24 August 2011

Still Think Big Brother Ain't Watching You?

This ought to instill an appropriate level of fear, then


The above photo by Ronnie Miranda appeared various places following the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver in mid-June. But the original is not just any wide-angle shot, for what he captured was actually a massive 1.0 gigapixel (one billion) digital image...

Such a capability offers astonishing detail that is obviously useful to anyone working in law enforcement or security/intelligence -how useful?

Simply click on the pic above and then zoom right down by double-clicking on anybody in the crowd... pretty scary. One can clearly see the faces of almost every single individual (prior to the trouble breaking-out) with just this one pic- and there were thousands upon thousands of people there. 

Combine this with rapidly-evolving face recognition technology and the unsettling Orwellian implications are plain. Vancouver Gigapixel

You expected to retain a speck of privacy in the 21st century? How quaint- get ready to be disappointed.

Do note that this technology was simply something in the hands of a private commercial photographer: just think what the police/FBI/CIA/DHS/military must have at their disposal (!)


Alas, the unprincipled partisan snake (who speak with forked tongue) that still occupies the Oval Office provides constitutionally-aware patriots with additional cause for concern: you've got to wonder how many 'gigapixel' photo crews the progs have shadowing GOP candidates and TEA Party events- I'd bet money they're doing it already, not to mention DHS keeping an eye peeled for those (non-existent) white, middle-aged terrorists (and other Obama political opponents) Big Sis mumbles about periodically.

Scotland Yard and MI-5 fancy this sort of thing, too- in a big way: in fact they've already got one public CCTV camera for every 32 people in the UK... appalling wall-to-wall voyeurism the DDR's incessant Stasi snoops could only dream of...


NPR   CBC   Wikipedia  The Guardian   Maggie's Notebook   (UK) h/t Roberto