{"id":14139,"date":"2016-04-07T14:30:25","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T19:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=14139"},"modified":"2016-04-07T14:30:25","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T19:30:25","slug":"the-surveillance-state-spies-in-the-skies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/07\/the-surveillance-state-spies-in-the-skies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Surveillance State: Spies in the Skies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/RqRnTvT3RiM\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/RqRnTvT3RiM<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><b>America is being watched from above. Government surveillance planes routinely circle over most major cities \u2014 but usually take the weekends off.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Each weekday, dozens<\/b> of U.S. government aircraft take to the skies and slowly circle over American cities. Piloted by agents of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the planes are fitted with high-resolution video cameras, often working with \u201caugmented reality\u201d software that can superimpose onto the video images everything from street and business names to the owners of individual homes. At least a few planes have carried devices that can track the cell phones of people below. Most of the aircraft are small, flying a mile or so above ground, and many use exhaust mufflers to mute their engines \u2014 making them hard to detect by the people they\u2019re spying on.<\/p>\n<p>The government\u2019s airborne surveillance has received little public scrutiny \u2014 until now. BuzzFeed News has assembled an unprecedented picture of the operation\u2019s scale and sweep by analyzing aircraft location data collected by the flight-tracking website\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flightradar24.com\/\">Flightradar24<\/a> from mid-August to the end of December last year, identifying about 200 federal aircraft. Day after day, dozens of these planes circled above cities across the nation.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI and the DHS would not discuss the reasons for individual flights but told BuzzFeed News that their planes are not conducting mass surveillance.<\/p>\n<p>The DHS said that its aircraft were involved with securing the nation\u2019s borders, as well as targeting drug smuggling and human trafficking, and may also be used to support investigations by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The FBI said that its planes are only used to target suspects in specific investigations of serious crimes, pointing to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fbi.gov\/news\/pressrel\/press-releases\/fbi-aviation-program-purpose-and-scope\">statement<\/a> issued in June 2015, after reporters and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grassley.senate.gov\/news\/news-releases\/grassley-wants-more-details-fbi-aerial-surveillance-program\">lawmakers<\/a> started asking questions about FBI surveillance flights.<\/p>\n<p>Read the Remainder at<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/peteraldhous\/spies-in-the-skies\"> Buzz Feed<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>**Please read the Entire Article, as it contains a ton of information the Civilian Operator needs to be aware of!<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"superlist_4201717_8378094\" class=\"buzz_superlist_item buzz-superlist-item longform_pullquote buzz_superlist_item_left_small \">\n<div class=\"share-box bf_dom\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America is being watched from above. Government surveillance planes routinely circle over most major cities \u2014 but usually take the weekends off. Each weekday, dozens of U.S. government aircraft take to the skies and slowly circle over American cities. Piloted by agents of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the planes are&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5406,1704,5072,3140,74,1928,3553,65,3712],"tags":[10957,10958,10959,10960,10961,10962],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}