The FBI Intelligence Division is building a secret “surveillance air force,” putting planes in the sky circling 24/7 over cities, with cameras installed to take high-res video for surveillance ops. They are tasked with specific operations periodically, but when not specifically tasked, they are a small part of a much larger 24/7 surveillance machine. This machine includes technical surveillance on telephone poles wired to central control centers, vehicle and foot operators, informants recruited from companies such as plumbers and electricians that might gain access to private areas such as homes and offices, and air assets from planes to drones to helicopters, all loitering 24/7, looking for anything interesting, while they wait for control to assign them a phase of some target’s coverage.
The FBI had at least 115 planes AP could document back in 2009, but that was probably a pilot program compared to today’s fleet. Even better, they have now begun hiding the program from public view behind shell companies registered to apparently fictitious people. They have begun hiding the planes, to hide the scale of the program, plain and simple, because they think if the public knew, the public would try to stop them, or maybe, even more problematically, wonder why they were risking their agencies’ reputations and their own careers to do something so strangely Orwellian as have high-investment surveillance ops loiter 24/7, under false paperwork.
The US Marshalls are doing the same thing, in association with the CIA, (which used to shy away from domestic surveillance, but no more). DEA has their own program, CBP/ICE probably do as well, ATF may also, and even local PD’s with DHS grants probably do too – and they are all operating synergistically due to DHS “connectivity.” There may even be private sector PI air assets out there with “connectivity” too, doing it on contract to some agency or other.
Even better, all of the birds run by those agencies together are probably not even a drop in the bucket compared to DHS, which is not only running planes, but has Predator drones designed to be given a cell phone number, and determine it’s direction automatically. The obvious implication is this is a “set it and forget it” means of aerial surveillance, designed to be set to automatically follow a cellphone wherever it might go, without any operator input needed.
It is mildly frightening when Law Enforcement reaches the point that they hide the stuff they do, because they know the people would stop them if they found out due to it being so clearly wrong morally. The next step is to begin punishing anyone who exposes it, and the final step is to not care about exposure, and punish any citizen who voices any opposition (all for our own good, and the good of the nation’s freedom, of course). It would be nice if the leadership of Federal Law Enforcement were open to the interests and wishes of the nation they are supposed to be serving, but that day seems to be fast disappearing. Their view now seems to be that Americans are little more than children in need of protection, and they are going to seize total control to provide it, whether we want it or not. That can’t end well.
This site isn’t focusing on surveillance by accident. These stories are increasingly appearing to be the tip of an enormous iceberg, the extent of which most Americans would not believe is even possible, let alone actually happening. The “TIPS” program, designed to run more private citizen informants per capita than the Stasi ran back in East Germany, appears to have been quietly resurrected through expansion of the Terrorism Liaison Officer program, which turns your local plumber, electrician, bank teller, phone company rep, and utility worker into a spy the Intelligence Division can send to poke around in your private spaces and business sans warrant, whenever you call them to repair something, or deal with their company.
Mobile surveillance units, consisting of video-ing cars and foot units are being contracted to loiter near and within all major metropolitan areas, ostensibly on the look out for terrorist activity, but really on call for surveillance duty. Hidden and not-so-hidden technical surveillance wired into broadband on our telephone poles, including license plate readers, facial recognition cameras, and cell-phone trackers, is being wired up on major streets throughout America, and on a lot of small streets, with DHS funding. Wonder why DHS funds Shotspotter installs? The sound-triangulating microphones plug into broadband, and can be used to listen to specific conversations. In Seattle, DHS funded a Wifi mesh network designed to track any Wifi enable device, as it moved through the city. That will eventually come to a city near you. I’m sure there is more that would bug all our eyes out, but they are working very hard to keep all of it as secret as possible.
I don’t know why the push is on for all this intel-gathering apparatus, or why it is being done so secretly. Maybe there is intel the Muslims are going to use highly contagious biological weapons on cities, maybe some liberal Obama nut-job got their finger on the button, and can’t stop pushing it to watch their power expand and expand some more. Maybe the super-secret melonhead council that meets in the hidden chambers under the Washington monument has concluded the collapse is imminent and the anarchy could get them killed, and this is their stab at a trump card. I don’t know.
But between the citizen informants, the air assets loitering on standby, the tech, and the mobile foot and vehicle units, I am inclined to think this is strongly indicative of something really, really big forthcoming.
Watch your back.