“This is the next generation of surveillance … it is important for the public to know that some of these capabilites exist.”
These are the words of Yiannis Antoniades, designer of Argus, the world’s highest resolution camera with 1.8 billion pixels. Antoniades is an engineer with BAE Systems and developed the camera under contract to DARPA. The camera uses Wide Area Persistent Stare and shows an example of a 15-square-mile area video image that offers multiple drill-down capabilities. Colored boxes highlight moving objects, including cars and people and even birds. You can see a man waving his arms; the camera can see objects as small as six inches on the ground.
But is it being used now? The answer to that question is “classified”, says the video.
Really? THAT is classified? So why does that remind me of this clip from the 1980 film Airplane!:
For the record, the Argus video does state that it has, “for the first time … permission from the government to show some of these capabilities.” So unless that claim is a lie, I don’t think it’s some rogue video.
It’s just an amazing advance in technology.