The Air Force is about to launch a new technology that will bring enhanced aerial surveillance to certain locations in Afghanistan. Where the current airborne robots use one camera to provide live video of a single narrow area, the new device will provide a constant stream of images from a mulit-lens drone that the military claims will be able observe all the activity in an entire town.
This, of course, approaches the scenario of the 1998 Jim Carrey movie “The Truman Show”, though in this case it’s adapted to serve the purposes of modern warfare.
I’m all for new technology that helps American forces stay alive and accomplish their mission in Afghanistan. But it’s hard to choose the weirdest single thing about this.
Is it:
… that ESPN was used as a model to help the military learn to “tag” certain recorded video sequences for immediate recall, the same way a TV crew covering a professional football game follows a specific player or compiles a collection of certain types of plays?
(What will be the Jalalabad equivalent of an end zone celebration?)… that the Air Force sent a representative to watch how reality TV shows choose footage from programs where multiple cameras record all the activity in a house?
(This way we’ll be sure to know if two Taliban have a fight in the outdoor hot tub.)… that the massive amount of video recorded by these all-seeing cameras flying over villages in Afghanistan will be stored in the digital memory of servers housed in used shipping containers … in Iowa?
(This is a far cry from the day when the most exotic images to be found in Keokuk were at the new Blockbuster.)… that the project’s official name is Gorgon Stare, after the three headed beast from Greek mythology whose steady gaze would cause you to turn to stone?
(Haven’t we already financed another weapons system that can actually do that?)… that or that the details regarding this surveillance project, which is something you would think by its very nature requires secrecy, are all over the internet, and are now appearing second hand in a whimsical blog posted under the image of a baboon?
The only reason I can think of for this level of sharing is that the military wants everyone in the war zone to feel that they are being observed and their actions are recorded, constantly. Smile! You’re on Overt Camera!
For people who grew up at a time when television was still a new and exciting idea, the thought of being on camera carries the aura of something special. Not so anymore. And maybe the day is drawing near when NOT being on camera will be the more significant event – something to post as your most amazing ever Facebook status: OMG! I’m out of the frame! Do I even exist?
Perhaps that’s even a workable plan for some future reality show – a group of people are put in a house and left to their own devices without being viewed or recorded. When they come out they can tell us how positively weird it was to know they weren’t being watched.
How would it change your behavior if you knew a camera in the sky was recording everything you did outside?
Trail Baboon 
we probably wouldn’t “mark our territory” anymore. or maybe we would…. who cares??
a gracious good morning to You All
too cold to mark anything today!
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Don’t let anything freeze today, Brrrrrb.
Animals in the wild (and my Golden Retriever) know a territory has been marked by the smell. I suppose we humans can only get the same message by watching it on TV. And watching is something we seem to be increasingly good at.
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hi, Dale – we read that our “marking” might help keep away wolves or other critters that might want a tasty morsel of Niblet or T – so we mark around their fence perimeters ala “Never Cry Wolf” (a film we really love) – so far, no wolves or wild dogs pestering the Boys – maybe it works???
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ah, country life!
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Do you want to know the truth? Ah, let’s not let facts spoil a good story again! Let me just add that, as a friend of wolves, I hope your gentlemen are WELL protected. You live in a part of the state that was historically critical for helping wolves restore their numbers.
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yes, Steve – lots of farmers grumbling around here about wolves getting calves, lambs, dogs, etc. we hear once in awhile – see them almost never. i think i know what you wanted to say – that our scent might actually bring them in? i’ve heard that about having a dog as protection – that the scent of another canine might bring the wolves (and coyotes, and wild dogs) in rather than keep them away. so we don’t have a dog. we are respectful of the danger of predators, but as a farmer friend says – the wolves are lying around fat and lazy because there are so many deer to eat around here.
sorry – off topic!
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My parents had a farm in the woods of NE MN for 20 years. Saw wolves occasionally; our dog knew them as cohorts of a sort; never once had them bother our cattle, but the calves we kept near the house and we did not have an smaller animals like goats or sheep, which I think they would try. Our biggest problem were tame dogs that roamed in packs.
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We have an abundance of coyotes around and have had them run right through the yard in the middle of the day chasing chickens. It took me a minute to get a rifle loaded and wake up the dogs sleeping in the garage… missed the coyote. I can’t hit the broad side of a barn to be honest.
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Hmmm. If I were to confess to “marking my territory,” which I’m not–not confessing, that is–except in the small hours of dark nights with little moonlight, I am sure that there would be nothing distinctively visible that could be photographed by a spy satellite whizzing by in outer space, particularly in these temperatures . . . not that I’m confessing to anything. Now, if I were to do something like that, it might be a comfort to think of all the friendly little satellites up in the sky that are also whizzing in the privacy of that vast and private darkness.
Good chilly morning baboons all, pointers or setters, and may your first full week of the new year be full of smiles.
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whizzing – like that word!
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I am staking out new territory today in notgoingtoworkanymoreland. So I will mark out my space digitally and call it Wee-Fi. This is the first day I am officially off the payroll and feeling what they call this, this “it that shall not be named.”
Steve–I see that in the process of changing from three computers to one, I dropped your email address. I do not quite remember it. Could you send it to my home address, since I do not have the business one anymore? (Or anyone else who wants me to have their address, or take down mine.)
cbirkholz@hickorytech.net
(It is almost impossible for my fingers to not type the other address.)
Aldo, Steve, we will not be coming up to Highland Park tomorrow and probably not the rest of this week. Will let you know.
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Well, your “non-confession” has made me smile this cold Monday morning. Thanks!
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I can’t help but see this as a boon to those tireless enforcers of American Yard Maintenance, who could check how often you mow, water, weed and feed and in winter, just how quickly and thoroughly you get your drive and sidewalk cleared ( in my experience, these are the same folks who insist it is an absolute trampling of your personal rights to restrict smoking, driving without a seatbelt and-gasp- live without health insurance, but what is life without a few contradictions).
I see a good market ahead for the transmitter that you put on your garage that projects a randomized loop of your immaculately maintained estate with regular intervals of you going to work and conducting Mandatory Yard Maintenance activities to the observation satellite, thereby allowing you to continue to indulge in whatever shady activities you like in your own back yard.
tim, get on this one.
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holagrams? i like it!
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If you have been around children of about age 8-9 and under you will notice in them the reaction Dale describes. There are the kids raised on digital cameras–thus they have their picture taken thousands of times a year and they expect, even as toddlers, to see themselves immediately on the back of the camera. They are never out of frame and are not sure what to do when they are not. We shall dub them the Favre generation.
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Good first Monday of the new year to all,
That isn’t good news, Dale, to start out the first work day of the new year. I also do a little marking in the bushes from time to time and don’t want to have this monitored from the sky. If there are some other things I do that I don’t want any one to know about, I am not going to talk about those things here. I had better start doing those things only on dark nights as Steve suggests.
Perhaps I can come up with some diversion tactics to confuse Big Brother in the sky. I would need one of those transmitters that MIG mentioned above. It would show me spending long hours keeping my car in sparkling condition, as well as keeping my srubs perfectly trimed and my lawn completly free of even the smallest weed and other Mandatory Yard Maintence already suggested by MIG.
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Hmmm. So we all seem to agree that the development of more eyes in the sky will require a cloaking device of some sort for the home and pasture.
Is it big screen projection on an overhead cover? I know there’s a guy in Minneapolis with lots of teflon dome roofing in his warehouse.
http://www.startribune.com/local/112731004.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU
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Well, let’s see… UC-Berkeley has already developed what they call a ‘carpet cloak.’
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090501154143.htm
Of course, China found a way to counter it…
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4078843/China-counters-U-S-invisibility-cloak
I think what’s called for is a polar response (sounds better than ‘extreme’). We need either something like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak that operates by actual magic or just take a normal blanket, drape it around yourself, and sneak around in an obvious and ridiculous way like a character from Scooby Doo, all the while pretending that no one can see you. You’ll either be dismissed as a crackpot or people will intentionally try to ignore you. Either way, you win!
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I’m thinking just running an interfering feed, so that the image from the camera never shows on the screen, the monitor shows the cgi of your yard you want it to see.
I’d like to say I’ve given it a lot of thought, but it is actually something out of the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, Irish teacher turned kids’ author.
Happy Tolkien’s birthday, all!
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“All that glitters is not gold; all who wander are not lost.”
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Would putting up a teflon roof be kinda like wearing a great big tinfoil hat?…
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Dale, move back into the family bomb shelter.
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Morning–
I’m back in my college office and had as a surprise, a case of 30 lightbulbs waiting by my door. Surprise!
In regard to today’s question, what makes you think you weren’t already under surveillance?
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I could tell you a long story from the late 80’s–I once did -n part–which proves the gov/military have been able to watch much of the U.S. from the air in quite good detail. I believe it is something like 80% of downtown Mankato, admittedly only a few blocks and lots of parking ramps, is under camera view which are all taped all of the time.
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Was just remembering a Township issue from a few years ago that we had documented by a local guy and his ‘Ultra-lite’ aircraft and camera… low tech meet high tech….
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Ben – this was my point today. I figure, from the amount of detail I can see when I GoogleMap my address (kiddy pool in the back yard!) that we’re already under surveillance all the time. But having had to watch surveillance tape in another life, I can tell you that most of the time in most places, there is absolutely NOTHING going on worth watching. So I figure if they want to watch my 99% incredibly boring day-to-day activities, for the possibility of that 1% … then go ahead!
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VS — so you are doing something juicy and salacious one percent of the time? Wowzah, wowzah!
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Every few years, a guy shows up on our doorstep with a new aerial photo of our property (we live in the country), neatly framed, to sell us. Ben, I bet you get similar attention. I go through my creep-factor v. how-else-will-I-ever-get-such-a-photo analysis, then shell out the money. At least this time, the junky SUV and trailer aren’t in the picture!
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My grandparents had at least one of those pictures of the farm, and I think one of the aunts did a painting based on it. Wish I had that picture now!
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In 1990, I was with a group of Americans in the eastern part of Berlin. We noticed the prominent television cameras pointed at most public spaces and we noticed that the cables to those cameras had been cut.
Another victory for democracy! Those evil Communists spied on everyone and now, we thought back then, people in all of Berlin will be free of that nasty surveillance.
Flash forward 20 years…
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thy weren’t smart enough to hide the cables huh?
welcome to the new yers blog ken
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Hide the real cables, make it look like they’re broken w/ the cut cables…. Ooooo, sneaky!
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Ken, good to have you expand the presence from southern MN.
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They would have been better off just removing the cables altogether.
I know several people with the signs for a home alarm system on their windows and in the shrubbery-but the signs are all they have.
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I know several as well. I think of them as advertising… “look, look, I think I have something worth stealing here!”
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Do you know how well you can be tracked in travel by your CC use?
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cc in email sending?
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Credit Card?
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Yep. Credit Card. My ex-brother used to have to report his many foreign travels to the State Dept and CIA. Then they set up that he would tell him he was going to travel and give them the rights to track his CC and they would know where he was much of the time, such as where he ate, stayed, etc. Police will for family emergencies find folks out on travel this way.
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yep, one of the things I find rather sinister (no offense, lefties) about gas pumps now making it very inconvenient to fill up with cash.
Cell phones are easily tracked as well.
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One of my favorite lines from “National Treasure” is when Ben has used his credit card to purchase a fake Declaration of Independence and Riley says to him “We probably have our own satellite by now.”
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I’d work much harder to improve my golf game. 😉
Either that or stay inside.
Chris in Owatonna
(feeling smart-alecky today- I’d probably just ignore the camera. My life is pretty boring and as a rule, I don’t break the law…well…I’m not averse to driving 5 mph over the speed limit now and then.)
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Good luck with your game, Chris.
I am not a very good golfer, but I find my game gets much worse when I know a stranger is watching me. Something about the extra eyes on my swing causes the club to go all haywire. How do professional golfers do it?
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Here in our Association I call Efrafa many pairs of eyes do a quite thorough job, including leaning against your windows to peer in. I notice those willing to do that have very heavy coverings on their windows.
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Remember how many MN legislators opposed cameras to catch people running stoplights because someone might be caught on camera with the wrong person next to them?
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“Public safety be hanged, I’ve got an affair to keep secret!” Yes, I remember that quite well.
There was/is also the case of a guy in Phoenix (where they still use automatic cameras) who wears a full-head gorilla mask when he drives. He’s racked up a bunch of tickets and refuses to pay them because (he says) the state can’t prove that it’s really him under the mask.
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Was that the reason they gave? I thought it was because they couldn’t tell who was behind the wheel, thereby making the car’s owner potentially liable for the violations of another. Maybe I was thinking of the wrong kind of violation?
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It was one of the arguments raised which struck a chord with a few legislators in several states. I read somewhere that in CA where such cameras are common the courts have ruled it isn’t the driver who is identified but the owner. I know the cameras are focused on the license plates.
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My way of looking at this . . . if my license plate runs a red light, it deserves a nasty ticket, especially if it brings the car along with it. Forget who is in the driver’s seat. People don’t kill people. Cars kill people when they run red lights. People should pay when their cars misbehave.
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The real problem starts when freedom of speech is limited, but our news media is already more or less involved in keeping the news within certain limits when it comes to examining government policy. That is why a person like Julian Assange gets so much criticism here when really he is trying to let us see things that our news media should be doing a better job of covering.
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tis ture
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I really wonder what Philip K. Dick would make of contemporary technology. Some of what he wrote was pretty prescient; it’s been years and years since I read him, but I seem to recall a lot of surveillance tech in his books, as well as the first mention of e-news. He’d either be a best-selling, trenchant commentator on privacy and information, or a burned-out paranoiac wearing a tinfoil hat and warning everyone about the black helicopters and shapeshifting alien lizard people (ref. David Icke).
As for me, I spend as little time outside as possible (bright hurty thing in the sky, you know), so I doubt I’d change my behavior just for a little old satellite. Oh, except I might paint an animal-rights slogan on the car roof. That could be a whole new business, roof stickers instead of bumper stickers!
BTW, happy New Year everyone, and good riddance not only to 2010 but to the last decade!
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CG – I absolutely love the idea of roof stickers. There’s got to be some money in that. Now all we need is an entrepreneur who likes getting these ideas off the ground. Oh, that’s right, we already do………..tim?
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harvey mackey of mackey envelope swim with sharks fame prints the advertising of his company on the tops if his trucks, he says he gets lots of business from the people who see it downtown, i always thought that was a geat idea.
my dad always told me to behave like everything i did was going to be printed on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow. i think about that from tme to time when i’m hoping they have some other news but it is not a bad idea to keep in the back of your head. if you are not wanted it to be publisized what up with that? different if the nazis from the cia are out to get you but for the most part come and get me. i did curtail a bit of email corespondance back when w was on the witch hunt after the 911 walk of shame and he was tracking every pinko group and i didn’t lie that so i do get the point but then again its kind of like the gop if yougive them enough rope to hang themselves with that is the only way to change the program. if they find out i pee in my back yard along the way so be it.
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Like Clyde, we live in a neighborhood in which everyone seems to notice everything that everybody does out of doors. I’m eager to hear what they have to say to us (and to one another) when we start planting our front yard vegetable garden in the Spring. OT-we ordered a new microwave/convection oven combo last week thinking that the old one was shorting out a kitchen circuit. Well, now we find that the problem resided in a bad neutral connection in a outlet on the same circuit, not in the microwave at all. It’s too late to cancel the order, so we will have a new microwave (which we really sort of needed, I keep telling myself). Sigh!
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My neighbors also notice what you do indoors; they literally walk up to windows and look in. It seems to arise from the notion that all outdoors property is held in common so they have the right to the land right outside my windows.
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Walk around the house naked. A week of that ought to take care of the problem.
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right through the nose, and the coffee has cooled a bit too, so not getting the full cleansing effect
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That would be cruel and unusual punishment.
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and yet the punishment would fit the crime.
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A friend of mine–a full-figured girl, to say the least–used to walk around naked in her apartment next door to Gray’s Drug and upstairs. Across the street was a Bridgeman’s shop, the manager of which was always trying to get the cops to stop Mary from wandering nude in her apartment past open windows. It was an interesting issue in civil rights. He maintained that he and his customers shouldn’t have to see a naked woman while digging into their chocolate sundaes. Mary maintained that she could wear (or not wear) whatever she chose in the privacy of her own apartment. She felt no need to pull the shades because, after all, people didn’t have to look up at her window. And if you were a cop in Minneapolis in those days, the very nicest call you could get to check out would be the one where you had to interview Mary in the buff.
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How did I miss that, in all walks through that corner.
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Probably same way I did, though I walked the corner several hundred times. I was always on the wrong side of the street and with my head down, trying to navigate slush puddles and ice patches.
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seen one you seen em both
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The title takes me back to college, when we played with the Alan Parsons Live Project…twice 🙂 Eye in the Sky was a fun one to play, though not quite as fun as Sirius. That had a major orchestral part to it. As for satellites watching what I’m doing, about the only thing I would mind them seeing is me speeding to and from places. I have a bad habit of driving too fast…probably because I drive A LOT. Otherwise, I’m boring. I only really go outside to bring my dog out and check the mail…and shovel. In the summer, I geocache, but “they” can already track me through my GPS so adding a camera isn’t too drastic. Eh, no matter.
I enjoyed reading all of your comments the last couple of days. I decided to stay off the computer this past weekend because I’m on it all the time. Thanks for the giggles and the predictions 🙂
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Hi Alanna–
I have Alan Parsons in my collection here and now.
The rest of us are on our computers all the time too… you can’t fight it… just give in already! 8)
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Haha, and what should I hear on my drive into work this morning? Eye in the Sky by the Alan Parsons Project! What serendipity 🙂
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In general I am opposed to living in a surveillance society – unless everyone has access to what those cameras are showing, there needs to be a good mechanism to “opt out” to my mind (see above: teflon roof or scrambling video feed). If everyone can see them, then there is still some freedom as it is open information – if it’s just a select few with the right “clearance,” then they shall see a copy of the Bill of Rights on my roof (that would take a *big* sticker) as well as my ACLU membership card writ large. And all that would be just above and to the left of all sidewalk chalk art in front of our house next to the weed-riddled yard. I fear that since the George W. years (and before, really), we are like the proverbial frogs in water not noticing as it heats to boiling and cooks us…hmmm…mebbe that’d be better. I’ll make a big statue of a frog in a stew pot and see what The Powers That Be make of that. Big green frog, perhaps wearing Lady Liberty’s crown, in a big red white and blue pot.
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1984 and big brother was a wonderful predicter wasn’t it.
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Sounds Mexican. Love it.
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Because the part of our yard known as the Back 40 is entirely invisible from the street and from neighbors when the trees are fully leafed out, any number of illicit activities have happened back there in the past (think teenagers and weeds). Now they’d only catch Husband gardening in the buff occasionally, and if we had a pool back there we’d be guilty of “skinny dipping”. At our age, the surveilance guys could hurt their eyes…
Nice to know there’s already the equivalent of roof stickers.
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Sheeesh! I have a back 40 and I was turned in by the lawn police for having grass longer than 4 inches! To see that, you would have to stand on a stepladder in my alley. Now I’m fighting mad. I want to borrow anybody’s horny teenagers and give my Nazi neighbors something bigger to complain about!
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🙂
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At my place of employ in the heart of downtown Saint Paul I know that there is no place outdoors or indoors where I can escape observation … this morning when I arrived I noted the installation of yet another outdoor camera … so I guess I’m already living the dream!
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Good to hear from you Nils.
And rest assured, your noting of the camera was noticed, and the incident has been recorded.
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My tech tale of the day. I bought two Samsung cell phones for my wife and I from Verizon on 12/1. Had to have one replaced 2 weeks later. Last Thursday one started acting up and the other one on Saturday. I took them in on Sunday the 1/1. They said they would have to see it acting up–freezing up basically–to deal with it. So it froze yesterday and I brought it. They told me that it was out of warranty as of yesterday and they could not replace it. They did replace them today.
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Nice going, Clyde! Did you have to threaten to mark their territory?
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I explained above, that’s my wee-fi.
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Greetings! Not being an outdoorsy person (like Crow Girl, that bright hurty thing in sky gives me sunburn), so I’m not too worried about what the eyes in the sky see — other than a less than American looking lawn. Clyde, I kept waiting for your famous quote — how does it go? The American lawn in the ultimate expression of our culture …. I don’t remember your exact words …
During the summer, my boys and I will practice our weapon forms outside at times, which might be alarming. Can’t exactly do them in the house — the bo staff is 5 1/2 to 6 ft long for tall adults. We just got some nunchakas that I’ve been having some fun with, too. But ouch — those can hurt whacking them around your arms and shoulders.
Next time I’m outside and I know there’s a surveillance camera watching me, I’ll be sure to flip’em the finger!
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Joanne–keep it raised pretty much all the time.
The Lawn is the highest expression of Western culture.
A quote from my son just now: Being a character makes high school worse but adult life better.
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Good gosh… I’ve been thinking about it for a few minutes and your son is exactly right!
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