FBI Behind Mysterious Surveillance Aircraft Over US Cities

The subject line report of this blog entry is at this ABC News link.

Old news really.  Maybe it was a slow news day.  Maybe it is related to the recent vote on the Patriot Act to get eyeballs as a function of connection to a recent major issue.

It is secret stuff so there is no telling what is really being done with what equipment and for what purpose.  Therefore, speculation can run wild.  Speculation, however, supported by the capabilities of current technology.  Speculation supported by the tech specs of specific equipment available from various companies that can do visual and cell phone surveillance.

Cheap to fly light aircraft gathering all this surveillance data is probably the best cost to benefit thing a spy agency can do to collect massive information on citizens.  Big cities are the low hanging fruit.

"Aircraft surveillance has become an indispensable intelligence collection and investigative technique which serves as a force multiplier to the ground teams," the FBI said in 2009 when it asked Congress for $5.1 million for the program.

Duh!  That is where the people are!  30 Major cities in the USA can be a large part of the population!  The scope of the program might be limited by funds but it is so cheap to fly these aircraft it is probably limited by the objective to keep it all under the public awareness radar.

There must be something that makes small aircraft collection of data better than cell phone dumps obtained from companies with cell phone towers.  Photo surveillance however has no general alternative except google maps.

The whole thing is ripe for blue sky speculation.

I wrote a blog entry about what might be behind massive amounts of stolen cell US phones finding their way to south of the border through Florida.  It had names of business and locations and associated people in Florida connected to this that may have been government agents and agencies that "doctored" these phones prior to sending them south via criminal channels.  Once there they could be monitored for various purposes.  I never published the blog entry.  It may have been more accurate than I thought and therefore thought twice.

If that program existed and worked south of the border then why not in the USA?

Who knows?

There is some kind of "secret sauce" benefit to the government running this city overflight surveillance program that produces info not otherwise easily or legally obtainable?  If its genesis was south of the border, how many of the same type of aircraft are used by the DEA there?  Do they, did they fly circles around major cities there?

Interesting comments at this link about the FBI Cessna 182RG. 

Theories and speculation about all this are only limited by the clear blue sky and visibility is unlimited under those conditions!

From the link:
"Most flight patterns occurred in counter-clockwise orbits up to several miles wide and roughly one mile above the ground at slow speeds. A 2003 newsletter from the company FLIR Systems Inc., which makes camera technology such as seen on the planes, described flying slowly in left-handed patterns. "

Recently I looked at FLIR in connection to road traffic surveillance cameras.  A world wide company, it has a location in Portland.  They are perhaps the major supplier of this type of camera that is perhaps the camera installed at traffic intersections in my city for "traffic control" purposes that are supposedly "less costly" alternatives to the circular vehicle detectors installed at intersections.

Hmmm, really?  Less costly is claimed in the official explanation of the use of these "traffic control" cameras that supposedly regulate the traffic lights depending on what they observe.  However, if the lights are actually on constant timing regardless of traffic flow then they are not doing that are they? 

Hmmm.....what are they doing?  They are not there to record traffic violations.  That requires a physically different camera.

If FLIR Inc. is making the cameras installed on these aircraft the cameras with this ability do not appear as a product for sale at the FLIR site.   The best resolution of cameras at the site is 1080 x 1920.  I will have to research that.

FLIR Camera offerings are not impressive regarding high definition.  The most exciting thing offered is laser targeting.  FLIR is also the generic term for Forward Looking Infared Radar so it may not be a FLIR Inc. camera.