DEF CON 30 - Andrew Logan - Tracking Military Ghost Helicopters over Washington DC

DEFCONConference
DEFCONConference
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Published 2022-10-20
There's a running joke around Washington D.C. that the "State Bird" is the helicopter. Yet 96% of helicopter noise complaints from 2018-2021 went unattributed: D.C. Residents can not tell a news helicopter from a black hawk. Flight tracking sites remove flights as a paid service to aircraft owners and government agencies; even in the best case these sites do not receive tracking information from most military helicopters due to a Code of Federal Regulations exemption for "sensitive government mission for national defense, homeland security, intelligence or law enforcement." This makes an enormous amount of helicopter flights untraceable even for the FAA and leaves residents in the dark.

What if we could help residents identify helicopters? What if we could crowd source helicopter tracking? What if we could collect images to identify helicopters using computer vision? What if we could make aircraft radio as accessible as reading a map? What if we could make spotting helicopters a game that appeals to the competitive spirit of Washingtonians? And what if we could do all of this... on Twitter?
All Comments (21)
  • @zeppelins4ever
    He really just made Pokemon GO for government aircrafts. That is glorious! Fantastic talk!
  • @jfwfreo
    Its very cool to document all these flights over Washington DC. I read a story a while back about some guys who wanted to drive real fast who were using ADS-B and other detection to track law enforcement aircraft so they could identify if there was anything in the area that might be doing speed measurement...
  • @alexfisher4009
    my late great aunt lived in a no fly zone in long island. she used to sit with binoculars and write down the Id numbers and report them weekly. her arch enemy was Matt Laur. she died before he was canceled but im sure she would have popped a bottle
  • @davefoster7770
    In terms of ID'ing the helicopters, they also make quite distinctive noise. I live in a minimal helicopter area but I can tell you what's overhead by the noise. Cops have a Bell. Coast guard have a Huey looking thing {whap whap whap). Air Ambulance is a buzzy EC135. The fire dept. have a weird twin contra rotating twin rotor thing. "Shazam" the helicopters for ID too.
  • @secretsauceskateboarding4337
    People are saying it's scary and dangerous how this guy's program is tracking military flights. Meanwhile, the fed gov tracks, listens to, and views you through your phone, computer, city cameras, and many other ways. I think I know which one is more dangerous.
  • @TheRealBanana
    Very cool talk! I'm constantly entertained with a couple SDRs, one capturing ADSB and the other listening to ATC. One thing I would love to see applied elsewhere is Multilateration. Currently some aircraft that emit ADSB data do not actually emit GPS coordinates. By having a large network of time-synchronized receivers you can use time-difference of arrival to locate a signal source. This multilateration technique could be applied to other government vehicles such as police cars. These vehicles do not emit publicly accessible location data but they DO emit signals in the UHF range (700-800MHz). With a network of receivers you could accurately track the movements of police/government vehicles without needing to decrypt their comms at all.
  • @chartphred1
    Cool talk, and nice podium dance as well 😂
  • @marianaldenhoevel7240
    What a cool open-source-intelligence-fusion project. If that is a word. Nosy question: Is listening in to ATC covered by the journalist privilege in the USA? Where I come from you need to be actively participating in air traffic to legally receive ATC communications. So it is limited to pilots, controllers, ground crew etc. while on active duty only. I do not, however, know of any case where a violation of this law has been prosecuted. Transmitting requires training, a personal license and certified equipment.
  • @nivonis393
    Oof. I've lived next to forthood for most of my life. I straight up don't hear helicopters unless they are very close ontop of me. Oblivious I swear. This impressive
  • @steingat
    If you had 3 SDR's in a triangle, I wounder if you could pinpoint the source of ATC transmissions based on signal strengh
  • @ericpaulgoldie
    people in 200 countries looking at how you can do all this an not be in jail, America is number one
  • @loudounfisher9135
    All these flights are still using transponders, just not in mode-S. Newflash, there are other modes! Look up mode 3.
  • @fmobus
    I've heard Ukrainians have been doing some sort of crowdsourcing wrt Russian planes. I wonder how much of that could be automated