Three members report a story about alleged CIA rendition flight intended to convey Snowden from Moscow to the US - but the interesting thing is how an aircraft that was avoiding any air traffic communication was detected by enthusiasts.
CIA rendition jet was waiting in Europe to snatch Snowden
The Register reports that the CIA sent a jet from Washington, DC to Europe in an attempt to bring brave patriot/cowardly traitor (depending on your point of view) Edward Snowden back to America from Moscow - a jet that is known to have previously been used in "rendition" missions. It seems that the jet never made it all the way to Moscow, since Russian authorities refused to detain Snowden. Read more at the Reg:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/13/cia_rendition_jet_was_waiting_in_europe_to_snatch_snowden/
Black ops flights not so secret after all
According to an article today in The Register, there was a CIA rendition jet waiting in Europe to snatch Snowden last year around this time.
N977GA was detected heading east over Scotland at the unusually high altitude of 45,000 feet. It had not filed a flight plan, and was flying above the level at which air traffic control reporting is mandatory.
This article is interesting despite its year-late reporting because the information was collected by a group of civilian "plane spotters". Using a technique called multilateration civilians with a radio receiver listening for plane transponders can track any flight in their air space by banding together and comparing their timestamps.
Several such online tracking networks are active in the UK, using this and other sources of information: they include www.flightradar24.com, www.planefinder.net, Planeplotter (www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm) and www.radarvirtuel.com. UK-based Planeplotter is one of the more sophisticated of these global "virtual radar" systems. It boasts 2,000 members with receivers hooked up to the internet.
Let's hear it for bored Brits and nerdy ingenuity!
Related Stories
The Guardian is reporting on the accusation that the UK Government is trying to suppress mention of Diego Garcia, thus opening them up to liability, in a soon to be released US Senate report into CIA interrogations.
The Senate report on the CIA's interrogation programme, due to be released in days, will confirm that the US tortured terrorist suspects after 9/11. In advance of the release, Barack Obama admitted on Friday: "We tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values."
"We have made representations to seek assurances that ordinary procedures for clearance of UK material will be followed in the event that UK material provide[d] to the Senate committee were to be disclosed," Hague [former UK foreign secretary] wrote.
Cori Crider, a director at Reprieve, accused the UK government of seeking to redact embarrassing information: "This shows that the UK government is attempting to censor the US Senate's torture report. In plain English, it is a request to the US to keep Britain's role in rendition out of the public domain."
Confirmation that a British territory was involved in extraordinary rendition could leave the government vulnerable to legal action.
See our earlier coverage: Rendition Aircraft Detected by Enthusiasts.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14 2014, @08:39PM
All enthusiasts are terrorists.
(Score: 3) by jimshatt on Saturday June 14 2014, @08:57PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Sunday June 15 2014, @12:27AM
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you don't also have real enemies.
If there is anything that Snowden did, it was to prove once and for all that the majority of the paranoia was not unfounded. At this point if somebody said that the CIA strapped them down to insert a tracking chip in their neck, or impossibly large satellite equipment in their colon, I would not laugh too quickly.
It's one thing to be stripping away our civil rights, but the more problematic and troubling abuses against us are via big corporations quashing dissent and their unending war against consumer protections. The Internet is at the forefront of this battle simply because of how EASY it is to manipulate public opinion and effectively control free speech.
Basically, the "market" expanded on tools that can be used to control and oppress people in the last 20 years and the elites and government never leave tools like that unused.
Never in my life have I seen corporations so openly violent and hostile towards consumer dissent with their business practices, and that is directly related to the American people (among others) simply falling asleep at the wheel and allowing their governments to be hijacked by monied interests that care nothing for their welfare.
Make no mistake. We are at war. We are losing. It's all but assured that we will continue to the logical outcome, that being a Neo-Feudal system where the serfs are being deprived of 90% of the fruits of their labor with the associated lack of any remediation against the nobles. People don't complain that bitterly as the nobles learned the lessons of panem et circenses well.
Who needs slavery when they figured out how to make you a slave willingly?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday June 15 2014, @04:02AM
The serfs must earn a dollar. The elite print them. On top of that, the elite, by law, exact usury on it as well. On top of that, our Government requires tax to be paid in it.
The only place more dollars can come from to satisfy usury has to be yet more dollars, printed by the elite, earned by the serfs by the sweat of their brow.
To sign yourself away, just sign their loan documents. The elite anxiously await, pens ready.
All this, yet the serfs fail to provide their own candidates for elected office, electing to choose between several the elite choose for them to choose from.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday August 03 2014, @08:17PM
Absolutely! I still hear "if you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to worry about." I can imagine there were groups of Jews saying that about having to register with the Nazi's.... a few, too few, realized there WAS something to worry about....
It seems to be a very COLD war, except it is Political, Military AND Industrial cold war against naive citizens.
Vive le/la (too lazy to look it up, meh) Resistance!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lx on Saturday June 14 2014, @09:41PM
Plane spotters are frequently detained as spies when indulging their hobby in backward military dictatorships. In our enlightened culture they are merely placed on watch lists.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday June 14 2014, @10:33PM
...for now...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @05:19PM
If you are wrong and some were simply disappeared, how would anyone know? It is fact that many countries, including the United States, disappear people.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by keplr on Saturday June 14 2014, @09:10PM
This story was briefly up on reddit's front page but was deleted by mods because the source wasn't "trustworthy". reddit has a history of doing this, ostensibly in the name of journalistic integrity. It often seems like towing the corporate/state line when you look at the types of things that get deleted. If you're a user of reddit, check out /r/undelete [reddit.com] which track links that get deleted from the front page.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 14 2014, @09:42PM
Indeed, Reddit's mods also removed previous Snowden stories from not only the front page but also news boards where the stories were directly relevant to the topic.
It's pretty safe to assume that Reddit has been co-opted (or is at least dominated by an overwhelming majority who favor the establishment). That doesn't concern me because I don't hang out there, but it is still troubling because Reddit is one of the largest (I assume) internet discussion boards. And before you ask me for a source, I already posted a link in a previous discussion. Google it yourself, there's plenty of evidence there.
Finally, a thank-you to the amateur flight-trackers for helping keep this public -- Nerds get a lot of shit for having such niche hobbies, but they are doing the rest of us a service which should be appreciated by all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14 2014, @09:46PM
Thanks for the link. Seems like the people in the comments destroyed the article's claims.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14 2014, @09:39PM
How great is this?
Snowden exposes the US government for taking advantage of the fact that systems designed for one thing leak information about their users to anyone who can figure out how to listen in.
Then these guys take advantage of information leaking out of government systems by listening in to systems designed for another purpose.
(Score: 2, Informative) by rancid on Saturday June 14 2014, @10:34PM
"I'm not going to be scrambling jets." [youtu.be]
I guess he was honest, it was only a single jet.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 14 2014, @10:08PM
Is there any reason the CIA couldn't have turned off the transponder?
Don't get me wrong, I'm in the "Snowden is a hero" camp -- but unless there is some reason that the transponder must remain turned on, I'm guessing the CIA will just start turning them off. Then no more tracking by this method will be possible. Radio geeks will have to build their own radars.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday June 14 2014, @10:39PM
Or do some sophisticated but possible signal processing to detect FM radio and television signals reflected by aircraft.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14 2014, @10:57PM
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/01/radar-detects-stealth-aircraft [wired.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by carguy on Saturday June 14 2014, @11:22PM
My mod points just timed out -- mod the link to the Wired article up please. The comments are also interesting.
(Score: 3, Funny) by cyrano on Saturday June 14 2014, @11:03PM
Can't fly without. Military would immediately investigate. Can't tell them not to. Military can't keep secrets, according to CIA.
The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. - Kali [kali.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 15 2014, @12:29AM
I am glad that the US military can't keep secrets.
Well I imagine they can keep some (sensitive battle plans etc.).
I really think the people with the biggest guns ought to be open to scrutiny at least to the people they represent. Of course when the guns are protected by information based security they ought to be able to keep secrets to stop control of said arsenal to be taken.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Sunday June 15 2014, @06:03AM
Without a transponder, the aircraft will most assuredly get agressively challenged entering any Nation's airspace.
Long story short, diplomatic nightmares.
Even in International airspace most nations would still check them out for possible smugglers, drugs, etc...
(Score: 1) by forkazoo on Sunday June 15 2014, @08:58AM
As has been noted, this would trigger an active response. Remember, the point of a plane like this is to appear "ordinary." As soon as you start acting like you are a military incursion, you will get a military response. When it comes to clandestine operations, you want to go in while doing exactly what a business jet carrying executives (or whatever the cover story is) would be doing. As soon as you stray from the cover story, you are essentially broadcasting what you are. (Even if you are doing it by literally turning off a broadcast.) If the US had full agreement and participation of other countries to run these kind of operations, they wouldn't need to be at least somewhat secret. A country like Germany may be willing to look the other way if things stay under the table, but as soon as plausible deniability goes away, they really can't sanction a lot of what the US does.
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Saturday June 14 2014, @11:58PM
This sounds like something Neal Stephenson would write.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 1) by MostCynical on Sunday June 15 2014, @12:41AM
George Santayana http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgesant101521.html [brainyquote.com] was right.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-21829815 [bbc.com]
http://www.verzetsmuseum.org/tweede-wereldoorlog/en/kingdomofthenetherlands/thenetherlands,may_1943_-_may_1944/hand_in- [verzetsmuseum.org]
The world is turning fascist (again...)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday June 15 2014, @05:14AM
Mr. MostCynical:
A few days ago, there was a discussion here on Soylent about kids in Pensacola, Florida having their summer reading program canceled [boingboing.net] over Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother" ( warning: 140 page PDF ) [craphound.com].
Your last two links smack of what I read in the book.
I am afraid we may not be so fortunate the next go-around, as once that super-simple AM radio format is gone, so will be the option of building super-simple crystal receivers that will pick it up. I remember building lots of the things as a kid, and got quite good building the resonator coils for them... ( seems the biggest diameter round loop I could make would work the best.. my favorite form was a hula hoop and had like five or six turns of bell wire on it. I had this crazy way of winding it in a spiral around the hoop so I could keep the wires away from each other. ). My dad gave me a little kit with a real piece of galena to get me started, but once I understood what was going on, it was 1N34 all the way. And old tuning capacitors from AM radios. I wasn't above wax paper and tinfoil - but I never got those to work very well. The thing I wanted most was an oscilloscope. I tried to make one from an old TV, but it worked like crap. I did not know at the time just how hard it was to drive an inductor.
While reading that book, I wondered if I would have been hunted down like m1k3y ( from the book ) for making crystal sets. Probably so.
Am I shilling for Cory? I support Cory and his beliefs on open source, knowing one of the things he said that as an author, his biggest problem was not piracy; rather it is obscurity. I enjoyed his book and was pleased he made it available to all, hence I linked it. I saw it as an extrapolation from George Orwell's "1986" and it looked almost too believable.
... albeit I think m1k3y is Cory's alter ego. ;)
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @05:13PM
It's not "rendition" it's kidnapping. It's not "sexual exploitation" it's rape. It's not "enhanced interrogation techniques" it's torture. It's not "being disingenuous" it's being a liar.
If you want to quote media that quote the Ministry of Truth fine, but please don't repeat the lies here. Call a spade a spade. The CIA has a plane so they can kidnap people and torture them for as long as they want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 17 2014, @12:05PM
I guess part of the lies is that he was supposedly to be transferred to America. More probably to a Black site (secret torture site).