Over the past year, police in Compton, Los Angeles have been testing a surveillance system that allows officers to monitor every car and person in real time as they travel around the city. The system, billed as a ‘Live Google Earth’ was invented by a retired Air Force veteran who owns a company called Persistent Surveillance Systems.
In the video (below), the Center for Investigative Reporting looks into a number of innovative surveillance technologies that are being trialled by the police including the Hawkeye system. Persistent Surveillance Systems founder Ross McNutt describes his product as, “a live version of Google Earth, only with TiVo capabilities,” and allows police officers to monitor the city from above in real time, pause or even rewind the footage.
PSS has retrofitted a number of planes with an array of high-resolution cameras that allow the pilot to record a 25 mile area of a specific location in real time for up to six hours. This system is similar in a lot of regards to what a satellite can do, but it also allows users to rewind footage, zoom in and follow specific suspects and cars as they move around the city.
The surveillance system isn’t clear enough to ID suspects by face, but when used with other on-the-ground video sources it can identify people as they leave the scene. The system has been piloted in Baltimore, Dayton and Compton with good effect and there are plans to roll it out in other areas of the country.
There are, however critics of this new technology who say that the system is an ominous invasion of privacy, but according to its creators and police, the technology is not as invasive as some current systems as it cannot look into people’s homes or identify faces.
Check out the video below to see what other emerging technologies are being used by the police: