Re: <nettime> Flying in Berlin's Sky, an Afternoon Investigation - September 22

[Harv Stanic Staalman <harv@subsignal.org>]

On Thu, 5 Sep 2019 11:45:44 +0200
Adam Burns <adamb@free2air.net> wrote this:

> I was approached by an NGO several years ago to develop robust,
> embedded, low power ADSB radio loggers to be deployed in remote areas of
> conflict and strife, specifically to assist with detection of anomalies
> that may assist with discovery of human and arms trafficking activity.

Interesting engagement. To monitor illegal arms movements to me is
understandable, but human migration from many endangered areas to be
monitored,  is in my eyes, a wee bit wrong. 

Those people usually need to stay clandestine and need a taciturn help. 
Not really monitoring and sharing (reporting) their presence, let alone
production and a storage of data that can be reverse-used against their
misery.

Some years ago there was one European guy in Sudan that spent a lots of his
own money disseminating thousands of small USB cam recorders...that helped
to prove many war crimes later on.

> Third party aircraft radio beacon detection networks (such as
> Flightaware, etc) were not trusted, as their aggregated data collection
> and web presentation were seen as mediated, potentially edited to remove
> such data.

Well, nobody wants people without humor (and that is why they are wearing
black suits and are armed) knocking on your door.
I am just trying to defend their (wise) decision not to display all the
data they have as they are aware of the consequences. (I had also the
same issues with them and I asked - so they told me why). 

Also, very recently a guy in Ireland who pictured AF1 with Trump on
board flying very high across and outside of the usual paths had such a
visit. 
I presume it wasn't very friendly. Prolly 'cos he posted a picture on his
Twitter. Sad.

Also peeking and poking around some NATO bases results in grave actions
(same humorless people, armed, violent, that answer to none of the civil
or assuming democratic institutions, let alone host states or their
parliaments)
- IBM's Watson in one of its variants is adopted for " a reverse waterfall"
  requests as in WiFi snooping (Wireshark and other snooping tools).
  Trying to log on from the outside usually ends up almost always rather
  bad.  

tldr; they see you before you see them and they like to shoot people -
think of it as a death-watch. 

In Berlin up until 1993-4 a Teufelsberg was one of such places, but no
Watson way back then.  plenty of soldiers with good old binoculars
technology and hundreds of microphones in wired trees for kilometers around
it. 

> There was knowledge and recognition within the NGO that not all aircraft
> are fitted with ADSB beacons and not all aircraft fitted with beacons
> would have them switched on during such "sensitive" flights.

Right. Fae. Israelis are famous for that.
Russians blare their signals pretty much so everybody knows they are
coming and they better run. Different approach.
 
> Although not an expert in the field, I find the ADSB beacons for
> aircraft and the corresponding AIS beacons for shipping and waterway
> entities a fascinating evolution in terms of direct exposure of transit
> network placement and movement. With the availability of cheap consumer
> USB radio detectors, Internet based networks such as Flightaware, etc.
> have business models based on highly distributed networks of local radio
> receivers providing a service of aggregation and correlation in global
> visibility of human and goods movement.

Yup. We indeed we do collect data for "them" all. 
Already for more then 10 years, as those have been required ever since -
as for the private vessels as well for a commercial and governmental
operated ones, with understandingly some exceptions.

Although I still think that human movements should not be monitored or even
attempted to produce any data on those.

Just to be rather short here - as in nb. - any research and a proof of
existence of such vessels or methods of deliberately hiding those is going
to be disregarded by_you_know_who and rendered to /dev/null.

Have fun.

my best

Harv

-- 
Cheap. Good. Fast.
pick any two
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