I've been furloughed from Disney Imagineering R&D for 4 months without pay, and now my laptop broke, so I've decided to take donations to support my work on the Advisory Circular bots and other projects that help you figure out what's flying overhead. skycircl.es/donate/
The Advisory Circular bots tweet in real-time whenever they see aircraft circling (*doing something* vs *going somewhere*). They detect a lot of police helicopters, but sometimes they get FBI front companies or military spy planes surveilling protests.
The code for the Advisory Circular bots is open source. I currently run 14 bots, and there are at least two other bots run by other people. You can find the complete list here: twitter.com/i/lists/126372…
Speaking of FBI front companies, I also uncovered a massive, secret, FBI aerial surveillance program. That was a _weird_ summer. Congress was pretty interested in the more than 100 planes registered to more than a dozen front companies. docs.google.com/presentation/d…
I've made improvements to the adsbexchange.com tracking map—ADS-B Exchange is the only completely uncensored flight tracking site. I added features to the map that shows the network of amateurs that contribute data to its network, and I'm working on KML/GeoJSON export.
I made a Siri shortcut that lets you say "Siri, what's overhead", and she tells you what the nearest (uncensored) aircraft is, wherever you are, and who it's registered to. A friend says it's like having a superpower.
