HFU HF Underground
General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: NJQA on June 12, 2020, 2055 UTC
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News organizations are waking up to apparent electronic surveillance of protesters, as evidenced by ADSB transmissions.
Even if protesters put their phones in “airplane” mode to thwart surveillance, it still helps things as it impedes protester (agitator) use of phones for coordination of their activities...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/spy-planes-george-floyd-protests/index.html
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3zvwj/military-fbi-flying-surveillance-planes-george-floyd-protesters
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/law-enforcement-surveilled-protests-drones-spy-planes-200611194618864.html
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Turn your phone off. Simples.
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During the local "big" (coordinated effort resulting in about ~1000 marchers) gathering here a week ago there was reportedly an MQ-9 Reaper overhead the entire time. If true it may, or may not, have been related to the protest, they are often overhead here anyway.
T!
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This type of News/twitter organizations adverse ADS- B publicity is not appreciated by this plane spotter, it gives the powers-that-be the pretext to shut down those web sites.
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I had the same thought when I saw the articles.
On the other hand, with all of these “defund the police” movements, maybe some of them would consider pushing the abolishment of blanket encryption of public safety transmissions in the interest of greater transparency?
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Protests aside, my understanding is that there are plenty of circling flight paths available on Flightradar24.com in many major metropolitan areas of the US. I have personally seen (and heard) non-military helicopters flying near or above my house that do not seem to appear on the radar websites. (I check frequently.) I assume this is because their transponder is turned off. My understanding from reading articles is that these are usually FBI or Department of Homeland Security helicopters. (I can recall in one instance checking FlightRadar24 on a helicopter above my neighborhood and it was identified as "Federal Bureau of Investigation" so cloaking is not a universal policy.) It would not surprise me that these flights are raking in mobile phone information, perhaps while doing other things. This has been going on for years on a routine basis.
Then there are the local police helicopters that seem to come overhead daily, though I have to say it appears to be more often at night, sometimes transiting to get to other areas, sometimes just "trolling" around looking for trouble. Their flight pattern usually indicates that they will circle certain locations for 5-10 minutes then move on. I have not attempted to correlate this activity with land-based police activity that might be occurring at the same time.
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Think the fedz and mil are going to the adsb that does not display what type of ac or agency is operating said ac to unauthorised monitors.
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ADSBexchange.com claims they do not filter postings at all. Other web sites will filter some military and “sensitive” (e.g. celebrity, government, etc.) aircraft.
Of course if you have your own receiver, then there is nothing anyone can do to prevent you from receiving them, outside of turning the xmtr off.
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U.S. federal, state and local government aircraft performing sensitive operations are now permitted to fly with their installed automatic dependent surveillance broadcast (ADS-B) position reporting electronics turned off, according to a new rule published by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Thursday.
https://www.aviationtoday.com/2019/07/23/new-rule-allows-military-aircraft-turn-ads-b-transmissions-off/
Building a Passive Radar System with RTL-SDR Dongles
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/building-a-passive-radar-system-with-an-rtl-sdr/
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RE: phones: according to some activist organizations' PDFs readily available online, phone security (and wariness) is definitely discussed. I suppose this apparent monitoring from the skies is one of the reasons.
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The ANG says their RC26s weren’t working the crowds:
https://www.airforcemag.com/why-ang-rc-26s-were-spotted-over-d-c-vegas-during-civil-unrest/
Also, others were collecting cellphone ESNs, not just the government:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/political-groups-use-deeply-spooky-protester-location-data-report-finds/