- Ross McNutt has a superpower — he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter-flash. But should he?
In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team came up with an idea. With a small plane and a 44 mega-pixel camera, they figured out how to watch an entire city all at once, all day long. Whenever a bomb detonated, they could zoom onto that spot and then, because this eye in the sky had been there all along, they could scroll back in time and see - literally see - who planted it. After the war, Ross McNutt retired from the airforce, and brought this technology back home with him. Manoush Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark from the podcast “Note to Self” give us the low-down on Ross’s unique brand of persistent surveillance, from Juarez, Mexico to Dayton, Ohio. Then, once we realize what we can do, we wonder whether we should.
"... wonder whether we should." Man. That just nails it on the head. Yesterday three idiots tried to hold up a 7-11 (convenience store) in downtown Seattle, next door to my company's product development offices. Gun battle, two cops shot, two of the robbers killed, and the third captured after a brief standoff and the cops using a flashbang on her. Ross McNutt could rewind their approach. Find out where they were earlier in the day. A weapons storage locker? A house where others were planning other robberies? Starbucks? These people don't show up on our radar until after they pull the sawed-off shotgun from under their coats, suddenly, in the middle of a store. I want to think that being able to go back and see their activity prior to the event would be ... ummm ... helpful? ... in, umm... some way? Maybe? Damn.
Know a guy who was working on this in 2012. The resolution is now in the gigapixel range and apparently the things consume a large fraction of the available liquid helium. But that's the experimental military stuff. The megapixel shit? already in Baltimore.