You know the name Google, but have you heard of H211? It's the private holding company named after a hangar at NASA's Moffett Field. Inside that hangar sits a fleet of airplanes that have been parked there since 2007. So how does Google play into this? The same men who run Google are the principals of H211.

Ken Ambrose is the Executive Director and Vice President of H211. He usually shies away from the spotlight. In fact, this is the first time he allowed TV news cameras in the cockpit as he flew a scientific mission for NASA, measuring ozone and greenhouse gases. But science is just one component of H211's mission here.

In an interview on the tarmac at NASA, NBC Bay Area's Stephen Stock said to Ambrose, "There are some critics who say wait a minute, this is just a well-connected, well heeled, well financed group of people flying their private jets in and out of a government run facility.""I don't think we're doing anything all that unusual. We're willing to do it and we're willing to pay for it," Ambrose answered Stock.

And pay they do. According to an agreement with NASA, H211 shells out $113,365.74 a month. That's a third more rent than they'd have to pay at most other airports. "Why is it so important for H211 to be here, here at NASA," Stock asked Ambrose who answered. "Good question.It's expensive, but it's proximate." 

And that's the rub. Google headquarters sits just blocks away from Moffett Field. "Is it coincidence that the founders are just across the street," Stock asked Ambrose. He answered, "Sure, it's convenient."

By policy, NASA won't let just any private company use government facility such as NASA Ames, but there are exceptions says NASA's Debra Fena. "We welcome anybody who wants to have a place on the NASA research park use the airfield who do two things. Have a NASA alignment to one of our missions, and is financially solvent." In other words, private planes like the fleet owned by H211 and Google's principals parked inside a taxpayer owned hangar must be used for scientific research. How much scientific research isn't specified.

"Some would say well that's just an excuse in order for Google or H211 to park their private planes here," Stock said to Fena. "It's a pretty expensive excuse for them. Our space act agreement is right now aligned with our airborne earth science requirements, data that we couldn't otherwise collect and we are very proud of that alignment. We are very proud of the relationship that has worked thus far since 2007," Fena replied back.

Make no mistake, there is science being done here with the help of these private planes. Dr. Laura Iraci is the science lead for NASA on the project that uses the H211 modified German fighter. She says, "Bad air quality days, good air quality days, having access over and over again to sample the same location is really quite valuable. And it's not something that's often available. Aircraft like this are hard to come by and they are expensive to operate."

"How many of these flights have you flown?" Stock asked Iraci.
"This makes our 42nd scientific flight," she answered.
"Out of how many years?"
"A little more than two."

Ken Ambrose says he's flown more than 80 such flights in that jet. But what about the other planes kept in this hangar? Are they flying scientific missions?

NASA tells us all the H211 planes, 6 of them including a 757, 767, and several gulfstreams, all of them total have flown 52 science flights since the agreement was signed in 2007.  We analyzed flight tracking data (.xlsx file) and found at least 1,039 flights that match H211's profile in and out of Moffett Field. We did the math. That works out to only about one in 20 flights, only 5% of all H211 flights out of Moffet Field are flown on science missions. 

Stock asked Fena, "This isn't just an excuse to allow Google and H211 to fly their planes?"
"No, No," Fena answered. "We'd be in trouble if it were."

Those H211 jets have been spotted all over the world, places like St. Marteen, Italy, Cyprus, Beijing, and Ireland.

Paul Asmus runs a charity named HAL, Humanitarian Air Logistics. He's been trying to use NASA Ames to fly relief missions for his charity out of Moffett Field for years. He says, "They're supposed to treat everybody equally, but in reality it doesn't seem to be that way."

Stock then asked Fena, "Their principals give money that allows them to have this special relationship this seat at the table with NASA. True or not?"
"None," Fena replied.
"Has nothing to do with it?" Stock then asked?
"Financial solvency. Two main criteria outlined in the airfield strategy. NASA mission alignment and financial solvency," Fena said again.

"You see where the criticism comes in a private company using taxpayer supported property to base their operations?" Stock asked H211's Ken Ambrose.
"And paying for it?" Ambrose replied. "It sounds like good government to me.

The initial agreement between H211 and NASA (pdf) expired in June of last year, but was amended to extend the lease until 2014. NASA insists there are no special favors here. NASA says that if any other private company is willing to pay and follow their criteria, they are willing to allow them to fly out of NASA Ames, just like the principals with Google.

It’s the fastest growing property crime in America according to the Federal Trade Commission: We're talking about identity theft.

The Bay Area is at the center of it all, ranking number 72 among metropolitan areas, with 4,521 complaints filed last year.

California ranks third in the nation per capita for the crime, with 38,607 complaints in 2011.

NBC’s Bay Area's Investigative Unit discovered that local and state cops are only now catching up to the size of the problem.

The percentage of stolen identities and fake ID cards has doubled nationally in the last two years.

Every year eight and a quarter million Californians get a new driver's license, but in a flash all that information on that little piece of plastic can be stolen.

"It's very scary," Alex Reyes is a 25-year-old local college student and a victim of identity theft.

"I feel very violated," Reyes tells NBC Bay Area.

In February someone tried to open a new telephone account using Reyes' social security number, name and address.

"I’m afraid to say this, but it’s a little too easy because everyone’s information is out there," Reyes says.

We spoke with Paige Hanson, manager of educational programs for the private identity security company, LifeLock.

"A lot of law enforcement, this is their first time facing identity theft, identity theft cases," Hanson tells NBC Bay Area, "a lot of it has to do with cyber security."

That’s why Hanson was in the Bay Area recently: to lead a closed-door, all-day seminar teaching law enforcement officers as diverse as federal agents to small town cops how to combat fake and stolen IDs.

"It’s really, how do you stop your community members from falling victim to these scams that expose the entire hard drive of their computer or that might accidently leak their bank account information," Hanson explains.

Identity theft can be a threat to national security when stolen information is used to make false documents.

This government report shows how investigators were able to get fake u-s passports by using stolen identities of children as young as 5 years old and dead people.

We spoke with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Anthony Ho last month.

"People can use these high quality IDs for things for like, everything from getting into a bar to potentially getting into areas that are secure," Agent Ho tells NBC Bay Area

And there are local companies in the business of finding a solution.

"It is very serious," Greg Miller, Vice President of JDSU, a Silicon Valley tech company tells us.

JDSU's mission is to pioneer technology that  makes documents and IDs harder to fake and easier to authenticate.

"We have very unique optical effects that can be put onto the document," Miller tells NBC Bay Area, "we also put in things that you cannot see that can only be detected with an instrument or seen through a microscope."

JDSU isn't the only one looking for an answer.

Professor Patrick Kelly teaches Computer Security at the University of San Francisco.

"I don’t think it takes much to do better than we’re doing now," Dr. Kelly tells NBC Bay Area.

He’d like to see the identification system go in a different direction. Instead of passports and drivers’ licenses, Kelly thinks the solution is to make a digital ID bank with layers of encryption and control.

"We want to create a facility so that you can go ahead and create and control your own identity information," Dr. Kelly says, "we want a driver's license to simply be a token, a token that can be authenticated."

However, until stronger systems are created there will continue to be victims who have their information compromised online, like USF student, Elizabeth Farmer.

"It’s a very unsettling feeling to have something like this happen to you," Farmer tells NBC Bay Area, "I was floored."

Somone hacked into Farmer's bank account and made multiple fradulent charges, purchasing gift cards online.

"I was as careful as I thought I could be," Farmer says, "as of right now, I don't even know what preventative measures to take."

Our experts do.

From our interviews we picked up a few tips for you to protect your identity.

To summarize: Be aware of your digital footprint. 

Do you have something you want the Unit to investigate? Email us: TheUnit@NBCbayarea.com.

Tip us: 1-888-996-TIPS

See more of our mutli-part series on this topic

Is the Federal Aviation Administration doing enough to keep you safe in the air?

According to a recent federal government report, the agency could be doing more.

The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit uncovered a report from the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation released in December 2011, which calls the FAA to task for failing to provide proper oversight of pilot training and for failing to adequately monitor pilot performance.

That directly impacts your safety, especially when you consider that close calls in our skies happen more often than most people realize.

We dug through 30 years of records from the FAA’s accident and incident database, as well as NASA’s Anonymous Safety Reporting System. We obtained reports chronicling everything from near mid-air collisions or NMACs, to airspace violations, from conflicts in the air to incursions on the ground.

Commercial pilot Ken Edwards remembers almost colliding with an airplane that he couldn’t see when he was flying over South Florida several years ago.

“In our case, it was the setting sun. It was the glare,” Edwards told us.” We simply couldn’t see anything outside, but we were being told very loudly by this computer-generated voice that we were about to collide with another air craft.”

Edwards is talking about the TCAS or Traffic Collision Avoidance System located inside almost all cockpits.

He went on to say, “It was scary. There’s a few seconds where if you blink, you miss it. It happens that quickly.”

The threat is just as real here in the Bay Area. We tracked NMAC’s, airborne conflicts and official FAA reports dating back to 2000 and found 1,032 different incidents in our region.

“There are more of these situations that take place than the public has an awareness of,” said retired FAA manager turned whistleblower Gabe Bruno. “The FAA has made an effort to hide these numbers in the past. (They say) we don’t report these things.”

Bruno and other critics believe the FAA is waiting until one of these close calls becomes a tragedy before the agency does more to prevent them from happening.

“The culture within the FAA,” said Bruno, “is one of ‘let’s keep things quiet, don’t rock the boat, we don’t want to have any problems on our watch.’”

The Inspector General’s report blasts the FAA for failing to provide “the rigor needed to identify and track poor performing pilots and address potential program risks.”

Bruno claims that the FAA wants to hide any issues that are critical of the agency.

“They want to make sure that any problems that the FAA is having in terms of performance, that kind of thing doesn’t get out,” said Bruno.

The report also says that the FAA has “…still not implemented initiatives with the greatest potential to improve safety,” and that the “FAA is not well positioned to assess air carrier’s pilot training programs.”

It goes on the state that the FAA “does not provide sufficient oversight of pilot performance.”

And, perhaps most troubling, the report finds that the FAA does not have procedures in place “to prevent two pilots in remedial training programs from being paired together during scheduled commercial flights.”

“That should never happen,” said Edwards.

He says pairing inexperienced pilots who fail multiple proficiency tests can be a dangerous problem if the wrong two pilots end up in the same cockpit.

“I’ve had experience where you go straight from training to flying with a very immature pilot,” said Edwards, “(one) who has very bad habits.”

NBC Bay Area investigator Stephen Stock asked Edwards, “And how is that a bad thing?”

“Well, if you’re cutting corners when you first become a pilot because the people you’re flying with are cutting corners,” said Edwards, “chances are you’re going to do the same thing.”

“And that could eventually cost lives?” asked Stock.

“That could eventually cost lives,” said Edwards. “Easily.”

According to the report, for more than a decade the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has called for the FAA to incorporate safety improvements impacting pilot performance and professionalism. The NTSB determined that the cause of the fatal 2009 crash of Colgan Air flight 3407 in New York was due in part to the pilots’ failure to follow appropriate procedures.

Doug Rice, senior vice president of the California Pilots Association, told us that there isn’t necessarily time for FAA inspectors to check an airline pilot every time he flies. A native of the Bay Area, Rice has piloted commercial planes for more than three decades.

We asked him if the public should be worried.

“No, because that’s the pilot’s responsibility,” Rice said. “We are going to respond in the safest manner possible to avoid any sort of threat situation.”

For its part, the FAA says it has addressed some of these problems. In a statement emailed to the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit, the FAA says it “uses rigorous, data-driven oversight system for all aspects of aviation safety, including pilot training and proficiency.” It also says “the FAA’s new training rule will address whether controls should be in place to prevent pilots in remedial training programs from being paired together.”

Rice believes that it is a testament to the FAA that pilots have maintained a safe and successful system.

But he said there are ways to do it better.

“And the Inspector General’s report brings that up,” he said.

The report also points out that the FAA doesn’t provide airlines with full access to a pilot’s background checks and flying history so that airlines can’t adequately evaluate a pilot’s competency.

The Inspector General’s office tells us that the FAA’s response falls short on several critical safety issues. The office has asked for further action and explanations from the FAA to Congress. That is expected on Capitol Hill soon.

See the reactions from some Congressional representatives on this issue elsewhere on this website.

See more of our mutli-part series on this topic

Do you have a story we should investigate? Email theunit@nbcbayarea.com.

Millions of us fly every year, but do you know just how often commercial airplanes come to colliding in mid-air or on the runway?

The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit dug through 30 years of records to discover that close calls in our skies happen a lot more often than you might imagine.

Airlines log millions of miles every year, so these near collisions only make up a small percentage of the flights here and around the country. But with these high speeds, all it takes is one, and you have disaster.

Forty-five hundred airplanes take off and land every single day at San Francisco International, Oakland International and San Jose International airports. That adds up to nearly one and a half million planes every year. Thousands of other flights go in and out of two dozen smaller Bay Area airports annually.

And we found that sometimes things get too close.

We obtained reports chronicling everything from near mid-air collisions or NMACs, to airspace violations, from conflicts in the air to incursions on the ground. They include instances from the Federal Aviation Administration’s accident and incident database and NASA’s Anonymous Safety Reporting System (ASRS). We found 1,032 incidents in the Bay Area since 2000.

“There are a number of complexities that you have at San Francisco that you don’t have at, say, a Los Angeles International,” said Doug Rice, senior vice president of the California Pilots Association.

A 34-year veteran pilot, Rice grew up learning to fly in San Jose. He flies weekly into the Bay Area as a captain of a commercial airline.

“I’ve come to judge who I should watch out for on the other runways,” Rice said.

We found that intersecting runways at SFO sometimes pose a problem for pilots. The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit obtained a radar recording at San Francisco International, which shows a passenger jet beginning to land at the same instant two different aircraft take off right in front of it on crossing runways.

“The intersecting runways are a challenge,” said SFO spokesman Mike McCarron, “but they can be worked as far as people following procedures, being properly marked, and that risk can be mitigated as long as people follow procedures and do the things as planned in all the aviation safety plans.”

Using NASA’s ASRS, we also discovered a close call in the skies above SFO. In November 2011, a 757 took off from the airport as another commercial jet was getting ready to land on a parallel runway. Misunderstanding instructions, the 757 turned into the path of the incoming jet. Only last-second intervention by air traffic controllers prompted the 757 pilots to turn right and avoid disaster.

“There are going to be a lot of close calls,” said pilot Ken Edwards. “Most of them you never hear about. But there are a lot.”

Edwards has nearly a decade of commercial flying experience with various airlines around the country.

He told us about one close call in Florida that he never saw coming.

“There were a few seconds there where I almost expected to feel impact,” Edwards told us. “When we pulled up, we were blocked by the sun, and we could see the other airplane going underneath us very clearly.”

He said it was so close that he could see the face of the other pilot, whom Edwards believes was oblivious to the situation.

“He was, I’m assuming, on a different frequency,” he said. “He, I’m guessing, never saw us.”

Retired FAA manager turned whistleblower, Gabe Bruno, told us close calls in the air usually happen because of operational errors. He believes anonymous NASA reports of close calls actually understate the problem. 

“You always hope for the best, and most of the time it is the best,” Bruno said. “But when you are setting up a series of events happening that the FAA could actually have some positive effect on, and they’re not, you are just waiting for things to happen.”

Our analysis of three decades of FAA accidents and incidents, plus 20 years of NASA’s reports of airborne conflicts and mid-air collisions, show that the number of close calls climbs around the year 2000, then drops off through 2007. We found that during the last three tears, the trend line starts to climb again.

In 2010 the National Transportation Safety Board changed the rules governing what constitutes a near mid-air collision. But, the numbers started creeping back up before the NTSB implemented that change.

“What the FAA relies on is saying we didn’t have a crash,” Bruno said. “What they want is to have a body count before they take corrective action.”

The FAA points out that these incidents make up less than one percent of all air operations over the course of a year. In a statement, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor told us, “We have transitioned from a safety system that did forensic analysis of past accidents to a system that seeks to identify precursors to possible future accidents.”

According to aviation experts in Washington D.C., the number of close calls nationwide is trending downward in recent months. 

Rice told us that the public should not be worried because pilots and air traffic controllers are professionals.

“It gets tight, but it looks tighter than it actually is,” Rice said. “The key is this is what we train for.”

Training is why Edwards believes he is still alive today after his close call.

“It was scary,” Edwards said. “There’s a few seconds where if you blink, you miss it. It happens that quickly.”

In part two of our series we investigate what the FAA is doing to prevent disaster in our skies. And we discovered that the agency seems to be missing an opportunity. We dug up an Inspector General’s report released about a month ago that calls the FAA to task for failing to provide proper oversight to train and monitor pilot performance. 

If you have a tip for The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit, email us: theunit@nbcbayarea.com.

Click here to see an animated recreation of a close call over Oakland International Airport.

The FAA responded in an email to written questions regarding close calls. The unedited text from that exchange appears below.

----------------------------------------

Q1: What does the FAA do to mitigate NMAC’s, airspace violations, excursions and incursions?

A1: The FAA thoroughly investigates every incident that occurs and develops mitigations based on the unique circumstances of the event. Mitigations can include controller training, changes in phraseology, new air traffic control procedures, new airfield signs and lighting.

Q2: As noted by US Rep. John Mica and others, the data shows that while there was a drop off in incidents from 2000 through 2006-2007 during the last three years there has been an increase in those numbers and the trend line is going back up again.

Granted, there has been a change in definition of what constitutes an NMAC but that change came only in 2010 and this trend started before that. Why are these close calls trending up again? What’s the FAA doing about that?

A2: I think you're confusing the term Near Midair Collision (NMAC) with "loss of separation". A NMAC is a report that is based on a pilot's perspective, not on hard data. A loss of separation is based on hard data and is something we thoroughly track.

A "loss of separation" should not be called a "close call" because the vast majority are not. We maintain large safety bubbles around aircraft to prevent a loss of separation from quickly turning into a serious incident.

Concerning increases in airborne losses of separation, I can tell you the following: Over the past several years, the FAA has transitioned to a non-punitive error reporting system at its air traffic facilities. This cultural change in safety reporting has produced a wealth of information to help the FAA identify potential risks in the system and take swift action to address them.

The new system has resulted in a higher number of reports of incidents involving loss of the required separation between aircraft than in previous years, but the number of incidents includes events that never would have been identified and understood under the previous system. These events occur in much less than 1 percent (0.00141 percent) of the operations in the system over the course of a year.

Q3: While the number of these close calls is very small compared to the number of flights and miles flown, it only takes one airborne incident to create serious tragedy. Does the public need to be concerned with these close calls?

A3: These events occur in much less than 1 percent (0.00141 percent) of the operations in the system over the course of a year. A "loss of separation" should not be called a "close call" because the vast majority are not. We maintain large safety bubbles around aircraft to prevent a loss of separation from quickly turning into a serious incident.

Q4: Critics of the FAA, such as former FAA manager and now whistleblower Gabe Bruno, say the FAA waits until an accident or incident before seeking to affect change (such as the movement to study fatigue and training post Colgan crash). What is the FAA’s response to that?

A4: The FAA operates the world's safest aviation system and continuously strives to make the system even safer.

We have transitioned from a safety system that did forensic analyses of past accidents to a system that seeks to identify precursors to possible future accidents. Our goal is to collect as much safety data as possible from pilots, air traffic controllers, aircraft manufacturers and others so we can spot trends before they result in accidents.

We aggressively take action when we identify a potentially unsafe condition. We also work with international aviation safety organizations so we can share our knowledge and best practices with other countries and they can share their knowledge and best practices with us.

Q5: Bruno and a half dozen pilots tell us they believe the actual incidence of ‘close calls’ (NMAC, airborne conflicts, airspace violations) is much higher than reported either in NASA ASRS data or by the FAA. What is the FAA’s response to that?

A5: The FAA collects many different sources of aviation safety data and incorporates it into the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) system. ASIAS connects 46 safety databases across the industry and is expected to expand eventually to 64 databases.

NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) represents just a small part of the data the FAA collects through ASIAS. While ASRS data can be useful, it has some inherent limitations. The reports represent a subjective opinion or perception about an event and do not always include complete information.

Because the reports are anonymous, the FAA cannot investigate or validate the data. In addition, NASA only publicly releases a small portion of the data, which makes it unreliable for statistical analysis purposes. ASIAS is able to overcome these limitations by leveraging multiple databases to analyze safety issues.

The entire aviation community encourages and relies on voluntary reporting to maintain existing safety levels and continue to make safety improvements. Since the introduction of ASRS, the FAA has developed other more useful, robust voluntary reporting systems with the airline industry and unions.

Unlike ASRS, those formal programs allow the FAA to review and validate voluntarily-reported data from pilots, mechanics, flight attendants, dispatchers, and air traffic controllers. The identity of those who make reports is protected by law, but the process allows for their participation in resolving potential safety issues.

As a senior member of the Commerce Committee, aviation safety is a critically important issue to Senator Boxer. The next step is to study the Inspector General’s report and then address the serious concerns it raises as the Commerce Committee carries out its oversight of the FAA and our nation’s aviation system.

Statement from US Representative John Mica (R) Florida
Chairman of US House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee

1) The(DOT OIG) report found that the FAA had not fully implemented the reforms promised in the wake of the Colgan crash and that there were loopholes in the remedial training program. We will closely monitor FAA’s efforts to address the concerns raised by this report.”

2) “The Committee receives monthly updates from FAA on all near miss incidents. These events are trending downward and the FAA is working with its stakeholders in a collaborative manner to address system or operational issues on a case-by-case basis. We will continue our oversight of these issues to ensure FAA remains focused on improving the safety of our aviation system.”

Take a look at the data we used to inform our report:

FAA INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS

NASA'S AVIATION SAFETY REPORTING SYSTEM DATA

Below is a link to an audit conducted by the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General. The report examines the FAA's ability to effectively oversee pilot performance.

DOT OIG PILOT TRAINING REPORT FINAL