Steve Orr

@SOrr1

Improbable as it may sound, Rochester and little Canandaigua are among hot spots featured in a fascinating investigative report posted Wednesday by BuzzFeed that analyzes and displays the flight paths of surveillance aircraft.

The piloted aircraft were operated by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. BuzzFeed obtained registration numbers of about 200 such aircraft and obtained flight-path data from Flightradar24*, one of several companies that collect and archive the data.

BuzzFeed's data covers a four-month period ending in December. The small craft, which apparently included both fixed-wing planes and helicopters, are outfitted with high-resolution video or cellphone sniffing equipment and are used in targeted investigations of criminals and potential terrorists, according to the "Spies in the Skies" report by Peter Aldhous and Charles Seife. The aircraft support federal investigations and, at times, those of state or local law enforcement agencies.

The map of the flight paths of these aircraft shows predictable clusters of activity over major population centers such as New York City; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; and Los Angeles, plus border areas in places such as Arizona and Texas.

Large sections of the country are largely bereft of surveillance activity. That includes nearly all of upstate New York, where none of the 200 FBI or DHS planes flew in that four-month period.

But there was plenty of activity in four places — Rochester and its suburbs; greater Buffalo; Lockport, Niagara County; and Canandaigua.

We can only speculate why. One or more DHS planes flew in the vicinity of Greater Rochester International Airport in early November. Training flights? On several occasions the planes lit out due west, into Genesee County. Looking for undocumented farm workers? Many of these flights also terminated in the same general area of Brighton. More on this in a moment.

DHS aircraft also flew in circles over Penfield and Webster in early November, with one flight taking a detour straight to Mendon Ponds Park. For whatever reason, the most concentrated activity was north of the village of Webster. There are other flights in evidence that were along the Lake Ontario shoreline or out over the water, suggesting they could have been related to border-patrol activities. But the flights in early November were well south of the lake.

An FBI spokesman told BuzzFeed that a plane circling a location may mean the pilot is waiting for a suspect to emerge from a building. Perhaps the same rule applies with DHS aircraft.

Any thoughts? Let us know.

On Dec. 30, after a hiatus of more than a month, a DHS aircraft appeared in the skies over the east side of Rochester and nearby sections of Irondequoit and Penfield.

One could speculate, from the date and location, that perhaps they were trying to pick up intelligence related to Emanuel Lutchman, the would-be terrorist who lived on Rochester's east side and planned to attack a restaurant there on New Year's Eve. Lutchman, who reportedly used a cellphone to communicate with ISIS representatives, was arrested the day these flights occurred. (It's plausible; the BuzzFeed article points out a surge in activity over San Bernardino, California, after the terrorist attack there on Dec. 2.)

As much as homeland security aircraft flew over the Rochester area in that four-month window, they did even more in the Buffalo area. A number of flights are along the border with Canada, which makes sense.

Others could be construed to center on the city of Lackawanna, which has a sizable Muslim community. Over the last 15 years, federal authorities have been believed to have conducted numerous surveillance operations in Muslim communities, especially around mosques and other gathering points. This activity has drawn repeated criticism from Muslim leaders and civil liberties advocates, who say it is unjustified and discriminatory.

Perhaps this is an example of that sort of surveillance, or perhaps not. (The section of the BuzzFeed map covering Detroit shows many FBI flights, with a number of them forming a perfect circle in the suburb of Dearborn, which has the highest proportion of Arab-American residents of any city in the nation. At the center of the circle is the largest mosque in North America.)

It may or may not be coincidental that a DHS aircraft flew around southern Rochester and Brighton on Oct. 8, several times coming near the Islamic Center on Westfall Road, and also that many of the Nov. 4 homeland security flights centered on the airport passed quite near the Islamic Center before swinging back westward.

As for the FBI in this area, an aircraft can be spotted flying around Rochester a few times. On Nov. 2, an FBI aircraft came in from the east, appeared to pass right next to the Islamic Center, do a dipsy-do and then head back east again. Coincidence again? Can't say.

That agency, though, was focused much more on Canandaigua and environs. Flights there occurred in mid-November, most of them on Nov. 16. A center point of activity seems to be Canandaigua's airport, which makes sense, though the plane or planes appear elsewhere as well.

Why? I haven't a clue. Do you?

Two other clusters of FBI activity are in evidence on BuzzFeed's map. One grouping in late October seems to be above and around Ralph Wilson Stadium in suburban Buffalo. But the Bills played in London, England that weekend, so the feds weren't watchdogging a football game.

The other cluster is over Lockport, Niagara County. Many of them, to be more specific, seem to be over the southern edge of South Lockport — which happens to be where the Racial Nationalist Party of America, a white-supremacist hate group, is reportedly based.

Maybe it's a coincidence. Or maybe not.

*How do companies like Flightradar24 track aircraft? They use data from thousands of ground stations that pick up signals from several types of transponders, which are on-board electronic devices that transmit a code identifying and locating the airplane. If you zoom in on BuzzFeed's map, you can see dots along a flight path; these are individual transponder pings. When enough of these pings are assembled, it's possible to track the entire flight of a given aircraft.

Steve Orr is the Democrat and Chronicle's Quality of Life Watchdog reporter. Contact him at SORR@Gannett.com or (585) 258-2386.