SoylentNews

Zinho [soylentnews.org] writes:

According to an article today in The Register, there was a CIA rendition jet waiting in Europe to snatch Snowden [theregister.co.uk] 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 [multilateration.com] 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 [flightradar24.com], www.planefinder.net [planefinder.net], Planeplotter (www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm [coaa.co.uk]) and www.radarvirtuel.com [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!

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Original Submission