Is That Really A Government Spy Plane Over My Neighborhood?

My prior video on surveillance planes got a lot of comments, so I figured I should do a follow-up! In this one I checked out a couple electronic gadgets that can help identify surveillance aircraft.

If you're interested in the tech I used in this video, you can find the HackRF One here: https://amzn.to/3Ghd7v0

The hackable Orbic Hotspot is here: https://amzn.to/3I8J09x
(Sometimes there are cheaper ones on eBay)

And the Rayhunter firmware for the Orbic is here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/meet-rayhunter-new-open-source-tool-eff-detect-cellular-spying

Many of the comments from the last video were: "Aren't these planes just Google Earth / LIDAR / Aerial Photography / training flights / holding patterns?"

Flight paths for aerial mapping usually look like this:
https://www.aerialsurvey.com/news/day-in-the-life-of-a-survey-pilot

While training flights often look like this:
https://yeokhengmeng.com/2019/03/aviation-faq-from-my-friends/images/ppl-training-airspace-in-overlay.jpg

Holding patterns look like this: https://www.cnn.com/travel/airplane-holding-patterns-explainer

And surveillance flights usually look like this (note the near perfect circles, repeated for long periods of time):
https://flowingdata.com/2016/04/08/us-surveillance-flight-paths-for-the-fbi-and-homeland-security/

https://oregonaviationwatch.org/articles/OAW-PDXPoliceSurveillance.php

Here are a few more news articles on this practice:

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/whats-spooky-about-fbis-fleet-spy-planes

https://www.foxnews.com/video/4270402545001

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/fbis-low-flying-high-tech-surveillance

https://www.fox9.com/news/fbi-conducting-spy-flights-over-cities-including-minneapolis

https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/02/politics/fbi-airplane-surveillance

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/fbi-releases-secret-spy-plane-footage-freddie-gray

Commenters also asked why the government uses manned aircraft instead of drones for things like this. I don't know the exact answer, but they do use both:

https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-fbi-using-drones-2006-20130926-story.html

You can buy some of these spy planes as government surplus! One is currently registered to the same DEA shell company as the one from my last video!
https://gsaauctions.gov/auctions/preview/331769
https://gsaauctions.gov/auctions/preview/331120


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