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Stabilized Cameras for Long-Distance Surveillance
DrBlake writes "New York Times has an article about new systems used to stabilize cameras hung from aircraft. Apparently they make it possible to see many details at 500 meters or higher. The systems are interesting in themselves and the article raises interesting concerns about what implications the systems have on privacy."
My head in an aircraft counts as a stabilised camera which can see beyond 500 metres. That is, unless I'm in economy class.
From an American perspective:
1) Employers, insurers and financial institutions have access to your credit records
2) Employers and financial institutions have or are fighting for access to your medical records (why employ or make a loan to a dying man)
3) Marketing companies are tracking your shopping, spending, web viewing, etc. habits on a daily basis
4) In its fight against terrorism, the federal government is putting in place systems to find out anything about you at anytime (scan the headlines if you don't believe it).
I'm not paranoid. Just realistic and a bit fatalistic. Privacy in modern America is a myth. Watch what you say or do, because others certainly are.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Glad to hear the US/NATO are investing is some new kit to improve the quality of airborne surveillance pictures broadcasts to the whole of Europe.
I was told [from a reputable source] of the ability to hold a conversation to ground using a helicopter-mounted laser.
Obviously this secure as any attempt to tap into the conversation would break the beam - revealing the attack attempt.
All that seems straightforward, but the ability to stabilise and aim a laser from a helicopter [of all places] was a bit mind-boggling.....
For the Spy in the Sky, New Eyes
By IAN AUSTEN
FLYING in his helicopter, Sgt. Frank Sheer of the Orange County Sheriff's Department in Southern California can be literally miles from the action. But that does not mean that he and his co-pilot do not know what's going on. In fact, Sergeant Sheer says they often have a clearer picture of a crime scene than the officers who are there.
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"We'll be tracking a suspect on a hillside from the helicopter," said Sergeant
Sheer, the chief pilot in the Orange County force, "and the deputies climbing up it will be saying to us, `There's nobody here.' We've actually had them step on a guy who pulled up a bush for cover."
It's not just having a bird's-eye view that gives Sergeant Sheer and many other airborne police officers, rescue workers, military personnel, and television news and movie crews almost paranormal vision. Nor is it simply advances in optics and cameras. Ultimately they all rely on complex camera stabilization systems that mix mechanical and electronic technologies to produce steady images, even at high magnification, from inherently unsteady craft like helicopters and boats.
When officers pursued O. J. Simpson along the freeways of Los Angeles eight years ago, a covey of police and television news helicopters tracked him with stabilized cameras hanging at the sides in their distinctive ball-shaped pods. But most helicopter surveillance is not that dramatic. If the Orange County Sheriff's Department needs a car discreetly followed, Sergeant Sheer can keep tabs on it from 3,000 feet up and a considerable distance behind -- a position that would leave most motorists unaware there was a helicopter around, let alone watching them.
New systems built around all-electronic motion-sensing technologies are so stable that only the horizon and haze limit how far away observers can be.
The use of airborne stabilized cameras to create films or follow athletes in action attracts little controversy. Nor does anyone dispute that the systems allow police officers to capture criminals or rescue people. Some privacy advocates, however, are concerned that the recent proliferation of airborne cameras and the growing capabilities of new systems may mean that anyone who steps outside may unknowingly be a target of an aerial eye. Outdoors, there may no longer be any place to hide.
"Because technology affords police what amounts to superhuman vision, that doesn't mean we lose all expectations of privacy," said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's program on technology and liberty. "There are lots of innocent people who are going to have their privacy invaded -- observed naked in their backyard sunbathing from far away."
There is a long history of efforts to produce steady airborne pictures. But in the early years, the results were for the most part dismal.
Steven Poster, the president of the American Society of Cinematographers, recalls his first attempt at photography from a helicopter, in the late 1960's. "It was an Illinois State Fair, and the stabilization came from a rope tied around me to the helicopter," Mr. Poster recalled. "I quickly realized that this was not a very good system."
While more sophisticated systems existed back then, they did not differ much from Mr. Poster's rope. Known as side mounts, they generally relied on bungee cords and the user's body to isolate the camera.
By the 1980's Mr. Poster was a director of photography for feature films and television advertisements, and he had found an answer to his aerial photography problems with a system made by Wescam, a company now based in Burlington, Ontario.
"It's the best way to stabilize a camera," said Mr. Poster, who has used the system in films like "Stuart Little 2," which is to be released this summer.
The Wescam system used by Mr. Poster's film crews is remarkably similar to the original Wescam developed in the early 1960's by a Canadian subsidiary of Westinghouse as a battlefield surveillance tool for the Canadian military. (Wescam is short for Westinghouse camera.)
Eliminating the vibration from the helicopter was the first step and the easy part. The Wescam ball is attached to a helicopter or airplane through a shock absorber that uses springs and other damping materials. "It is tuned for the natural frequencies of helicopters," said Mark Chamberlain, a mechanical engineer who is president and chief executive of Wescam.
But eliminating the vibration does nothing to limit three other kinds of movement by the camera: pitch (plunging up and down), yaw (rotating around a vertical axis) and roll (the side-to-side rotation that creates a moving horizon).
To deal with these kinds of movements, inventors of the original Wescam turned to large gyroscopes, which create inertia. It is like strapping a large boulder to the camera to stabilize it, yet without all the weight that a boulder would add.
Inside the camera ball are three gyros oriented to offset each of the three types of unwanted motion. Motors attached to the camera mount allow an operator within the helicopter to view images from the camera on a video monitor and point the camera as needed.
The gyro stabilization system proved so steady that it has not significantly changed over the last three decades. But the system has one significant drawback: the gyros require frequent maintenance.
That is not a problem for the movie industry, which rents the camera systems for short periods. (Other companies, including Gyron Systems International, Tyler Camera Systems and Spacecam Systems, also offer stabilized motion picture cameras.) But the need for maintenance made the systems largely impractical for full-time use by police, the military and television stations.
After Mr. Chamberlain led a management buyout in 1987 of the engineering company that had come to control the Wescam technology, he turned its attention to introducing a technology that was more robust.
Instead of providing stability, its three gyros wobble slightly when the rig changes directions. Sensors measure the wobbling and feed the data to microprocessors that in turn use high-speed electric motors to move the camera and offset the unwanted motion.
he second-generation technology -- what Mr. Chamberlain calls a sense- and-react system -- has only about half the stability of the original Wescam, so it cannot be used with lenses with very high magnification. But for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, it is unquestionably an improvement over using hand-held binoculars from a helicopter.
"At 1,500 feet we're not reading license plates, but we can tell if it's a man or a woman on the ground," Sergeant Sheer said.
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Like many systems used by police forces, one of the two Wescam systems
owned by Orange County has a night vision camera that creates images by capturing the infrared radiation emitted by warm objects, including people.
But a United States Supreme Court ruling last June has forced the Orange County Sheriff's Department and other police forces to change the way they use those thermal imaging cameras. The court said that the police could not train thermal imaging cameras on private homes without a warrant.
Mr. Steinhardt of the A.C.L.U. said he would like to see legislators, rather than the courts, come up with specific rules for police use of helicopter camera systems. The A.C.L.U. does not oppose the use of cameras "under the rare circumstance that the police might be legitimately in pursuit of a hot suspect," he said.
"But in the end, that's not how it's going to be used," he added. "It's going to be used in ordinary law enforcement, and that's very different."
It is also being used from ever greater distances. Four years ago Wescam introduced a third stabilization system that combines the reliability of cameras like those used by the Orange County Sheriff's Department while offering even greater stability than the original system. It replaces the spinning mechanical gyroscopes with fiber-optic gyros, which use bursts of laser light to calculate movements by the camera system in each direction.
Once measured, the movement is also offset with a new technology known as magnetic torque motors that can apply a force in a specific direction but allow free movement in all other directions.
Not only is the new system much faster, said Steven Tritchew, Wescam's chief technology officer, but it will also provide a steady image with the magnification of "any lens being made." Practically speaking, atmospheric haze and, ultimately, the impossibility of seeing beyond the horizon are the only limits on how far it can see. "We call it the ground-based Hubbell -- we can see a long way," Mr. Chamberlain said.
Certainly Lt. Keith Howland, a mission commander and tactical coordinatorbased at the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Me., noticed a big difference after an old system in his P-3 Orion surveillance airplane was replaced by a turret with Wescam's new technology about a year ago. "You wouldn't even place them in the same universe," he said.
While on patrol, Lieutenant Howland said, he can watch events on the ground "well outside of visible range."
Like many civilian cameras, the Wescam on the P-3 can be aimed by punching in Global Positioning System coordinates. Software allows it to track moving objects on the ground more or less automatically.
While his aircraft's camera system cannot match the broad sweep of surveillance satellites, Lieutenant Howland said that it had many other advantages. "Basically we can be in real time on a target, see things at the moment they happen, and report it," he said. "It's live video versus a picture."
The systems can be costly, with the most advanced models costing as much as $650,000. But Wescam plans gradually to introduce variations on the new technology into all its markets, potentially giving police departments the same farsightedness. (The Raytheon Company recently introduced a fiber-optic gyro-stabilization system of its own. FLIR Systems of Portland, Ore., is also among the companies that make stabilization systems for police and military use.)
Mr. Chamberlain suggested that the most advanced technology might next go to an even more demanding customer than a police department chasing criminals or a military unit tracking terrorists: the broadcast news industry.
"From a pure image point of view, the military want uninterrupted imagery," he said, "but if it bounces a little bit once in a while or there's a little bit of fuzz on it from interference for a second or two, that's O.K. In the broadcast industry, if it jiggles a little bit or has a bit of fuzz when someone's crossing the finish line, well, you might not get invited back."
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
This kind of stuff has been around for years in the military. Sure, it's a nice compact little civilian package now, but it's not exactly revolutionary.
If you're a privacy zealot, I don't see this as nearly as concerning as tracking through credit card transactions, etc. And honestly, I don't have any problem with my picture being taken when I'm walking around outside. I'm not doing anything illegal, I'm not going anywhere shameful, and if someone wants to spend thousands of dollars on technology to enable them to watch my fat ass stroll from place to place then more power to them. And hey, they might even catch a criminal or two.
This seems fine and dandy and will help the authorities do what they are supposed to do in chase situations. However, I'm a bit surprised that even though it's claimed that recent Hollywood efforts are getting their hands on this, that it's similar to "the original Wescam developed in the early 1960's by a Canadian subsidiary of Westinghouse as a battlefield surveillance tool for the Canadian military".
That said, I wonder why it never made its way down to police sooner? Cost of maintenance, perhaps?
I do understand where the ACLU is coming from as regards the invasions of privacy. I believed we recently rehashed this over the debate on metal-detector technology in airports that would let clothing be seen through, or other such nonsense. Yet, I'm surprised no one has made that big a deal over Terra Server. Going on the resolutions they can get down to, you'd be hard pressed to hide much more than a naked sunbather in your backyard, and it's only a matter of time before satellite imaging will make even that impossible. Why the fuss over one and not the other?
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
"what implications the systems have on privacy."
What a troll.
If you are worried about he FBI, NSA or CIA using an aircraft to spy on you then you are definitely doing something very very bad or very very suspicious.
I have trouble with people reading my email or scanning my HD, but they can use cameras on anything they want for all I care.
I'm not that ugly.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
App: tabloid media journalists need one to get those photos of media stars sunbathing out their tan lines.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The systems are interesting in themselves and the article raises interesting concerns about what implications the systems have on privacy.
Long range cameras can indeed be an invasion of "My Privacy"(tm). As can telescopes, binoculars, strong reading glasses and eyesight in general.
I believe the government have used all the above to spy on people at some point.
I am a Karma Library.
Time to hack the old kitchen Microwave oven, and make a do it yourself home made radar.
Best to rig it for a pickup truck, so you have the space to do a phased array on the roof of a shell.
Miniturization is going to be a pain, though.
Side benefit -- smoking police speed trap radars.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Amongst all the comments that will flow about big brother etc it is interesting to note that there have been satellite systems in existance that can see small details from space since the late 1980's.
What we are talking about here is a gyroscopic stabilised mount which enables cameras on Police helicopters to get a clearer picture at long range. Some of the uses pointed out here are surveilance of suspects, search parties etc. The camera systems have existed on law enforcement helicopters for about 10 years that i can recall and have been getting more advanced every year - its hardly a violation of your rights in a new form unless of course you are worrying about the cops reading the paper over your shoulder.
At $650,000 US its a bit more than a toy and i dont see it being something used by a peeping tom - it raises a few issues on privacy but the fact is Police around the world have had the ability for years its just been an issue with vibration which is amplified the more you zoom making things like license plates harder to read etc.
Interesting but not a massive breakthrough and not something id lose sleep worrying about - the only people who would need worry would be people who were hiding from the police in the first place and it might even save some lives when used on searches.
PS some cooler uses of gyrostablised systems like this (if you like that sort of thing) can be found in new generation FLIR and Laser targeting systems on military aircraft (think the article mentions it)
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Your so concerned about privacy, but out-side your own homes, your privacy is 0. Even if the government (uk) doesn't put security cameras everywhere for all you know its because their hidden. Take a look next time you walk down the street. Any one of those people could be spying on you, with hidden cameras, microphones, wireless scanners, or even just cutting eye-holes in a newspaper :). Any of those buildings on the sides of the road could be full of people spying on you. How many times have you looked out of the window and watched someone walk down the road? It could be the government, a private detective, the mafia or even terrorists. What about camera crews? how do you know they're filming a documentary, they could be the government spying on you... I know there are laws to protect you from this sort of thing, but who follows laws?
Even in your home, the privacy you have is only there because of the walls surrounding you. Your phone could be tapped, there could be lasers pointing at your windows to pick-up sound. There could be infrared cameras looking for heat sources.
Lets not even talk about the isp admins who could be reading your mail...
You don't have any privacy.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Looks a lot like the "Zoom Cam" that my local news stations have had on the choppers for years.
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
If you want to contine to overthrow the government, run your meth lab or whatever you don't want the gubmint to see, just move it indoors. Protesting the gubmint taking photos of what you do outside is like giving the guest account on your computer root privaliges and protesting when people go through your hard drive.
Not exactly new. Sure, it's better, more refined. Hell, I saw a Discovery Channel special that featured these cameras several years ago. They're used on the "cop" shows all the time.
The main problem I see with this technology is that you can no long expect privacy in many situations - this means that privacy laws may no longer protect you from invasion to privacy in some of these situations.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
The "camera" is an Electro-magnetic sensor so it can see what you are typing, and can read the email that you are reading on your screen.
Not wanting badly regulated security agencies spying on you is not a case of doing some thing wrong, its a case that these agencies have a history of "bending" or breaking the laws themselves to justify their budget or opinions.
Sad to say that goverment is not of the people, by the people, for the people anymore. "interests" are at work and normal people are refered to as "collatoral damage".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Now we all know what this will really be used for...
Chief Wiggum: "Continue swimming naked...c'mon...continue!....OK Lou open fire"
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
1st Office: Nothing happening on the hillside, sir.
Sgt Sheer: OK, well lets head back over to that nudist colony with the hot chicks.
---------------
So when are they going to develope a countertechnology: the cloak of invisibility! We have airplanes with low radar profiles, (stealth) so what will it take for low visible / infrared / UV profiles? A kind of flexible mirror suit that reflects the surrounding environment?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Here are the results of a Google search for florida riley privacy supreme court. Google is your friend.
One simple rule for its versus it's
i swear to god, if i see any new pop-ups for the "BESTSELLING Wireless Color Stabilized Video Camera!"; somebody is going to die...
The systems are interesting in themselves and the article raises interesting concerns about what implications the systems have on privacy.
Well duh. This wasnt invented so you could take a close up picture of a flower while flying in an airplane. It was invented so we could spy on people. Now the question of who we are going to spy on........
Great Linux Site
For those wanting to find out more about this stuff some links.
Wescam page on their camere systems
The MX 20 is i believe the system they are talking about - has been widely fitted on naval and coast guard aircraft for a number of years
The company makes systems for space, marine and air and sells to the military and private enterprise. They make some very interesting systems and anyone interested in this sort of stuff or wanting to know just how non new this technology is head over and have a read. There are also sample images to show resolution etc of the systems.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Last week ABC news followed a worker in downtown Atlanta through her work day and counted the cameras- nearly 2000. A large fraction were along the roads observing traffic and in stores.
Time to go into the lead-lined tarp, tent, and awning business.
Yes, you too can protect yourselves from the prying eyes (infra-red or otherwise) of high-altitude aircraft and satellite telemetry.
Come visit Crazy Al's House 'O Lead and find out what deals await you!
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
why does every new idea/innovation/invention have to be seen as a threat to 'privacy'!?. /.
This line is getting played out on
Try this:
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
--grifter
Free GMail invite with Free iPods!
Are you kidding me? Have you ever SEEN the chicks in a nudist colony? Yuck...
I'm not exactly sure how this relates to improved police surveillance cameras, but Americans (and probably many other countries as well, especially England) have lost their privacy years ago. Think about it:
-Almost every school/store/bank/gas station/place of employment has security cameras- there is video footage of you almost anywhere you go
-Every time you do any banking at a branch office or pay for anything electronically (ATM, Credit Card), there is an electronic record of where you were at that time
-Every time you log into the Internet or use any site to purchase/pay a bill etc, there is an electronic record that you (or at least someone with access to your account) was online at that time
-If you attend college, there is an electronic record every time you use your ID to enter your dorm, go to the dining hall, check books out of the library, use the gym, etc.
I know I'm getting dangerously close to paranoia- I'm 99.99% sure that no one is tracking me or has ever attempted to track me. My point is simply that if someone wants to track me (or anyone else for that matter), it would be fairly simple to pinpoint my exact locations throughout the day.
Our society is becoming ever closer to matching the Big Brother/Enemy of the State model. The question: How do democratic nations such as the US defend civil rights while still protecting their citizens from criminals and terrorists?
I find myself being somewhat ambiguous on this issue. I hate the thought of the police or the government being able to observe common citizens- it is clearly dangerous and, in many cases, unconstitutional. However, what's the point of freedom if you can't leave your house without getting mugged or blown up? I'm going to have to do some more thinking about this, but my gut reaction is that I'll take my chances with the terrorists and the murderers rather than being under constant surveillance when I've done nothing wrong.
As far as the specific issue of high-tech police cameras- there are only two of these cameras and they are only in one city. Cameras are nothing new- simply increasing the technology is no more of a violation of privacy (or a police necessity, depending on your opinion) than the previous versions.
I don't know why I'm wasting my time responding to someone who posts anonymously- the Internet is anonymous enough, but here goes- I appreciate the cynicism in your comments, however, your statement wreeks of ignorance. Simply not using the metric system doesn't make a country a "backwater country". More importantly, just because the US doesn't use the metric system doesn't mean Americans don't know how far 500 meters is. Even arrogant Americans (I hope you appreciate the cynicism in that comment) can multiply by 3 and then put the word "about" in front of the number . This is a cheap shot- there are plenty of things about the US that deserve criticism, but those require a thought process, which you are clearly incapable of.
how the fuck is this redundant?
damn moderators dont know shit
It's redundant because all of that information was in the article. Considering it was the article, that's not too hard to figure out. There is no good reason to copy this article and post it as a comment.
Well, the original poster _did_ ask for a mirror, and if the poster of the trolling, redundant, underrated and informative post didn't have access to a webserver, where he could place a mirror, he posted a copy of the article on slashdot in a reply to the request for a mirror, thereby turning Slashdot into a mirror of the article.
That wasn't too hard to understand, was it?
So what? What does that have to do with anything? How does someone asking for it make it any less redundant? Any redundant comment is just a mirror (maybe not word for word) of another comment or something in the story/article itself. If you want a mirror of the article, ask NYT. Otherwise its probably copyright infringment. The information is readily and legally available in the linked article therefor any reposting of that information within the comment section is redundant.
One person can use binoculars, a whole organisation can use a networked camera. And record for ever what you have done even if it wasn't at all suspicious.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
See, the thing is, according to their oath that they all take, the US military should have revolted against the government decades ago. They are sworn to uphold the constitution, not the current regime or "US Foreign Policy". The constitution has been increasingly subjected to bastardizing and degradation at the hands of politicians, getting worse with every succession of each Congressman and Senator's term. However, since the military brass can't technically get another star to improve from Brigadier General to Major General and such without Congressional approval, it'll never happen...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Yeah,right.
Just in case, you might want to get one of these:
http://zapatopi.net/afdb.html
- Canon IS
- Zeiss
- Fujinon
I can hardly wait for the article about refrigeration. Did you know you can actually chill your perishable foods without buying any ice? Amazing!Edith Keeler Must Die
TV cameras were too heavy back in the 1960's, so they just had gyrostabilized binoculars, but the effect was about the same. The binoculars were made by a now-defunct company called ORDCO. LAPD owned several of them which they used in helicopters. There is an episode of Adam-12 (a police show from the late '60s and early '70s) where one of the officers is seen riding in a helicopter and using an ORDCO stabilized binocular to locate a suspect.
Neat stuff, if someone couples this tech with stuff from Intevac, look out. They have a system that they claim beats FLIR by a factor of 7, they call it LIVAR. More here"http://www.intevac.com/products.asp?ItemID=20 ", and here "http://www.intevac.com/products.asp?ItemID=51"
L8r,
If this device could really stop piracy, I'm sure the RIAA would have their hands on one by now.
Oh, sorry, I'm dyslexic today. Never mind.
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
Wescam makes a camera called the TrollCam. Perfect tagline: "Official camera of Goatse.cx"
Trollcam website
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
calm down..breath...geeze a bit paranoid are we? Does it really matter how much privacy you have when your outside your home anyway? I dont see the big fuss about worryin about your "privacy", People watch others because they are nosey (dont deny you do it too), police use cameras and other devices to catch criminals or suspects (which screening of anysort that is used is regulated by law), businesses use cameras and track everything on their computers for security of the business (again regulated)...theres no argument for privacy in any of that, in some aspects being less worried about someone watching your every move and just doing what needs to be done in every day life you will have no need for privacy at all. (note i said in "some" aspects)
-Alicia
...you want this. 0.5 arcsecond pointing and tracking accuracy for a 2.5-meter telescope on a 747 with a sunroof.
Anyone who is watched with this camera is just asking for it. Privacy concious users of the atmosphere are aware that their photons are not encrypted in transmission. Heck, even little Kodak kiddies can capture and analize them using widely available tools like the One-Shot(tm) obtained from their local grocery store.
That's why it is imperative that security concious users embrace encryption. With a sufficent application of trees, smoke, camoflauge, and other photon encrypting material it is virtually impossible to seperate the subject from the background noise.
Oops... my mistake, it's already patented.