aboard a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter." [2]

[0] http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=62138

[1] https://str.llnl.gov/AprMay11/vaidya.html

[2] http://www.baesystems.com/article/BAES_028152/bae-systems-wi...?

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Re:FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over ... by linkregister on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @08:57PM (#9649990)

Thanks for the added info. I didn't do any googling; I limited my commentary to the source you provided (I didn't look at the youtube video, that method usually carries a low signal to noise ratio). The wikipedia article is light on actual information about the ARGUS IS; the primary source is an article with the title "drone nightmare" in it. Other advertised capabilities don't exist yet. I will add your sources to the wikipedia article, they are much better than what is there.

I don't think that it should be expected that I exhaustively comb search engines to find support for your point; I think that it's reasonable that I look solely at the source you gave me.

That said, I found the capabilities in your first (0th) source to be chilling. That source definitely supports your point.

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