This Surveillance Stuff Is Starting To Bug Me

Why are you so sure? The cutting edge on this sort of thing isn’t exposed publicly, and cell phones (with their low cost ceiling and need to make profit) aren’t a good analog.

I have no idea about what the people above saw (it does seem odd, but it’s easy to get false observations), but there is a lot of research going on in this field right now – specifically for spying, which the government admits a keen interest in.

My gut feeling from the research I’ve read about is that they’re not quite there yet, but that’s in no way clear, and I’d bet that within 5-10 years such tools will be available.

If the protesters were worried about being spyed on, they should be more concerned with shotgun microphones, traffic cameras, and spy satellites that are being directed by a sinister beaurocrat played by Jon Voight.

Agreed. There are better ways to do such surveilance, even if dragonfly cams are available. Simply infiltrating protest organizations for example, which the FBI has a proven penchant for.

I’m not sure that I can buy some super secret spying technology being used on a domestic march, with the inherent risk of someone knocking it down and taking it home (10 feet off the ground? That small yet close enough you could see spheres on its back? Anything that close is in real risk of being grabbed.)

And of all things to spy on - how hard is it to take pictures and listen in to people in a march without being seen with current technology?

This sounds like Art Bell fodder. ;)

You know the constraint on Intel fab size is profitability, right? I suspect the NSA could get anything they want if they pay for it.

Nope. Worked with Intel until recently on development of 32 and beyond. Constraints are still design and performance and things like dielectric constraints. For whatever thats worth to this discussion.

When it comes to the hardware necessary for a solid communications link in an urban environment, sure they are. Especially considering the bandwidth you’d need to make any such platform useful for video, or even still photographic recon. Even assuming you’ve got some ultra-keen CCD arrays that are better than anything available in the civilian world, how are you going to transmit the data stream? If you’re trying to compress to meet bandwidth restrictions how are you going to find the computational power under extreme size and power limitations?

I guess we’ll just have to disagree. IMHO the cost constraints on cell phone technology are a significant hindrance, and assuming something like the NSA is limited to publicly available technology is misguided.

Simply attaching a very thin wire for power and data transmission would go a long way. It’s also not clear to me that some sort of miniature low power directional wireless isn’t already feasible (for projects without market constraints) – which would be easily enough to transmit low res video for navigation, and high res photos for identification.

Moreover, you wouldn’t necessarily even need video, as you could guide positionally (triangulating from two known beacons), or from a remotely placed viewpoint (as radio controlled planes are).

From what I’ve seen, all the components are right on the cusp of being developed in the private and university research sectors, and it’s not such a stretch to think the government spy agencies are a step ahead in their field of expertise, and the main barrier is likely to be working out engineering kinks.

Again, my gut feeling is that it’s not yet feasible, but will be soon.

Ask the CIA, they’re the ones doing it, not me. Unlike me, with my thousand dollars a month budget, they’ve got millions of dollars and they’ve had thirty years to mess around learning how to do all that stuff.

Declaring something impossible just because you or I or any of us here don’t know how to do it is pretty silly, no? Lack of evidence does not constitute proof and all that.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!

Just put cameras on regular flies and let them use their patchouli oil guidance systems, if you want to monitor hippies. No need to have fly driving software, everyone we want to watch is filthy anyway.

Either way, it’s a bad idea to have expensive technology that betrays your presence floating around where anything sticky or anyone with a net can capture it. Human beings might be conditioned to ignore a lot of things, but insects always seem to catch the eye here in North America. Maybe it’s different in Sally Struthers’s videos, I don’t know.

Yeah, this is the key. Dragonflies that take pictures would be a pretty clever idea if some joker hadn’t already invented video cameras. There might be situations where this kind of Totally Spies gadgetry would be useful, but covering a large march down a public street is not one of them. Besides, do you really want cameras rolling while the cops use their experimental ultrasound pain generators?

Evidence of the absence of evidence is not the absence of the evidence of absence.

Shit, I’m so confused. If I bend over, will you forgive me?

After a certain point, you can’t do something for any amount of money. In some fields, industrial R&D does far outstrip what even the US Government can afford to spend in black programs. It’s one step removed from hand-waving about using captured alien technology.

How long of a wire do you expect to be able to attach to an object weighing less than a gram?

Assuming you had the capability on the downlink, the tracking would be a significant challenge. The best way to do it would be…with a UAV.

If the government could work around the FAA restrictions on UAVs in urban airspaces, they wouldn’t need some magical dragonfly to begin with.

If you don’t have video, what’s the point as a surveillance platform? And for that matter, if you’re planning on using it internationally in remote covert situations, how do you intend to operate the infrastructure for differential positioning support? Or in a building? Why are you spending billions of dollars for something that can only be used in carefully controlled domestic environments when there are cheaper alternatives?

Which components? Might I add, systems integration is a bitch. We’re talking about a device which would be blue-sky in the following areas:

Powerplant (density, efficiency)
Flight Control (making the control software work at all, interfacing autonomous control, stability control with manual control inputs, dealing with control input loss due to communications drop out)
Communications hardware (antenna design, power requirements, robust spread spectrum implementation)
Computational hardware (power efficiency, computational capability: flight control, spread spectrum signal encoding/decoding, sensor system processing
Sensors (power efficiency, resolution, size)

The development cost of this piece of state-of-the-art technology was around 4.5 billion dollars. It involved hundreds of engineers across a span of disciplines.

Our dragonfly in each of it’s engineering subsystems is far more challenging than it’s UAV equivalent, and you think there are a few people kicking around in a basement at Langley that have whipped it up?

My gut would be 2020ish, and would involve a fair bit of biotech that doesn’t exist yet.

And it most cases it would still be easier to use a UAV.

I was just quoting the Boondocks quoting Donald Rumsfeld, as interpreted by Samuel Jackson playing a cartoon white man. It seemed appropriate.

That was the best cartoon ever.

/sign

An interesting article about research at Oxford:

They add that most of the weight is from batteries (theirs’ had a 38 minute life), which could obviously be cut down by shortening operating time. This is low budget research stuff too, and I think it’s reasonable that bigger budget spy agencies can do better.

I’ve seen recent public research on the surprising ease of controlling insects electronically as well, and with the such light weight cameras I’d revise my prediction, and guess there is a 50% chance such surveillance is feasible now, albeit with short range and battery life.

Also, spying on a demonstration seems like the perfect place to test such new tools out; if I’d just gotten hold of them that’s exactly what I’d do. Sure it’d be easier to use other methods, but it’d make a good field test, and any reaction would give an idea for how easily such surveillance is spotted.

Is the best cartoon. Is. Apparently they have just begun a season 2.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to more Boondocks. Although I have to say, my perspective on that “Xbox Killer/Convenience Store” episode has really changed. When I first saw it, it was hilarious. When I went back to it later, it wasn’t enjoying it as much, and eventually it dawned on me that it was because nothing it satirized had been abandoned in the intervening period. It was making me sad and disgusted instead of entertaining me. Maybe sometimes the real world is too ugly for commentary.

Edit: This is P&R and not EE, right? I’m just making sure. Okay, good.

Woot.

The only thing I can compare it to is political Bloom County strips at their finest. The “Wimp Or Shrimp” election lever one is particularly poignant these days. But Bloom tended to have softer edges. McGruder writes like a fork to the eyeball.

Edit: This is P&R and not EE, right? I’m just making sure. Okay, good.

What, are you serious? EE is the one with Kunikos and friends bitching about it not being P&R. Duh.