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Pretty cool. Now imagine the tools the NSA has, live satellite feeds and hi-res cameras all over the US and the world with a bunch of Diet Coke drinking zombies

Pretty cool. Now imagine the tools the NSA has, live satellite feeds and hi-res cameras all over the US and the world with a bunch of Diet Coke drinking zombies clicking, zooming and panning all day long.

shubb 13y ago
Working with satellite data I can tell you that the maximum resolution data you are likely to get from a satellite is 0.25m resolution (i.e. a pixel is the size of a car wheel). And that's talking about likely military satellites - the public are lucky to get hold of 0.5m resolution. Also, clouds get in the way. A lot. For super high resolution imaginary like you are talking about, you need something like the ARGOS system [1]. This image was made by a slowly automatically rotating camera, but the ARGOS system seems to use a whole bunch of high resolution cameras, like a insects eye. The interesting thing about the ARGOS demo on NPR was the automatic object tracking. The system can track cars, and people, as they move around. You could go back through the data to follow a guy back to his house after he is identified as planting a bomb. Or more HN, posting something from an internet cafe. I really think that, as technology makes pervasive surveillance possible, we need laws to explicitly limit what the state or companies can do, at least domestically. It supprises me that people are so much more upset about the NSA gathering data, given that they willingly gave it to ad networks that want to use it to make bad decisions. The highest cost google ads are for loans, insurance, and other services where the provider makes more money if the user makes an inappropriate choice. Imagine if google put a googleX ARGOS on it's Loon baloons, and found some way to monetize it. We really need laws in place to stop anyone doing that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA <- skip to about 1:30
- tomjen3 13y ago
  I assume that the government has better than normal classified satelite tech, so how do you know what kinds of resolutions are possible?
  - maaku 13y ago
    Atmospheric effects. Atmospheric refraction adds significant noise, fully obscuring features smaller than about 0.25 m. Yes, ground telescopes have ways of cancelling out atmospheric effects, but the required calibration and long exposure is impossible with the orbit of spy satellites.
    - Someone 13y ago
      I don't think it takes long exposure. Ground-based telescopes can make the simplifying assumption that they are looking at static point sources. That makes it easier to correct for camera movement and for optical defects from the lense and the atmosphere. On the other hand, looking down is a bit easier than looking up because the atmosphere will converge rays looking down, but diverge them looking up. See http://what-if.xkcd.com/32/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/32/. That site also claims that others say Hubble is about as good as the best spy satellites, resolution-wise.
      - maaku 13y ago
        Adaptive optics is far too complex to summarize in a HN comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics Hubble is of the best spy satellites. It was built by the same team that builds spy satellites, using all the same parts and equipment, tested in the same facilities, etc. It just has a slightly different secondary mirror setup and a very different set of instruments and control mechanisms, since it's meant to point at galaxies and do astronomy, not at the Earth doing surveillance. Seriously, one of the hardest parts of the Hubble program was figuring out how to do it in the view of the public without revealing the underlying surveillance programme.
- kordless 13y ago
  It's a permissions problem. Imagine the world as one big file system we're all sharing. You 'write' stuff to this file system all the time expecting nobody to come along and use it, but they do. If you limit access to some of this data by making it illegal that doesn't mean they don't still have access to it. Seems like what we need is a quantumly encrypted coat we can put it on whenever we want complete privacy.

shubb 13y ago

Working with satellite data I can tell you that the maximum resolution data you are likely to get from a satellite is 0.25m resolution (i.e. a pixel is the size of a car wheel). And that's talking about likely military satellites - the public are lucky to get hold of 0.5m resolution. Also, clouds get in the way. A lot. For super high resolution imaginary like you are talking about, you need something like the ARGOS system [1]. This image was made by a slowly automatically rotating camera, but the ARGOS system seems to use a whole bunch of high resolution cameras, like a insects eye. The interesting thing about the ARGOS demo on NPR was the automatic object tracking. The system can track cars, and people, as they move around. You could go back through the data to follow a guy back to his house after he is identified as planting a bomb. Or more HN, posting something from an internet cafe. I really think that, as technology makes pervasive surveillance possible, we need laws to explicitly limit what the state or companies can do, at least domestically. It supprises me that people are so much more upset about the NSA gathering data, given that they willingly gave it to ad networks that want to use it to make bad decisions. The highest cost google ads are for loans, insurance, and other services where the provider makes more money if the user makes an inappropriate choice. Imagine if google put a googleX ARGOS on it's Loon baloons, and found some way to monetize it. We really need laws in place to stop anyone doing that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA <- skip to about 1:30

tomjen3 13y ago
I assume that the government has better than normal classified satelite tech, so how do you know what kinds of resolutions are possible?
- maaku 13y ago
  Atmospheric effects. Atmospheric refraction adds significant noise, fully obscuring features smaller than about 0.25 m. Yes, ground telescopes have ways of cancelling out atmospheric effects, but the required calibration and long exposure is impossible with the orbit of spy satellites.
  - Someone 13y ago
    I don't think it takes long exposure. Ground-based telescopes can make the simplifying assumption that they are looking at static point sources. That makes it easier to correct for camera movement and for optical defects from the lense and the atmosphere. On the other hand, looking down is a bit easier than looking up because the atmosphere will converge rays looking down, but diverge them looking up. See http://what-if.xkcd.com/32/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/32/. That site also claims that others say Hubble is about as good as the best spy satellites, resolution-wise.
    - maaku 13y ago
      Adaptive optics is far too complex to summarize in a HN comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics Hubble is of the best spy satellites. It was built by the same team that builds spy satellites, using all the same parts and equipment, tested in the same facilities, etc. It just has a slightly different secondary mirror setup and a very different set of instruments and control mechanisms, since it's meant to point at galaxies and do astronomy, not at the Earth doing surveillance. Seriously, one of the hardest parts of the Hubble program was figuring out how to do it in the view of the public without revealing the underlying surveillance programme.
kordless 13y ago
It's a permissions problem. Imagine the world as one big file system we're all sharing. You 'write' stuff to this file system all the time expecting nobody to come along and use it, but they do. If you limit access to some of this data by making it illegal that doesn't mean they don't still have access to it. Seems like what we need is a quantumly encrypted coat we can put it on whenever we want complete privacy.