Right now, a Cessna plane outfitted with multiple cameras is flying over Baltimore to conduct wide-area surveillance. Those four to six cameras can capture an area of about 30 square miles. The real-time images are stitched together and continuously transmitted at a rate of one per second to analysts on the ground.
The public has no clue the Cessna is flying and filming overhead, sometimes for 10 hours a day, or that the Baltimore Police Department has been tapping into that surveillance to fight crime. It’s being conducted by a private company, Persistent Surveillance Systems; the surveillance has not been publicly disclosed and is being funded by a private donor.
The captured images are stored on hard drives so they can be pulled up and reviewed at a later date if needed. According to Bloomberg, which has aninteresting and in-depth report, Ross McNutt, the founder of Persistent Surveillance Systems, pitches the surveillance as: “Imagine Google Earth with TiVo capability.”
Baltimore Paying For Secret Aerial Surveillance Of Entire City
Baltimore Paying For Secret Aerial Surveillance Of Entire City