Pentagon admits it has deployed military spy drones over the U.S
It's not just drones. Law Enforcement often flies surveillance flights, circling over locations of interest. These planes often have thermal/visual imaging video cameras and, according to some stories, may also be carrying other tracking or signal interception hardware (think Stingray). HN user jjwiseman [0] scooped most of the press about this.<p>You can locate such "interesting" flights right now, using your browser. Just open up ADSB Exchange Virtual Radar [1], which doesn't filter out flights with certain squawk codes like other online virtual radar sites do. If you do, select  "Menu" from the map (with the gear icon), then "Options". Select the "Filter" tab, select to "Enable filters", select "Interesting" from the dropdown listbox, and select "Add Filter". Now you can zoom out over the country, and see all the "interesting" flights using the table on the left. Note any flights with the "LE" or "FBI" or "DHS" user tag.<p>Right now, as I write this, an FBI-owned aircraft is circling over the Norwood/Bronx area of NYC [2], tail number N912EX, registered to OBR Leasing (one of the "shells" that the US Gov't uses for registering its law enforcement aircraft), as mentioned in an AP story last summer [3]<p>[0]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jjwiseman" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jjwiseman</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://www.adsbexchange.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.adsbexchange.com</a>, select "Currently Tracking [number] Aircraft on upper-right"<p>[2]: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/EUYqx98.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/EUYqx98.png</a><p>[3]: <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4b3f220e33b64123a3909c60845da045/fbi-behind-mysterious-surveillance-aircraft-over-us-cities" rel="nofollow">http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4b3f220e33b64123a3909c60845da...</a><p>Edit: Another one, flying around NW Los Angeles, right now: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/PwRpqRe.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/PwRpqRe.png</a><p>Edit2: Any aircraft squawking transponder beacon codes between 4401-4433 are engaged in law enforcement operations. More on the various squawk codes reserved by US Gov't operations can be found here (pdf link): <a href="http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FINAL_Order_7110_66E_NBCAP.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FINAL_Order_7...</a>