I C U
Stalkers’ Alert!
Spy planes able to photograph sunbathers in their back gardens are being deployed by Google and Apple.
The U.S. technology giants are racing to produce aerial maps so detailed they can show up objects just four inches wide.
That’s so you can show your “friends” on FB [27.18] your ….erm, location.
Apple’s military-grade cameras are understood to be so powerful they could potentially see into homes through skylights and windows. The technology is similar to that used by intelligence agencies in identifying terrorist targets in Afghanistan.
It’s not the technology: it’s the human choices on how to use it. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
The military-grade images are taken at a height of around 1,600ft, meaning people below are very unlikely to realise they are being photographed.
The cameras can be installed on planes, helicopters or even unmanned drones, although there are safety restrictions about the use of the latter in Britain.
A small plane carrying the cameras can photograph up to 100 square kilometres (38.6 square miles) every hour.
Prediction: Patterns in lawns soon to become quite popular.
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In other news, Mossberg announces they are reproducing a new shotgun version of the “Punt Gun”! Those unfamiliar with shotguns should
GoogleBing punt gun. (Mossberg Marketing claims their punt gun is part of a plan for a new *clay pidgeon* shooting range. The new range will be designed to propel clay pidgeons to an altitude of (cough) 1600 feet (cough)….)Oooh, yeah – Mrs. Kravitz: only now, she probably has her own remotely-piloted mini-drone with low-light-level TV, forward-looking infrared, and a commission from
the Obama administrationthe Department ofInJustice and Homeland Security tospy on her neighborsreport on suspicious activities (it’s been reported that up to a quarter of East German “Stasi” personnel were neighborhood and workplace informers).With the advent of relatively cheap robotic aerial platforms and digital imagery, widespread photomapping was inevitable. That’s not worrisome. It’s a very useful thing, actually.
It’s the extension of that technology into the near-realtime surveillance issue that’s worrisome. The temptation for abuse will be too hard to resist. [insert tome on the possibilities for mischief, crime, and intimidation, not to mention drones with frikkin' laser beams on their heads]
Back in the day when there were monopolies on this kind of thing, privacy and domestic-reconnaissance issues could be strictly protected; but that cat’s out of the bag.
I’m investing in the camo-netting industry.
Next week:
the rising popularity of the drone-on-drone combat hobby.
What’s that tower thingamajig in the left of the first photo?
^ London’s British Telcom Tower
(What? “Well, you have to know these things when you’re a King, you know.” — Arthur in The Holy Grail)
The cameras can be installed on planes, helicopters or even unmanned drones.
Odd coincidence that, we’ve just had mass approval for use of those by our own government here in the US.
It’s almost like it was a joint effort.
People need to stop convincing themselves that things are “just coincidences”.
This shit is planned.
What I don’t understand is – why would anyone want to put a dime on top of the Washington Monument?
Would this story have any connection with the fact that the CIA gave NASA some of its old spy satellites (Keyhole?) so NASA could spy on other planets?
Skullduggery is afoot in the land. I’ll have to go to the local RC aerodrome and get some RC on RC combat flying lessons. Those gov’t drones will have to have a Check 6 function in a couple years if this shit keeps up.
Apple’s military-grade cameras are understood to be so powerful they could potentially see into homes through skylights and windows
Military-grade meaning nearly obsolete, but overbuilt?
And, wow. A camera can potentially see through windows?
Alert the hyperventilating media!
Well lookie what we have here!
(story @ Washington Times)
Anyone wanna bet that the government decides to solve this issue by selling them off to private companies, the first in line of which will be Apple and Google?
“… investigators said Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Air and Marine has a fleet of nine “unmanned aircraft systems” ….
Nine is too many to handle??
“The Homeland Security Department ordered so many drones… doesn’t have a good plan for how to use them”
“… agency doesn’t have a dedicated budget for running drones …”
“… each Predator B drone costing about $14 million.”
“The agency also said it won’t expand beyond 10 drones — “unless directed to do so by a higher authority.”
(Is that the one Hebrew National answers to?)
Just like Allstate – the country’s in good hands. Sort of.
I predict..
Coolie hats will soon become very popular.
Laser pointers will become far more powerful.
Matrix’s of mirrors will become quite useful (picture them on tops of buildings aimed skyward.)
For every way to spy there is a way to hide.
Go check out how the Germans and Vietcong developed ways to confuse the air reconnaissance efforts.
Well they better stay out of gay peoples’ bedrooms and womens’ wombs!
New architecture. Large, wide patios on all side. Sail-like “sun guards” making your house look like a sailing ship.
Tinted windows.
I go for that broad, flat, square-topped Western-style hat instead. The one that, according to the intarwebs, doesn’t have a name and/or never existed.
Sometimes web searches are useless.
choo means sombrero, gringo?
Claire: (#15) While we’re at it, I’m forwarding the Memo:
We mustn’t say “space aliens” any more. From now on it will be “undocumented extraterrestrials”.
“undocumented extraterrestrials’…
Well that is better than calling them Space Backs.