The press and the citizens of Baltimore have gotten hold of some information which has some of the residents up in arms. (And recent history demonstrates that this is a dangerous state of affairs in Charm City.) Ever since January, running all throughout the trials of the Freddie Gray police officers and the protests which were ongoing for most of that time, there’s been an eye in the sky watching them thanks to the Baltimore police and it has nothing to do with an Alan Parsons Project album. (Bloomberg)
[A] small Cessna airplane equipped with a sophisticated array of cameras was circling Baltimore at roughly the same altitude as the massing clouds. The plane’s wide-angle cameras captured an area of roughly 30 square miles and continuously transmitted real-time images to analysts on the ground. The footage from the plane was instantly archived and stored on massive hard drives, allowing analysts to review it weeks later if necessary.
Since the beginning of the year, the Baltimore Police Department had been using the plane to investigate all sorts of crimes, from property thefts to shootings. The Cessna sometimes flew above the city for as many as 10 hours a day, and the public had no idea it was there.
A company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, based in Dayton, Ohio, provided the service to the police, and the funding came from a private donor. No public disclosure of the program had ever been made.
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But the other shortcoming is far more serious. Why on Earth would they be paying someone that much money for a single Cessna to fly around during limited hours? The contract is costing them millions and by their own admission, the resolution of the resulting pictures is too poor to identify automobiles, say nothing of people. You can get some hints and potentially track the movement of a target if it can be matched up against ground cameras, but that’s about it.
We have drones now! They’re a lot cheaper and can fly any time, day or night. And thanks to the new regulations we discussed earlier today, you don’t need a certified Air Force pilot on call all the time. They can hire some sixteen year olds (which is the minimum FAA required age) with a more easily obtainable certification and have them flying their robotic cameras at lower altitudes all over town. High quality cameras are readily available and streaming video technology isn’t much of a mystery in 2016.
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UPDATE: (Jazz) Well, that didn’t take long. Once word of the program got out to a wider audience the Public Defender office was calling for them to shut it down immediately.
Baltimore’s public defender’s office is asking the police department to suspend its use of a private plane that had until last week been flying above the city streets recording aerial surveillance without the public’s knowledge.
Baltimore Deputy Public Defender Natalie Finegar sent Commissioner Kevin Davis and State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby a copy of the written request Monday.
In the letter Finegar writes that the program should not continue without “in-depth conversations” and that without judicial approval in the form of a warrant or court order, analysts should not view footage.
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- Discussion
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Sky cameras are watching Baltimore and the residents aren’t happy about it https://t.co/1xXWvJINR3
— HotAir.com (@hotairblog) August 30, 2016
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