Curious as to how the Defense Department could be spying on you next? PBS checked in with DARPA about the latest in drone camera technology for the NOVA special "Rise of the Drones," including the world's highest-resolution camera.
Actually seeing the sensor on ARGUS-IS, or Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, is still classified, but the basics of how it works have been deemed fit for public consumption.
ARGUS-IS uses 368 imaging chips like those found in cell phone cameras, to stitch together a 1.8 billion pixel video. That means from 17,500 feet in the air, ARGUS-IS can see someone on the ground waving their arms. And it generates that kind of high-definition video for an area 15 square miles across. It can see a bird flying through a parking lot from more than three miles in the air.
It can store a million terabytes of video a day, up to 5,000 hours of footage, so soon drones will not only be able to see everything that happens on the ground, but also keep that record.
Whether or not ARGUS has been used in the field is still classified. Let's get real, though: Does this cool a toy get put in a corner?
So don't look up. Remember when Gene Hackman told that to Will Smith in the movie Enemy of the State?
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10 comments:
Well, that pretty much kills making love outdoors, doesn't it?
Privacy issues aside, it sounds like neat technology!
Very interesting technical development.
Developments like this may feed the paranoia of some people. There's a great leap between getting raw data and evaluating it. The scenario in Person of Interest is too im[ractical for real life at present.
I would say, keep this flying!
Angel - Only if you don't want to be on Youtube.
Elvis - The good and the bad.
Grand - Technical and voyeural.
Heidi - I love Person of Interest. And I'm OK with that scenario as long as I'm the one person that has the keys to the kingdom.
We need to protect our 2nd Amendment rights as a deterrent to fascism. Unfortunately, by focusing ONLY on the 2nd Amendment we've allowed the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th amendments, which are also designed to protect us from our government, to blown to smithereens. Our guns won't save us.
Jay
Jay - The tunnel vision crowd doesn't want to hear about anything else.
Would it be illegal to moon a spy camera?
Duck - I think appropriate would be a better word.
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