Police Are Testing a Live Google Earth To Watch Crime As It Happens-gctid111629

[Sun Ship]

Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan
4/14/2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VkKeM-OK6g#t=255

In  Compton last year, police began quietly testing a system that allowed  them to do something incredible: Watch every car and person in real time  as they ebbed and flowed around the city. Every assault, every purse  snatched, every car speeding away was on record—all thanks to an Ohio  company that monitors cities from the air.

The Center for Investigative Reporting  takes a look at a number of emerging surveillance technologies in a new  video, but one in particular stands out: A wide-area surveillance  system invented by Ross McNutt, a retired Air Force veteran who owns a  company called Persistent Surveillance Systems.

McNutt  describes his product as "a live version of Google Earth, only with  TiVo capabilities," which is intriguing but vague (and also sounds a lot like the plot of this terrible Denzel movie).  More specifically, PSS outfits planes with an array of super  high-resolution cameras that allow a pilot to record a 25-square-mile  patch of Earth constantly—for up to six hours.

It's  sort of similar to what your average satellite can do—except, in this  case, you can rewind the video, zoom in, and follow specific people and  cars as they move around the grid. It's not specific enough to ID people  by face, but, when used in unison with stoplight cameras and other  on-the-ground video sources, it can identify suspects as they leave the  scene of a crime.



The  PSS system has been tested in cities including Baltimore and Dayton,  and, last year, police officers in Compton used it to track crimes,  including a necklace snatching. In one case, they could track a criminal  as he approached a woman, grabbed her jewelry, and then ran to a  getaway car. They eventually drove out of frame, which meant they  weren't caught—but, as the Compton police explain in this video, the  system told them that this particular car was involved, at the very  least.

Plenty  of critics argue the technology is an ominous invasion of privacy:  Video surveillance free of any traditional technological barriers,  tracking everyone and everything that moves in a city. But according to  police and its creators, it's not as invasive as other systems, because  it can't see into homes or identify faces. It "allows us to provide more  security with less loss of privacy than any of the other options that  are out there," says one officer. That's definitely one way to look at  it. [Center for Investigative Reporting]

http://gizmodo.com/police-are-testing-a-live-google-earth-to-watch-crime-1563010340

[Nana]

Make cell phones inexpensive to the point that even villagers can afford them and combine them with a system like this and we have a highly effective rural big brother system to monitor all activities in the villages. Targeting anybody with drone based missile systems for pinpoint remote assassination capabilities/"surgical" strikes. Yikes.