June 18, 2025 • 27 mins
When ICE raids sparked massive protests across Los Angeles, something unusual appeared in the sky: Predator drones. Dexter talks to Joseph Cox over at 404 Media to understand how military-grade surveillance aircrafts ended up flying over U.S. citizens and what that means for the future of civil liberties.
Read + Watch:
Joseph’s articles on the Predator drones flying over the protests:
DHS Flew Predator Drones Over LA Protests, Audio Shows
CBP Confirms It Is Flying Predator Drones Above Los Angeles To Support ICE
Also:
How to Protest Safely: What to Bring, What to Do, and What to Avoid
How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Okay, so this episode is partially about protests, but not
necessarily a specific one. It's not really about Trump's military
parade on Saturday, or the No King's protest and response
to that. It's not about the ice raids or the
protests that have been going on in response to that
for almost two weeks at this point. I'm sure you've
seen all that online. But just to start us off,
(00:31):
i live in Los Angeles where some of the biggest
protests have been happening, and I've been out every day
with my camera covering the protests. Most of the time,
it's pretty calm and peaceful. Despite that, law enforcement presence
has been massive, and it's not just the LAPD. The
National Guard is here and so are the Marines. Officials
(00:53):
estimated that this deployment would cost one hundred and thirty
four million dollars. It does get hectic. I've seen tear
gas canisters launched a protesters' heads. I've seen police horses
nearly trample multiple people, and an unhoused person who didn't
(01:16):
seem to understand what was even going on being beaten
up with a baton. And that was in the space
of half an hour on Saturday. Afternoon. This stuff is
usually aimed at protesters, but journalists are not exempt from
being pushed, having tear gas thrown at him, or even
being shot at with one of those less lethal rounds.
I can confirm that because I've been hit by one
(01:36):
of those rounds twice. But again, this episode isn't about
me or journalists in general. It's also not even really
about the protesters. It's about the tools that are being
used to watch all of them, and about surveillance and
protests in general, and a trend that we're starting to
see take shape. If you're listening to this in June
(01:58):
of twenty twenty five, the things you're about to hear
in this episode might sound concerning to you. If you're
listening after that, all this might just sound kind of quaint.
But let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I'm time.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is kill Switch. I'm
Dexter Thomas. Goodbye. On Tuesday, June tenth, Joseph Cox over
at four or four Media noticed something weird going on
in the flight data over LA.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
When the protests started over the weekend. I did what
I often do when there's a protest or some sort
of large event is I go and check flight data
to adsb exchange dot com. It's a website where volunteers
they run basically little sensors that can detect flight traffic.
(03:12):
The website then makes this freely available. But what I
usually do is I go and I start seeing what
aircraft are in the sky above this protest or this event.
And in this case, the skies were busy. There was
a lot going on up there.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Zerre one traffic couble clock one droll ma ab direction,
another Troy Q nine to two drum seven three traffic
cover clock eight miles the direction, another Troy nine two
three drunk.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
I'm sure people on the ground would have noticed this
as well, But there were aircraft up there that you
would have heard, would have seen, and then I think
many others do you may not have even noticed as well.
So there are sort of two suspicious flight paths. The
first time, I was doing circles and I followed where
it took off, and it took off and eventually landed
(04:02):
from March Air Reserve Base, which is to the east
of LA. We don't fully actually know what that flight is.
I think it's a larger DHS plane. I haven't fully
verified that. But the other one which we have verified
is that there were these other really interesting flight patterns
above downtown LA and Paramount, but they were in this
(04:22):
very distinctive hexagonal pattern and it was a much higher altitude.
It was like over ten thousand feet something like that.
There's something in the sky at around ten thousand feet
flying these hexagonal patterns. Doesn't have a call sign.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
What is a call sign? Why would you expect a
call sign from an aircraft?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I'll try my best because I'm definitely on an aviation expert, okay,
but I am incredibly interested in it journalistically. So a
col sign is basically unique code and aircraft is going
to broadcast, be assigned so it can identify itself of
two other planes and to air traffic control. So to
(05:03):
be able to effectively organize air traffic, you need to
know which plane is which. You'll have Delta flight seven
oh two or whatever, and obviously that's going to be
a Delta one the DHS call sign or one that
they often uses Troy Troo y. So this is how
planes identify themselves and how ATC can manage them. If
you don't have a call sign, that's interesting because it's
(05:27):
obviously raised the question of why don't you want this
plane to be identified? And it does make it harder
to figure out what agency is behind this craft. Not impossible, yeah,
but that information is out there and you cross reference it.
You'll look up FAA registration records, and that's usually how
you'll go, oh, that's registered to DHS. Oh that's registered
(05:49):
to California Highway Patrol or something like that.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, it's kind of like driving that a license plate,
which yeah, I suppose some agencies can do, yeah in
the sky, driving with a licensed plane in the sky,
that would raise them questions From.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Me, I'm immediately interested because I've seen those hexagans before,
and that was when DHS flew predator drones above Minneapolis
during the BLM protests in twenty twenty. So that is
immediately really interesting. It's very distinctive, like you don't normally
see those patterns on flight data.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Joseph started connecting the dats and he wrote an article
on four or four media saying that it looked like
two very similar drones were flying over the anti ice
protests in LA and that these might belong to DHS,
the Department of Homeland Security fly in a hexagon.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah. So again this is where the limit of my
expertise shows itself. I can't necessarily say they're flying exactly
in a hexagon, or is that how the data is
being interpreted by ADBs exchange or something like that. But
it appears as a hexagon, and that is an immediate
red flag of that might be a predator drone.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
In case that phrase predator drone sounds familiar to you,
we're talking generally here about a series of unmanned aircraft
developed by General Atomics, the MQ one, the Predator, and
the MQ nine the Reaper. These have been used for surveillance,
including along the border between the US and Mexico, but
they've also been used for so called targeted strikes and
(07:17):
launching air to ground missiles to kill people in places
like Afghanistan and Iraq. Most people wouldn't expect that one
of these drones were flying over a major American city.
You think of predator drones, you think of this as, oh,
this is something used in wartime, this is use for war.
Just a backup, what usually would you associate a predator with?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I would usually associate a predator just broadly speaking, flying
over a country like Afghanistan during the US's war on terror,
I would associate it with maybe a convoy of cars
is driving from one location to another, and intelligence of
(07:58):
some veracity set that there is some sort of insurgent
or some sort of al kaeda isis Taliban whoever leader
inside this vehicle. We're now going to fire the health
fire missile and we're going to destroy that vehicle. That
would be the standard way of thinking about it. And
I think, of course, with the US's drone wars, it
has targeted weddings as well. Is done so called double
(08:21):
tap processes, where you fire a drone strike, it kills people,
people then go to help you, then fire a second
missile because you want to get those as well. These
are weapons of assassination and weapons of war, and now
those are flying above US soil. To be clear, I'm
pretty sure that DHS ones are not armed, so I
want to be very clear about that. But they are
(08:42):
still incredibly powerful surveillance apparatus. They have very high powers
cameras on them. They can potentially have very sophisticated electronic
surveillance technology as well. We don't know whether that's being
used above these protests, but at.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
This point Joseph wasn't one hundred percent sure who these
aircraft belonged to. And this is where a community of
people who study this stuff come in. An aviation enthusiast
named aero Scout did some digging and finally helped connect
that final dat.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I tried to see where it took off. I can't
figure it out. Maybe it had this transponder off or
whatever before that. Eventually I see it flies to the
US Mexican border, which is obviously where US Customs and
Border Protection hangs out and stores some of their drones.
So they were very smart and they followed the flight
(09:35):
path of what looked like the drone. They found the
relevant atc Audio, and in that haystack they found a
couple of needles, including the mention of Troy, which is
the DHS call sign. Even though this drone is not
broadcasting a call sign, it's mentioned there. And then crucially,
some of the audio says a Q nine, which is
shorthand for the MQ nine, which is the official name
(09:56):
for a Predator or a reaper drone. So cross referencing
it was confirmed. I actually emailed Customs and Border protection. First,
when I first saw the hexagons, I was like, oh,
I mean I have to immediately approach the comment. Now.
They took several days to get back to me, like
an unusually long time. But then they got back to
(10:17):
me and they confirmed that their MQ nine predators are
supporting federal law enforcement in the Greater Los Angeles area,
including quote, Immigration and Customs enforcement with aerial support of
their operations.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Okay, so specifically ICE.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Also yes, because I asked, are you flying these for
yourselves or you flying them for another agency? This statement says, yes,
we are flying them for ICE. Interestingly, CBB says it
is not engaged in the surveillance of First Amendment activities.
End quote, which is, well, you're flying above a protest,
(10:53):
I hope, Like, are you just not gonna You're gonna
not point the camera at the protest?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, I'm sorry. Not read that sentence to me again.
I need to partse that again.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
This is the four quote. Additionally, they are providing officers
safety surveillance ren requested by officers air and marine operations.
Is not engaged in the surveillance First Amendment activities.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
First Amendment activities, I would certainly associate with the protest.
That is interesting, Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I would say it's a few different ways to interpret it.
The one would be that, oh, no, we were asked
by ICE to fly and provide situational awareness for the
protection of our employee. Is that sort of thing, and
maybe we incidentally filmed people protesting. That's one very charitable interpretation.
Another one would be that we don't view the protests's
(11:46):
First Amendment protected speech because they're all violent or whatever.
And again this is me extrapolating from the statement. But
when you marry that statement with drone footage like DHS
posted on Twitter, it says these protests that they are violent,
California needs to get this under control. And there's footage
(12:06):
from a drone. They don't say predator. By'm going to
presume it's the predator and it's specifically of the protest
like it shows Peel protesting. So I don't know. It's
very hard to square that statement with the fact that
a predator drone flew not just above downtown LA, but
also flew above Paramount. It flew above the two areas
where the protests were.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Let's talk real briefly if we could about this site
where you're able to actually track stuff. This data is
basically freely available to anybody who wants to look at it.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, you can go to adsb exchange dot com right now.
You can then move your cursor over Los Angeles and
then you can see the air traffic coming in and out.
But it is an amazing tool journalistically for researchers as well,
and this information is available to anybody. It's just a
(12:52):
barrier to entry for interpreting it. And again I'm absolutely
non expert. I'm just good enough to go that looks
like a drone to me people who are a lot
better than me.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
So at first, there's a flight pattern that looks like
it's a hexagon. This looks like Minneapolis twenty twenty. And
actually tipping back to twenty twenty, when you first realized
that there was a predator flying over Minneapolis, were you
surprised at all?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I was entirely shocked, and that was the first time
I had seen it. My co founder, Jason Kubler has
been covering drones is and years. He may have been
less surprised, but I think I almost had a benefit
of coming in sort of clear eyed about it because
they're flying predator drones for protests. That's insane to me,
as somebody way back when I was actually an intern
(13:38):
at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, and I
was one of my jobs was you need to enter
into a spreadsheet the drone strikes from Obama's drone war
inside Yemen and then subsequent administrations as well. So for
me journalistically, predator drones, reaper drones, they are a weapon
for war, they are a weapon for assassination, and now
(13:58):
they're flying essentially that same technology over protests inside the
United States. I was blown away by that. I confirmed
it with DHS at the time, and then I started
to go back and look through more flight data associated
with those drones and you could then go look through
historical data and figure out, oh, they're actually flying these
all over the country, sometimes over the one hundred mile
(14:20):
border limit above US cities. So this is actually happening
for a long time. It's just we don't necessarily understand
or see that. Customs and Border Protection published footage, so
that they said was drone footage, and it's very clear
you can see people running around and protesting and the
police response and all of that. So in this context,
(14:41):
they're being used as a situational awareness tool, is what
CPB told me. But I still think it's wild and
there's a big public interest in telling people there's like
a dot in the sky watching this, and you may
not realize that, and then we have a conversation about
whether we want that where we think it's proportionate. Some
people might be okay, but we can't have that conversation.
(15:02):
That's what digging free flight, DATCHA and finding out in
the first place.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So these situational awareness tools, that dot in the sky
might feel distant, but it is watching. That being said,
that's not the only way people are being watched. That's
after the break. If you go to a protest, whether
(15:32):
you're actually marching all day or you're just there for
a little bit to see what's going on, you're probably
aware that you're being watched more than normal. For some people,
maybe that's comforting. For others that feels like a risk
that would make them uncomfortable. Surveillance is no longer theoretical.
It's over your head, it's in your pocket, and especially
(15:53):
at a protest, it's all around you. So this brings
me to another set of questions. Which is I've been
here physically out documenting protests as best as I can
on one person, and as I'm out here reporting on
the protests, actually physically going to the protests. And I've
covered protests before where people are increasingly concerned about their security. Right,
(16:14):
especially in twenty twenty, people were already wearing masks because
of COVID, which you didn't see too much of before
that it would really sort of a select group of
people who would wear masks to a protest. You saw
that more than twenty twenty, and you certainly see that now.
But if there are drones in the sky, realistically, how
anonymous can one be at a protest?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
And I'll preface this with I'm not necessarily giving advice
to one side or activists, law enforcement, to any It's
more just like a cold analysis of the technology itself.
I wouldn't say it's impossible, but I would say it
has got exponentially harder, just based on the sort of
technology that's going to be at one of these protests. So,
(16:57):
as we've said, you'll have prejudice drones with very high
powered cameras. I don't know whether footage from that would
be used in a criminal prosecution or anything like that.
But regardless, it's there and it's collecting data on the
ground or even sometimes in the drone. Maybe you will
have technologies such as imsy catchers, which are basically these
(17:18):
fake cell phone towers which broadcast a signal they trick
phones into connecting to them, and that can give up
unique identifiers associated with your phone. That can be sort
of a springboard for law enforcement to then go get
more information about people. They can also in some cases
intercept text messages and phone calls as well, although with
(17:43):
upgrades to four G and five G like that may
not necessarily be the case. And then the big one
for me is that I don't think we've seen it
deployed by will be very interested if state or local
do use This is, of course, facial recognition technology, where
so many agencies across the United States by this tool
called CLEARVIEWAI that's built on a massive database of billions
(18:04):
of images of people's faces. They point a camera at
somebody on their phone. It's an app you installed on
the phone. A police officer does that, scans the face
and brings up their vembo or whatever it is, so
they can identify the person quite easily. Apparently it works
in some cases even when people are wearing masks, and
it's sort of to hammer on that just cold analysis
(18:25):
of the tech. I think that might also be why
a lot of ice officers and well primarily ice officers
masking their faces right, may be concerned about there, because
there's actually tools that anybody can use in the same
sort of way anybody can access flight data. There are
facial recognition tools that anybody can access and you can
(18:45):
put faces through there.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Officers also being concerned about being identified themselves using the
same sort of technology.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
But potentially, yeah, it's a dual use technology. It can
be used by anybody. Because the access to this tech
has filtered down. It's not just a tool for law
enforcements anymore. It's a tool for anybody with an Internet
connection and the smartphone.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
There's really two things that we can be thinking about
when we're thinking about ones. I suppose the right to
privacy even just walking around on the street, and this
is something that you cover a lot just in general.
Do you have the right to privacy when you go
and buy chicken at the store or buy apples at
the store. And increasingly I think people are paying a
bit more attention to this they maybe haven't been in
(19:25):
the past. But there's of course, when somebody hears there
are drones in the sky, I think immediately some people
might be immediately concerned, Hey, why is somebody spying on me?
Right immediately might think about that. There's also the fact
that there's so many cameras. There's so many cameras at
a protest, you basically can't avoid being on cameras somewhere.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
While I was looking at the flight data over the weekend,
I was pairing it with this sort of compilation of
live streams on tiktoks. Some YouTube channel had very handily
taken all of these people who are on TikTok or
over platforms and put it all on one screen. So
I could watch like the LA protests from all of
these different angles at once, and I say, wow, this
(20:09):
is pretty useful actually, and it would switch audio of them.
But like I was only able to do that because
ordinary people are filming at live streaming.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
If you're able to watch it and other people are
able to watch it, of course law enforcement is able
to watch this.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Yeah, and they will then be able to archive that
footage potentially, and if they feel the need to for
whatever reason. You can also do facial recognition tech after
the fact. It's not just a live thing. You can
take a video that was uploaded or streamed to TikTok
or whatever and then run the technology on that after
the fact. This is why Laura enforcement are so attracted
(20:45):
to this and why clear View and other products have
been so popular across the US is that you can
take something as singular as someone's face and then use
that as a springboard for a criminal investigation.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I think one of the really fascinating things about protests
right now, if I can say that, is that, on
the one hand, you do have people, I think rightfully so,
who are concerned about surveillance of any type. Right there's
actual official, purposeful surveillance, say by a drone, and there
would be law enforce on watching somebody's TikTok of them.
(21:19):
On the flip side, there is a desire for documentation.
We've seen time and time again how difficult is it
to get police to release body cam footage and how
many things would have gone unreported, George Floyd's murder being
one of them if somebody were not there to document it.
And I've seen and filmed plenty of things that probably
a lot of people would not have known about had
(21:40):
somebody not been there with a camera. Yeah, and there's
this kind of the dual concerns. I suppose the desire
for really everybody should be able to film something, the
public should know about things. But then everybody is filming
things and everyone, if we allow for the police to
be part of the public, can see it also.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, ubiquitous surveillance is absolutely a double edged sword. With
everything you've said, and I agree with all of it,
I guess I would lean towards Ultimately, I think it's
probably a good thing that more people are able to
film more and more events over time. The idea that
anybody can see some sort of injustice happening, police brutality
(22:23):
or whatever and go and film it, I think, on
average hands out to be a good and powerful thing.
And I think you can see that where in some
of the ice raids or the ice activity you can
overhear or people have reported that they will say, go
for the one with the camera. This is a very
powerful tool for the public and for everybody. Just people
(22:46):
may want to be careful about what they film, just
in the same way I'm careful about. I'm not going
to go on Facebook and upload a bunch of photos
of myself and tag where they all were or something
like that, just from a purely personal privacy perspective as well.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
So what are you going to be watching for. I
don't see these protests stopping. I don't see the momentum
go anywhere. What are you looking for?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, I'm going to keep looking at flight data if necessary,
dive into atc audio. I'll be looking above what happens.
If protests move to another city, and I believe some
are planned, I'll probably look at those as well. And
it's not that, oh my god, surveillance planes are always bad.
It's no. They can have very legitimate use cases. But
(23:30):
I think journalistically it's worth looking and analyzing and understanding, Okay,
is it proportionate to be flying a Predator drone above
this area of a protest or whatever the aircraft turns
out to be. And again, we can only have that
conversation if people are looking at the data and figuring
out what's going on. Yeah, in the same way, we
(23:51):
can only figure out what's going on with people like
yourselves when you're actually on the ground filming, talking to protests,
talking to law enforcement, and figuring out what's going on there.
It's the same thing.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
You said you were surprised when you saw this in
twenty twenty. You were surprised when you saw a drone
or reprodrone specifically or Minneapolis. You said you're less surprised
now in LA. Would it be reasonable to assume that
if there's a large protest, there might be one of
these things in the sky in the future here in
(24:22):
the United States?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Yeah, I think it's maybe not a given. Customs and
Border Protection only has a fleet of I think ten drones.
I think they only have five land mission presents drones.
They can't be everywhere all at once, obviously, And I
guess what made it almost obvious that we're going to
fly a drone here is that there is a connection
and a nexus of course to DHS and ICE. These
(24:43):
are anti ice protests. Customs and Border Protection is also
a part of DHS. It would make absolute sense that
one arm of DHS is going to support the mission
of another one. So will we see them in other protests? Broadly, yes,
will we see these drones and other anti ice protests.
I think it's pretty likely, Yeah, depending on the size
(25:06):
and the response.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Thank you so much for making time for this. Thank
you so much for real.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yeah, absolutely, there.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Is a lot more we could say about the protests
that are happening right now, but again, this episode isn't
really about these protests in particular. But I do want
to mention one thing in the show notes, We've put
a link to a guide on how you can be
safe for the protest. This applies to you whether you're
a journalist, whether you're a protest to yourself, or just
someone who doesn't trust the news and you want to
(25:36):
turn off the TV, get off your phone and just
see for yourself what's happening outside. Again, that's in the
show notes. That's from Wired dot com and I've read
through it and I definitely recommend it for everyone. Thanks
(26:05):
once again so much for listening to kill Switch. Let
us know what you think, and if there's something else
you'd like us to cover, let us know. You can
hit us up at kill Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC,
or you can hit me up personally at dex digi
that's d e x d I g I on Instagram
or on Blue Sky if that's your thing, and while
you're at it on Apple podcast or Spotify, before you
(26:26):
close that app, leave us a review. It helps other
people find the show, which in turn helps us keep
doing our thing. Kill Switch is hosted by Me Dexter Thomas.
It's produced by Sena Ozaki, Darluk Potts, and Kate Osbourne.
Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch and
Kyle also mixed the show. From Kaleidoscope, Our executive producers
(26:47):
are oz Lashin, Bungesh Hajigadur and Kate Osbourne. From iHeart,
our executive producers are Katrina Norvil and Nikki Etur
Okay, so this episode is partially about protests, but not
necessarily a specific one. It's not really about Trump's military
parade on Saturday, or the No King's protest and response
to that. It's not about the ice raids or the
protests that have been going on in response to that
for almost two weeks at this point. I'm sure you've
seen all that online. But just to start us off,
(00:31):
i live in Los Angeles where some of the biggest
protests have been happening, and I've been out every day
with my camera covering the protests. Most of the time,
it's pretty calm and peaceful. Despite that, law enforcement presence
has been massive, and it's not just the LAPD. The
National Guard is here and so are the Marines. Officials
(00:53):
estimated that this deployment would cost one hundred and thirty
four million dollars. It does get hectic. I've seen tear
gas canisters launched a protesters' heads. I've seen police horses
nearly trample multiple people, and an unhoused person who didn't
(01:16):
seem to understand what was even going on being beaten
up with a baton. And that was in the space
of half an hour on Saturday. Afternoon. This stuff is
usually aimed at protesters, but journalists are not exempt from
being pushed, having tear gas thrown at him, or even
being shot at with one of those less lethal rounds.
I can confirm that because I've been hit by one
(01:36):
of those rounds twice. But again, this episode isn't about
me or journalists in general. It's also not even really
about the protesters. It's about the tools that are being
used to watch all of them, and about surveillance and
protests in general, and a trend that we're starting to
see take shape. If you're listening to this in June
(01:58):
of twenty twenty five, the things you're about to hear
in this episode might sound concerning to you. If you're
listening after that, all this might just sound kind of quaint.
But let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I'm time.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is kill Switch. I'm
Dexter Thomas. Goodbye. On Tuesday, June tenth, Joseph Cox over
at four or four Media noticed something weird going on
in the flight data over LA.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
When the protests started over the weekend. I did what
I often do when there's a protest or some sort
of large event is I go and check flight data
to adsb exchange dot com. It's a website where volunteers
they run basically little sensors that can detect flight traffic.
(03:12):
The website then makes this freely available. But what I
usually do is I go and I start seeing what
aircraft are in the sky above this protest or this event.
And in this case, the skies were busy. There was
a lot going on up there.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Zerre one traffic couble clock one droll ma ab direction,
another Troy Q nine to two drum seven three traffic
cover clock eight miles the direction, another Troy nine two
three drunk.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
I'm sure people on the ground would have noticed this
as well, But there were aircraft up there that you
would have heard, would have seen, and then I think
many others do you may not have even noticed as well.
So there are sort of two suspicious flight paths. The
first time, I was doing circles and I followed where
it took off, and it took off and eventually landed
(04:02):
from March Air Reserve Base, which is to the east
of LA. We don't fully actually know what that flight is.
I think it's a larger DHS plane. I haven't fully
verified that. But the other one which we have verified
is that there were these other really interesting flight patterns
above downtown LA and Paramount, but they were in this
(04:22):
very distinctive hexagonal pattern and it was a much higher altitude.
It was like over ten thousand feet something like that.
There's something in the sky at around ten thousand feet
flying these hexagonal patterns. Doesn't have a call sign.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
What is a call sign? Why would you expect a
call sign from an aircraft?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I'll try my best because I'm definitely on an aviation expert, okay,
but I am incredibly interested in it journalistically. So a
col sign is basically unique code and aircraft is going
to broadcast, be assigned so it can identify itself of
two other planes and to air traffic control. So to
(05:03):
be able to effectively organize air traffic, you need to
know which plane is which. You'll have Delta flight seven
oh two or whatever, and obviously that's going to be
a Delta one the DHS call sign or one that
they often uses Troy Troo y. So this is how
planes identify themselves and how ATC can manage them. If
you don't have a call sign, that's interesting because it's
(05:27):
obviously raised the question of why don't you want this
plane to be identified? And it does make it harder
to figure out what agency is behind this craft. Not impossible, yeah,
but that information is out there and you cross reference it.
You'll look up FAA registration records, and that's usually how
you'll go, oh, that's registered to DHS. Oh that's registered
(05:49):
to California Highway Patrol or something like that.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, it's kind of like driving that a license plate,
which yeah, I suppose some agencies can do, yeah in
the sky, driving with a licensed plane in the sky,
that would raise them questions From.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Me, I'm immediately interested because I've seen those hexagans before,
and that was when DHS flew predator drones above Minneapolis
during the BLM protests in twenty twenty. So that is
immediately really interesting. It's very distinctive, like you don't normally
see those patterns on flight data.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Joseph started connecting the dats and he wrote an article
on four or four media saying that it looked like
two very similar drones were flying over the anti ice
protests in LA and that these might belong to DHS,
the Department of Homeland Security fly in a hexagon.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah. So again this is where the limit of my
expertise shows itself. I can't necessarily say they're flying exactly
in a hexagon, or is that how the data is
being interpreted by ADBs exchange or something like that. But
it appears as a hexagon, and that is an immediate
red flag of that might be a predator drone.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
In case that phrase predator drone sounds familiar to you,
we're talking generally here about a series of unmanned aircraft
developed by General Atomics, the MQ one, the Predator, and
the MQ nine the Reaper. These have been used for surveillance,
including along the border between the US and Mexico, but
they've also been used for so called targeted strikes and
(07:17):
launching air to ground missiles to kill people in places
like Afghanistan and Iraq. Most people wouldn't expect that one
of these drones were flying over a major American city.
You think of predator drones, you think of this as, oh,
this is something used in wartime, this is use for war.
Just a backup, what usually would you associate a predator with?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I would usually associate a predator just broadly speaking, flying
over a country like Afghanistan during the US's war on terror,
I would associate it with maybe a convoy of cars
is driving from one location to another, and intelligence of
(07:58):
some veracity set that there is some sort of insurgent
or some sort of al kaeda isis Taliban whoever leader
inside this vehicle. We're now going to fire the health
fire missile and we're going to destroy that vehicle. That
would be the standard way of thinking about it. And
I think, of course, with the US's drone wars, it
has targeted weddings as well. Is done so called double
(08:21):
tap processes, where you fire a drone strike, it kills people,
people then go to help you, then fire a second
missile because you want to get those as well. These
are weapons of assassination and weapons of war, and now
those are flying above US soil. To be clear, I'm
pretty sure that DHS ones are not armed, so I
want to be very clear about that. But they are
(08:42):
still incredibly powerful surveillance apparatus. They have very high powers
cameras on them. They can potentially have very sophisticated electronic
surveillance technology as well. We don't know whether that's being
used above these protests, but at.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
This point Joseph wasn't one hundred percent sure who these
aircraft belonged to. And this is where a community of
people who study this stuff come in. An aviation enthusiast
named aero Scout did some digging and finally helped connect
that final dat.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I tried to see where it took off. I can't
figure it out. Maybe it had this transponder off or
whatever before that. Eventually I see it flies to the
US Mexican border, which is obviously where US Customs and
Border Protection hangs out and stores some of their drones.
So they were very smart and they followed the flight
(09:35):
path of what looked like the drone. They found the
relevant atc Audio, and in that haystack they found a
couple of needles, including the mention of Troy, which is
the DHS call sign. Even though this drone is not
broadcasting a call sign, it's mentioned there. And then crucially,
some of the audio says a Q nine, which is
shorthand for the MQ nine, which is the official name
(09:56):
for a Predator or a reaper drone. So cross referencing
it was confirmed. I actually emailed Customs and Border protection. First,
when I first saw the hexagons, I was like, oh,
I mean I have to immediately approach the comment. Now.
They took several days to get back to me, like
an unusually long time. But then they got back to
(10:17):
me and they confirmed that their MQ nine predators are
supporting federal law enforcement in the Greater Los Angeles area,
including quote, Immigration and Customs enforcement with aerial support of
their operations.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Okay, so specifically ICE.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Also yes, because I asked, are you flying these for
yourselves or you flying them for another agency? This statement says, yes,
we are flying them for ICE. Interestingly, CBB says it
is not engaged in the surveillance of First Amendment activities.
End quote, which is, well, you're flying above a protest,
(10:53):
I hope, Like, are you just not gonna You're gonna
not point the camera at the protest?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, I'm sorry. Not read that sentence to me again.
I need to partse that again.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
This is the four quote. Additionally, they are providing officers
safety surveillance ren requested by officers air and marine operations.
Is not engaged in the surveillance First Amendment activities.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
First Amendment activities, I would certainly associate with the protest.
That is interesting, Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I would say it's a few different ways to interpret it.
The one would be that, oh, no, we were asked
by ICE to fly and provide situational awareness for the
protection of our employee. Is that sort of thing, and
maybe we incidentally filmed people protesting. That's one very charitable interpretation.
Another one would be that we don't view the protests's
(11:46):
First Amendment protected speech because they're all violent or whatever.
And again this is me extrapolating from the statement. But
when you marry that statement with drone footage like DHS
posted on Twitter, it says these protests that they are violent,
California needs to get this under control. And there's footage
(12:06):
from a drone. They don't say predator. By'm going to
presume it's the predator and it's specifically of the protest
like it shows Peel protesting. So I don't know. It's
very hard to square that statement with the fact that
a predator drone flew not just above downtown LA, but
also flew above Paramount. It flew above the two areas
where the protests were.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Let's talk real briefly if we could about this site
where you're able to actually track stuff. This data is
basically freely available to anybody who wants to look at it.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, you can go to adsb exchange dot com right now.
You can then move your cursor over Los Angeles and
then you can see the air traffic coming in and out.
But it is an amazing tool journalistically for researchers as well,
and this information is available to anybody. It's just a
(12:52):
barrier to entry for interpreting it. And again I'm absolutely
non expert. I'm just good enough to go that looks
like a drone to me people who are a lot
better than me.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
So at first, there's a flight pattern that looks like
it's a hexagon. This looks like Minneapolis twenty twenty. And
actually tipping back to twenty twenty, when you first realized
that there was a predator flying over Minneapolis, were you
surprised at all?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I was entirely shocked, and that was the first time
I had seen it. My co founder, Jason Kubler has
been covering drones is and years. He may have been
less surprised, but I think I almost had a benefit
of coming in sort of clear eyed about it because
they're flying predator drones for protests. That's insane to me,
as somebody way back when I was actually an intern
(13:38):
at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, and I
was one of my jobs was you need to enter
into a spreadsheet the drone strikes from Obama's drone war
inside Yemen and then subsequent administrations as well. So for
me journalistically, predator drones, reaper drones, they are a weapon
for war, they are a weapon for assassination, and now
(13:58):
they're flying essentially that same technology over protests inside the
United States. I was blown away by that. I confirmed
it with DHS at the time, and then I started
to go back and look through more flight data associated
with those drones and you could then go look through
historical data and figure out, oh, they're actually flying these
all over the country, sometimes over the one hundred mile
(14:20):
border limit above US cities. So this is actually happening
for a long time. It's just we don't necessarily understand
or see that. Customs and Border Protection published footage, so
that they said was drone footage, and it's very clear
you can see people running around and protesting and the
police response and all of that. So in this context,
(14:41):
they're being used as a situational awareness tool, is what
CPB told me. But I still think it's wild and
there's a big public interest in telling people there's like
a dot in the sky watching this, and you may
not realize that, and then we have a conversation about
whether we want that where we think it's proportionate. Some
people might be okay, but we can't have that conversation.
(15:02):
That's what digging free flight, DATCHA and finding out in
the first place.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So these situational awareness tools, that dot in the sky
might feel distant, but it is watching. That being said,
that's not the only way people are being watched. That's
after the break. If you go to a protest, whether
(15:32):
you're actually marching all day or you're just there for
a little bit to see what's going on, you're probably
aware that you're being watched more than normal. For some people,
maybe that's comforting. For others that feels like a risk
that would make them uncomfortable. Surveillance is no longer theoretical.
It's over your head, it's in your pocket, and especially
(15:53):
at a protest, it's all around you. So this brings
me to another set of questions. Which is I've been
here physically out documenting protests as best as I can
on one person, and as I'm out here reporting on
the protests, actually physically going to the protests. And I've
covered protests before where people are increasingly concerned about their security. Right,
(16:14):
especially in twenty twenty, people were already wearing masks because
of COVID, which you didn't see too much of before
that it would really sort of a select group of
people who would wear masks to a protest. You saw
that more than twenty twenty, and you certainly see that now.
But if there are drones in the sky, realistically, how
anonymous can one be at a protest?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
And I'll preface this with I'm not necessarily giving advice
to one side or activists, law enforcement, to any It's
more just like a cold analysis of the technology itself.
I wouldn't say it's impossible, but I would say it
has got exponentially harder, just based on the sort of
technology that's going to be at one of these protests. So,
(16:57):
as we've said, you'll have prejudice drones with very high
powered cameras. I don't know whether footage from that would
be used in a criminal prosecution or anything like that.
But regardless, it's there and it's collecting data on the
ground or even sometimes in the drone. Maybe you will
have technologies such as imsy catchers, which are basically these
(17:18):
fake cell phone towers which broadcast a signal they trick
phones into connecting to them, and that can give up
unique identifiers associated with your phone. That can be sort
of a springboard for law enforcement to then go get
more information about people. They can also in some cases
intercept text messages and phone calls as well, although with
(17:43):
upgrades to four G and five G like that may
not necessarily be the case. And then the big one
for me is that I don't think we've seen it
deployed by will be very interested if state or local
do use This is, of course, facial recognition technology, where
so many agencies across the United States by this tool
called CLEARVIEWAI that's built on a massive database of billions
(18:04):
of images of people's faces. They point a camera at
somebody on their phone. It's an app you installed on
the phone. A police officer does that, scans the face
and brings up their vembo or whatever it is, so
they can identify the person quite easily. Apparently it works
in some cases even when people are wearing masks, and
it's sort of to hammer on that just cold analysis
(18:25):
of the tech. I think that might also be why
a lot of ice officers and well primarily ice officers
masking their faces right, may be concerned about there, because
there's actually tools that anybody can use in the same
sort of way anybody can access flight data. There are
facial recognition tools that anybody can access and you can
(18:45):
put faces through there.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Officers also being concerned about being identified themselves using the
same sort of technology.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
But potentially, yeah, it's a dual use technology. It can
be used by anybody. Because the access to this tech
has filtered down. It's not just a tool for law
enforcements anymore. It's a tool for anybody with an Internet
connection and the smartphone.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
There's really two things that we can be thinking about
when we're thinking about ones. I suppose the right to
privacy even just walking around on the street, and this
is something that you cover a lot just in general.
Do you have the right to privacy when you go
and buy chicken at the store or buy apples at
the store. And increasingly I think people are paying a
bit more attention to this they maybe haven't been in
(19:25):
the past. But there's of course, when somebody hears there
are drones in the sky, I think immediately some people
might be immediately concerned, Hey, why is somebody spying on me?
Right immediately might think about that. There's also the fact
that there's so many cameras. There's so many cameras at
a protest, you basically can't avoid being on cameras somewhere.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
While I was looking at the flight data over the weekend,
I was pairing it with this sort of compilation of
live streams on tiktoks. Some YouTube channel had very handily
taken all of these people who are on TikTok or
over platforms and put it all on one screen. So
I could watch like the LA protests from all of
these different angles at once, and I say, wow, this
(20:09):
is pretty useful actually, and it would switch audio of them.
But like I was only able to do that because
ordinary people are filming at live streaming.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
If you're able to watch it and other people are
able to watch it, of course law enforcement is able
to watch this.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Yeah, and they will then be able to archive that
footage potentially, and if they feel the need to for
whatever reason. You can also do facial recognition tech after
the fact. It's not just a live thing. You can
take a video that was uploaded or streamed to TikTok
or whatever and then run the technology on that after
the fact. This is why Laura enforcement are so attracted
(20:45):
to this and why clear View and other products have
been so popular across the US is that you can
take something as singular as someone's face and then use
that as a springboard for a criminal investigation.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I think one of the really fascinating things about protests
right now, if I can say that, is that, on
the one hand, you do have people, I think rightfully so,
who are concerned about surveillance of any type. Right there's
actual official, purposeful surveillance, say by a drone, and there
would be law enforce on watching somebody's TikTok of them.
(21:19):
On the flip side, there is a desire for documentation.
We've seen time and time again how difficult is it
to get police to release body cam footage and how
many things would have gone unreported, George Floyd's murder being
one of them if somebody were not there to document it.
And I've seen and filmed plenty of things that probably
a lot of people would not have known about had
(21:40):
somebody not been there with a camera. Yeah, and there's
this kind of the dual concerns. I suppose the desire
for really everybody should be able to film something, the
public should know about things. But then everybody is filming
things and everyone, if we allow for the police to
be part of the public, can see it also.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, ubiquitous surveillance is absolutely a double edged sword. With
everything you've said, and I agree with all of it,
I guess I would lean towards Ultimately, I think it's
probably a good thing that more people are able to
film more and more events over time. The idea that
anybody can see some sort of injustice happening, police brutality
(22:23):
or whatever and go and film it, I think, on
average hands out to be a good and powerful thing.
And I think you can see that where in some
of the ice raids or the ice activity you can
overhear or people have reported that they will say, go
for the one with the camera. This is a very
powerful tool for the public and for everybody. Just people
(22:46):
may want to be careful about what they film, just
in the same way I'm careful about. I'm not going
to go on Facebook and upload a bunch of photos
of myself and tag where they all were or something
like that, just from a purely personal privacy perspective as well.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
So what are you going to be watching for. I
don't see these protests stopping. I don't see the momentum
go anywhere. What are you looking for?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, I'm going to keep looking at flight data if necessary,
dive into atc audio. I'll be looking above what happens.
If protests move to another city, and I believe some
are planned, I'll probably look at those as well. And
it's not that, oh my god, surveillance planes are always bad.
It's no. They can have very legitimate use cases. But
(23:30):
I think journalistically it's worth looking and analyzing and understanding, Okay,
is it proportionate to be flying a Predator drone above
this area of a protest or whatever the aircraft turns
out to be. And again, we can only have that
conversation if people are looking at the data and figuring
out what's going on. Yeah, in the same way, we
(23:51):
can only figure out what's going on with people like
yourselves when you're actually on the ground filming, talking to protests,
talking to law enforcement, and figuring out what's going on there.
It's the same thing.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
You said you were surprised when you saw this in
twenty twenty. You were surprised when you saw a drone
or reprodrone specifically or Minneapolis. You said you're less surprised
now in LA. Would it be reasonable to assume that
if there's a large protest, there might be one of
these things in the sky in the future here in
(24:22):
the United States?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Yeah, I think it's maybe not a given. Customs and
Border Protection only has a fleet of I think ten drones.
I think they only have five land mission presents drones.
They can't be everywhere all at once, obviously, And I
guess what made it almost obvious that we're going to
fly a drone here is that there is a connection
and a nexus of course to DHS and ICE. These
(24:43):
are anti ice protests. Customs and Border Protection is also
a part of DHS. It would make absolute sense that
one arm of DHS is going to support the mission
of another one. So will we see them in other protests? Broadly, yes,
will we see these drones and other anti ice protests.
I think it's pretty likely, Yeah, depending on the size
(25:06):
and the response.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Thank you so much for making time for this. Thank
you so much for real.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yeah, absolutely, there.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Is a lot more we could say about the protests
that are happening right now, but again, this episode isn't
really about these protests in particular. But I do want
to mention one thing in the show notes, We've put
a link to a guide on how you can be
safe for the protest. This applies to you whether you're
a journalist, whether you're a protest to yourself, or just
someone who doesn't trust the news and you want to
(25:36):
turn off the TV, get off your phone and just
see for yourself what's happening outside. Again, that's in the
show notes. That's from Wired dot com and I've read
through it and I definitely recommend it for everyone. Thanks
(26:05):
once again so much for listening to kill Switch. Let
us know what you think, and if there's something else
you'd like us to cover, let us know. You can
hit us up at kill Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC,
or you can hit me up personally at dex digi
that's d e x d I g I on Instagram
or on Blue Sky if that's your thing, and while
you're at it on Apple podcast or Spotify, before you
(26:26):
close that app, leave us a review. It helps other
people find the show, which in turn helps us keep
doing our thing. Kill Switch is hosted by Me Dexter Thomas.
It's produced by Sena Ozaki, Darluk Potts, and Kate Osbourne.
Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch and
Kyle also mixed the show. From Kaleidoscope, Our executive producers
(26:47):
are oz Lashin, Bungesh Hajigadur and Kate Osbourne. From iHeart,
our executive producers are Katrina Norvil and Nikki Etur
kill switch News
Hosts And Creators
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