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One thing which bothers me is satellite imagery. In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. I often wonder, what if you had two di

One thing which bothers me is satellite imagery. In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. I often wonder, what if you had two distinct lenses, each with separate transmit? EG, both operating at once. Or multiple lenses? Now you could do things, potentially, such as use a high-fidelity lens to tag individuals. EG, license plates. Facial recognition. That sort of thing. Once tagged, another lens, one which records the entire surface of the continental US, would track objects the size of vehicles, or even people. Determining who or what each was, would not be vital. Only high probability tracking, and those other lenses coming into play for closer viewing, to tag. Now you're just tracking dots as they move. And once someone is tagged (phone, or license plate), they don't need to be retagged. If not already being done, it won't be long until it is done. And once tagged, you'd never shake that tag easily. We're all familiar with facial recognition tech used by SV giants, and we know of many things, such as gait recognition used in China. Yet what amount of tagging, facial recognition could be done, when budget was of absolutely zero concern. If computing power was of zero concern. All you need at the images from the satellite. Ground based computing power can do the rest. What if you had trillions in computing power to throw at this? Well. Regardless. If it isn't a problem now, it will be a problem eventually.

082349872349872 6y ago
In one of the local traditions, the voters in the state all assemble in a town square to vote in person. (this year they exceptionally used ballots) https://www.ai.ch/politik/landsgemeinde https://www.ai.ch/politik/landsgemeinde In the old days, every voter was given a special sword, and admission to the gathering was conditioned upon possession of the sword (my former landlord still has his, it might still be a requirement). Would it be possible to develop some sort of equivalent, but as an antenna rather than a sword, reflecting on wavelengths illuminatable from the ground and observable from the air, that would allow popular votes to be taken via spy imagery? Presumably confirmation would involve multiple independent drone captures...
asdff 6y ago
Do we even have capabilities to prevent another nation from just doing this on American citizens? They are probably doing everything you've described right now in China on people in China, but I wonder how long it will be until the Chinese point there cameras at Americans as well, if they haven't already.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  > if they haven't already Gary Powers was shot down in 1960.
ohazi 6y ago
> In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. This is absolutely false.
- bbarnett 6y ago
  https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/top-secret-your-briefing-on-the-cias-cold-war-spy-satellite-big-bird/250629/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/top-s... It was also known by the likes of William Safire that our satellites could "read the license plates on the cars of Kremlin officials." -- If untrue, please provide a counter source to many of the like statements as cited above. (You may be right, but it seems that many believe you are wrong)
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nugbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kFEEAAAAIBAJ&dq=big-bird%20satellite&pg=6807%2C619159 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nugbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kFEE... Under 'twenty questions', second column, end of column, under highlights "Big Bird" satellite. Again, you may be right. However there are many claims that this capability existed in the 80s. Suggest you research some of the satellites of the time, including ones which worked on film, and jettisoned rolls of it for terrestrial pickup.
    - squarefoot 6y ago
      > Again, you may be right. However there are many claims that this capability existed in the 80s. I wouldn't be surprised if they could do that but there was no proof around to demonstrate it. The military tend to be very secretive about what they can do because by revealing it they would implicitly give hints on what they cannot do.
    - ohazi 6y ago
      > Suggest you research some of the satellites of the time Suggest you do the same. Here's the "Big Bird" satellite you referred to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon > The cameras could scan contiguous areas up to 120 degrees wide, and achieved a ground resolution better than 2 ft (0.61 m) during the later phase of the project. The sources you cite are, to put it nicely, propaganda. The physics simply doesn't agree that this was even remotely possible at the time. Another commenter correctly pointed out that these claims would violate the diffraction limit by more than an order of magnitude, and that's assuming zero atmospheric interference, which is absolutely not the case. Why do you think film is relevant here? These satellites are not noise-limited like your phone vs. an SLR, they're diffraction limited. This is an optical resolution limit that has nothing to do with the photon capture medium or the size of the photographic plate. The only way to do better is to increase the effective area (of the mirror, not the plate) or to decrease the effective wavelength. They were not doing interferometry with these satellites, and certainly not the multi-axis interferometry you'd need to be able to resolve centimeter-thick lines in text.
01100011 6y ago
The future, imo, is sensor fusion. Cameras everywhere, in the sky and on the ground. Those cameras feed back to a large tracking system which is able to detect and track objects as they move between cameras. This information can be crosschecked against cell phone location data and could flag anyone travelling without a phone, or with the wrong phone, for further scrutiny. It sounds like paranoid delusions now, but I think it's what we're moving towards in 50 years or so after society has normalized mass surveillance.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  Where I live we already have cameras on larger street crossings for traffic management, and along every bus line, not to mention the ones in busses, metros and stations. What is lacking is the fusion you mention. But with ubiquitous 5G it's only a matter of when, not if. The smaller ones clipped onto the top of traffic lights look rather eyeborgian ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1043844/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1043844/ )
TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Here is a BAE camera system that can track all cars in a large area: https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/product/airborne-widearea-persistent-surveillance-system-awapss https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/product/airborne-widearea-p...
nostrademons 6y ago
This tech is available to private corporations, and almost to individuals. If you've called a solar company to get an estimate recently, they have full 3-D LIDAR maps of your house from orbit. They can map out the trees down to the branch level and then model how much sunlight will hit a given spot on your roof if you trim them. I was on the phone with a sales rep from LG yesterday and it was a bit surreal: I knew she was looking at a satellite image of my house, so I was like "We're planning to cut that whole branch off the middle tree that's shading the south roof of our house, and we're going to thin the branches of the corner tree" and she could follow along. Much of this is also available to private citizens on Google Maps too - my home is not visible from the street, so when we were buying it, we used the satellite imagery to determine how big a back yard it had, how much parking was available, roughly how big the decks were, and we could even see the previous owner's patio furniture.
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. Are you sure about that? I'm not even sure about that now. Any credible information on the net, somewhere? I thought that was movie stuff, like in https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/ I'm aware that this is difficult to prove, because secrecy, national security and so on, but license plates from orbit? In the 80ies?

082349872349872 6y ago

In one of the local traditions, the voters in the state all assemble in a town square to vote in person. (this year they exceptionally used ballots) https://www.ai.ch/politik/landsgemeinde https://www.ai.ch/politik/landsgemeinde In the old days, every voter was given a special sword, and admission to the gathering was conditioned upon possession of the sword (my former landlord still has his, it might still be a requirement). Would it be possible to develop some sort of equivalent, but as an antenna rather than a sword, reflecting on wavelengths illuminatable from the ground and observable from the air, that would allow popular votes to be taken via spy imagery? Presumably confirmation would involve multiple independent drone captures...

asdff 6y ago

Do we even have capabilities to prevent another nation from just doing this on American citizens? They are probably doing everything you've described right now in China on people in China, but I wonder how long it will be until the Chinese point there cameras at Americans as well, if they haven't already.

082349872349872 6y ago
> if they haven't already Gary Powers was shot down in 1960.

ohazi 6y ago

> In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. This is absolutely false.

bbarnett 6y ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/top-secret-your-briefing-on-the-cias-cold-war-spy-satellite-big-bird/250629/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/top-s... It was also known by the likes of William Safire that our satellites could "read the license plates on the cars of Kremlin officials." -- If untrue, please provide a counter source to many of the like statements as cited above. (You may be right, but it seems that many believe you are wrong)
- bbarnett 6y ago
  https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nugbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kFEEAAAAIBAJ&dq=big-bird%20satellite&pg=6807%2C619159 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nugbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kFEE... Under 'twenty questions', second column, end of column, under highlights "Big Bird" satellite. Again, you may be right. However there are many claims that this capability existed in the 80s. Suggest you research some of the satellites of the time, including ones which worked on film, and jettisoned rolls of it for terrestrial pickup.
  - squarefoot 6y ago
    > Again, you may be right. However there are many claims that this capability existed in the 80s. I wouldn't be surprised if they could do that but there was no proof around to demonstrate it. The military tend to be very secretive about what they can do because by revealing it they would implicitly give hints on what they cannot do.
  - ohazi 6y ago
    > Suggest you research some of the satellites of the time Suggest you do the same. Here's the "Big Bird" satellite you referred to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon > The cameras could scan contiguous areas up to 120 degrees wide, and achieved a ground resolution better than 2 ft (0.61 m) during the later phase of the project. The sources you cite are, to put it nicely, propaganda. The physics simply doesn't agree that this was even remotely possible at the time. Another commenter correctly pointed out that these claims would violate the diffraction limit by more than an order of magnitude, and that's assuming zero atmospheric interference, which is absolutely not the case. Why do you think film is relevant here? These satellites are not noise-limited like your phone vs. an SLR, they're diffraction limited. This is an optical resolution limit that has nothing to do with the photon capture medium or the size of the photographic plate. The only way to do better is to increase the effective area (of the mirror, not the plate) or to decrease the effective wavelength. They were not doing interferometry with these satellites, and certainly not the multi-axis interferometry you'd need to be able to resolve centimeter-thick lines in text.

01100011 6y ago

The future, imo, is sensor fusion. Cameras everywhere, in the sky and on the ground. Those cameras feed back to a large tracking system which is able to detect and track objects as they move between cameras. This information can be crosschecked against cell phone location data and could flag anyone travelling without a phone, or with the wrong phone, for further scrutiny. It sounds like paranoid delusions now, but I think it's what we're moving towards in 50 years or so after society has normalized mass surveillance.

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Where I live we already have cameras on larger street crossings for traffic management, and along every bus line, not to mention the ones in busses, metros and stations. What is lacking is the fusion you mention. But with ubiquitous 5G it's only a matter of when, not if. The smaller ones clipped onto the top of traffic lights look rather eyeborgian ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1043844/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1043844/ )

TaylorAlexander 6y ago

Here is a BAE camera system that can track all cars in a large area: https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/product/airborne-widearea-persistent-surveillance-system-awapss https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/product/airborne-widearea-p...

nostrademons 6y ago

This tech is available to private corporations, and almost to individuals. If you've called a solar company to get an estimate recently, they have full 3-D LIDAR maps of your house from orbit. They can map out the trees down to the branch level and then model how much sunlight will hit a given spot on your roof if you trim them. I was on the phone with a sales rep from LG yesterday and it was a bit surreal: I knew she was looking at a satellite image of my house, so I was like "We're planning to cut that whole branch off the middle tree that's shading the south roof of our house, and we're going to thin the branches of the corner tree" and she could follow along. Much of this is also available to private citizens on Google Maps too - my home is not visible from the street, so when we were buying it, we used the satellite imagery to determine how big a back yard it had, how much parking was available, roughly how big the decks were, and we could even see the previous owner's patio furniture.

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. Are you sure about that? I'm not even sure about that now. Any credible information on the net, somewhere? I thought that was movie stuff, like in https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/ I'm aware that this is difficult to prove, because secrecy, national security and so on, but license plates from orbit? In the 80ies?