Planespotting (Trevor Paglen & A. C. Thompson)

Created by : Francis Goodwin View profile

Nerds with binoculars bust the CIA's torture taxis

by Trevor Paglen & A. C. Thompson -- Village Voice

Oct. 15, 2006 -- We'll call him "Ray." He's asked that we not reveal his real name; he's simply not interested in having his identity known. We're driving just behind his SUV, and, after several hours on the road, we've finally come to a stop on a muddy dirt track just northeast of Sacramento in California's Central Valley, near the towns of Marysville and Yuba City. This is the California hinterlands. Ray has brought us here because nearby is a large chunk of restricted airspace, a slice of sky cordoned off for the exclusive use of Beale Air Force Base.

Ray is a planespotter -- a person obsessed with almost everything having to do with aviation. As a hobby, Ray tracks airplanes, logs their serial numbers and movements, analyzes their radio systems, and keeps detailed records of the frequencies and designs that their systems use. He tries to understand how aviation systems work, how planes communicate with the ground controllers and with each other, and how the military and the Federal Aviation Administration manage various kinds of airspace. On this mild spring day, Ray's testing a new piece of gear: a Kinetic Avionics SBS-1, a "virtual radar" system. Attached to his laptop with a USB cable, the system allows him to watch air traffic within a forty- or fifty-mile radius and to log call signs and basic information about the planes.

Because Ray, who lives in the suburbs outside San Francisco, says that "tracking cargo and commercial aircraft near Oakland or San Francisco is way too easy," our goal for the day is to track something a little more challenging: U-2 spy planes.

From our vantage point, we can see two of the infamous black spy planes circling lazily in the distance like giant condors. Ray fiddles with the gaggle of cables, antennae, rack-mounted radios, and the flashing LEDs of the electronic devices pouring out the hatchback of his SUV. Speakers sputter with the sound of military pilots periodically checking in with the control towers: "Dragon 73 on approach...."