Planespotting: Nerds with binoculars bust the CIA's torture taxis

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Planespotting: Nerds with binoculars bust the CIA's torture taxis

by Trevor Paglen & A. C. Thompson
October 15th, 2006 10:26 PM

....
Ray is a planespotter - a person obsessed with almost everything having to do with aviation. As a hobby, Ray tracks airplanes, logs their serial numbers and movements, analyzes their radio systems, and keeps detailed records of the frequencies and designs that their systems use. He tries to understand how aviation systems work, how planes communicate with the ground controllers and with each other, and how the military and the Federal Aviation Administration manage various kinds of airspace. On this mild spring day, Ray's testing a new piece of gear: a Kinetic Avionics SBS-1, a "virtual radar" system. Attached to his laptop with a USB cable, the system allows him to watch air traffic within a forty- or fifty-mile radius and to log call signs and basic information about the planes.
....

And the image that Ray has created from all the data he's harvested is a dark and grainy one, a picture that has as much to do with the Bush administration's war on terror as it does with aviation. Ray was one of the first people to use planespotting techniques to expose the Central Intelligence Agency's extraordinary rendition program, which relies on a fleet of low-profile aircraft to whisk terrorism suspects to dungeons around the world where they're tortured and abused.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Poor Ray

is just asking for a ride on one of those planes.

[Swede]

2. This could get this guy Ray,killed.

"stop messing with those Base Camp guys or you'll wind up dead in the desert with two bullets in the back of your head."

"Wouldn't one bullet be enough?" asked Ray.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

5. Which says volumes about...

Some of the people involved in these programs. Little niceties like...oh, say...THE LAW, mean little if not nothing to them.

They all think they have their double 0 license.

[Beelzebud]

3. Great.. Under Bush Rule, America has "Torture Taxis".

/me pukes all over America, once the land of the free and once the home of the brave.

[texpatriot2004]

4. Thank you Ray and others for watching nm

[Phrogman]

6. Guys like Ray are the greatest patriots this country has!

They've figured out the system from outside the box, and they report to the rest of us.

[Canuckistanian]

7. Quite an interesting instrument he's using

Flying a small plane? Operating a regional airport? Just like to track what's going on overhead? You're in luck: £499.95 ($904) will get you the Kinetic Avionics SBS-1, a PC-based system that lets you track any planes that use Mode S/ADS-B transponders. Kinetic also operates a service called MapMode-S, which lets SBS-1 users share their tracking data, creating a virtual worldwide network of radar data, so you can track planes virtually anywhere there's an SBS-1. Somehow, we suspect this stuff isn't going to be legal for long, so if you want one (for legitimate purposes, of course), you may want to pick one up ASAP.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. Yeah. Pretty hardcore.

I've got some aviation frequencies punched into some of my scanners, but nothing like that. One often sees planespotters at Gravelly Point, located at the north end of the main runway at Washington National Airport.

Gravelly Point

[Canuckistanian]

10. I had no idea that transponders were unencoded

I listen to a scanner, too, even military stuff sometimes, but I wonder how you get transponder messages?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

11. transponders

I don't know, though I ought to. I'm thinking there's similar data that some railfans listen to. It's called ATCS, for Automatic Train Control System. It's filtered out of the signal that most scanner owners listen to. To retrieve that information, the scanner owner has to solder a tap to the scanner's discriminator and then process that information. There are several websites showing which pin on the microchip is the discriminator output.

Some links:

ATCS Monitor Frequently Asked Questions

Bill Cheek's Scanner Data Decoding Frequently Asked Questions File

[bulletsandspikes]

9. We wont see him again.