Hiding, not as easy as it used to be!

[Randy Rizzo]

This is probably old news by now and there's possibly better stuff out there by now. Still, pretty amazing stuff.

Ever wonder how they found the Boston bombers in just a few days?
This may help you to understand what the government is looking at.
This photo was taken in Vancouver, Canada and shows about 700,000
people.

Hard to disappear in a crowd. Pick on a small part of the crowd click
a couple of times -- wait – then, click a few more times and see how clear
each individual face will become each time. Or use the wheel on
your mouse.

This picture was taken with a 70,000 x 30,000 pixel camera (2100 Mega
Pixels.) These cameras are not sold to the public and are being installed
in strategic locations. The camera can identify a face among a multitude of People.

Place your computer's cursor in the mass of people and double-click a couple times. It is not so easy to hide in a crowd anymore.


http://www.gigapixel.com/mobile/?id=79995

[Matt Day]

I'm not a fan of clicking on links in chain mail. Especially since most of it can be debunked by snopes anyway.

[Bert Kemp]

Randy I'm curious as to were you got that info on the camera. Most any one can take pictures like that if you have a decent camera with a good telephoto lens.

[Dan Hintz]

I'm not a fan of clicking on links in chain mail. Especially since most of it can be debunked by snopes anyway.

Randy I'm curious as to were you got that info on the camera. Most any one can take pictures like that if you have a decent camera with a good telephoto lens.

GigaPixel is a known quantity, guys... they started back in the early 2000's making, well, Gigpixel-level digital camera systems. Some of their images are astounding. I didn't click on the link above because I've seen their work before.

[Jim Koepke]

I'm not a fan of clicking on links in chain mail. Especially since most of it can be debunked by snopes anyway.

Matt I can understand the not wanting to click on unknown links. Some sites like gigapixel are fairly well known for their images. Gigapixel does have some fun images to dive into.

On the other side of the coin, there is surveillance to a degree George Orwell couldn't imagine.

Ever shop Target? If you have, there is a major retailer who has a file on you without your knowledge. You only use cash? That doesn't matter to them. They may not know your name, but I wouldn't bet on that.

Target tracks everything customers do and records these activities into a database — so, if you’re a Target customer, chances are you have a Target Guest ID number in their computer systems.

http://nowiknow.com/targeting-crime/

They also work with law enforcement on some crimes.

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

GigaPixel is a known quantity, guys... they started back in the early 2000's making, well, Gigpixel-level digital camera systems. Some of their images are astounding. I didn't click on the link above because I've seen their work before.

Same here, some of their images are amazing.

jtk

[Bruce Page]

Guys, please do not turn this into a political rant thread.

Thanks

[Randy Rizzo]

Randy I'm curious as to were you got that info on the camera. Most any one can take pictures like that if you have a decent camera with a good telephoto lens.

Got it in an email from my brother, no idea where he got it. Agree if you had a camera of that quality you could perhaps get an image of that quality, but a crowd that size? If you've walked the streets of London, there are cameras everywhere. I cannot speak to the quality of those images though. Apparently this sort of surveillance is/has been going on for some time. I was just really surprised that you could actually scan the entire crowd with the detail that is evident. There were quite a few folks who might have been aware they were under surveillance as the one finger salute was being displayed by many

[Bruce Volden]

Well years ago (20+) I worked for the Post Office in a mail processing center.
We were told that the inspection service at that time had cameras in place
that could read the date off a dime at 100 yards.
Seems there was always somebody looking to pick valuables up that had fallen out
of envelopes. Part of the employment indoctrination noted explicitly this was NOT
permitted---didn't stop employees from trying 'tho!
I know nothing of cameras.

Bruce

[Dan Hintz]

Got it in an email from my brother, no idea where he got it. Agree if you had a camera of that quality you could perhaps get an image of that quality, but a crowd that size? If you've walked the streets of London, there are cameras everywhere. I cannot speak to the quality of those images though. Apparently this sort of surveillance is/has been going on for some time. I was just really surprised that you could actually scan the entire crowd with the detail that is evident. There were quite a few folks who might have been aware they were under surveillance as the one finger salute was being displayed by many

London CCTV cameras are about the quality you would expect... HD level in some areas, SD in others. But don't expect the average camera to be gigapixel-level.

Gigapixel images are done in one of two ways... with a special camera that is a giganto monster of a beast with multiple smaller cameras attached to a common mount, or one (or more) normal cameras shot from different positions. In the end, though, the final image is put together in software. They are not coming from a single lens system, so get it out of your heads that some small box on the street corner is taking Gigapixel-level images for crowd tracking purposes.

[Malcolm McLeod]

2 recent stories - -

1) Hi-rez cameras can capture an imagine detailed enough to ID the fingerprints of someone waving at the camera from ~20 feet away.

2) 'Camera' built from 300-400 iPhone-derived devices, then hovering at >20000ft above a city, can allow you to track a specific pigeon flying anywhere within 5-6 mile radius.

Y'all behave now. Ya' hear?

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

This picture was taken with a 70,000 x 30,000 pixel camera (2100 Mega
Pixels.)

It says right in the link that this image is made up of 216 photos, taken over a 15 minute span, then stitched together into one large image.

I've spent a lot of time in Vancouver, though, and Gigapixel has a lot of cool photos of Vancouver.

[julian abram]

Randy, I found this to be very interesting, was not aware how good this technology was. Thanks for posting!

[Brian Ashton]

Unfortunately I don't remember a lot of the details but a couple years back a government (think it was in UK) was bragging about their CCTV network and the facial recognition system they had just rolled out... Then a security experts piped in and said that the system was easily defeated simply by wearing a hat and looking down. The government had to admit that yes that was a problem...

[Moses Yoder]

What you are saying is that if I commit a crime, chances are I will get caught. I like that idea. Here I am minding my own business, never been sent to prison.