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Satellite Images Used to Document International Atrocities
wikkedwoman wrote with a link to a Washington Post story about the use of satellite imagery to detect atrocities around the world. The story details Amnesty International's efforts to identify areas in the world that may have been subject to man-made disasters. By comparing and contrasting imagery captured over time, researchers can produce hard evidence to present to a hard-to-please international community. "Tonight, [Amnesty Researcher Jeremy] Nelson begins his work by making a copy of the [older] shot in the right-hand screen and pasting it directly over the [newer] one on the left. Then he makes the top one nearly transparent. A river that cuts through the scene becomes a marker to help him line up the two. Now he can easily flip back and forth to look for changes. Sudanese huts tend to follow a similar pattern: a solid base ring with a steep, thatched roof. In the earlier image, they show up as small circles, with a slight shading to the dome, depending on the direction of the sun. Nelson draws a small, green circle slightly larger than the area of the average hut and makes several dozen copies of it ... When he finishes, he moves the 2007 shot to the top and begins the analysis again ... parts of this region were burned so thoroughly that there's nothing left but a large black scar. If you didn't know that huts were there before, you'd have no idea they were now gone. 'Whoever did this did a good job,' he says quietly. 'Thorough, at least.'"
4Z5TX
...there are all kinds of atrocities going on internationally and domestically (for you /.'ers here in the US) that you don't need more than a pair of eyes to see. How many times a day do people just blow off the homeless and starving people of their own country.
Yes there are problems like Gitmo, Darfar and Sudan. Hell there is most of a continent that is what I consider an international atrocity because of starvation, disease, and corruption.
What about all the homeless people here in the US, the overrun VA hospitals with deplorable conditions and the Katrina victims still waiting for FEMA--things we can see without Satellite Imagery?
Maybe we should handle those problems first before we spend the big bucks on the technology to look for more problems we can't afford? And for fscks sake, no, I'm not saying that any atrocities found with this tech are of any less importance than the ones found without it. Human suffering is human suffering--it all sucks. But that money AI used for the satellite images could have been feeding people in Africa and the US and elsewhere... ~sigh~
I guess I'm just not as excited about technology as I am about humanitarianism. I feel like this is getting ahead of ourselves.
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Maybe so, but how can you justify that troops are being used in Irak instead of Darfur where they most likely would have, if not done the most good, they would have prevented the most bad from happening...
www.aleo.no
guess again mate... there's plenty of reports of atrocities being carried out by US troops in Iraq - the funny thing is, the orders seem to be coming from the top.
Come back and say what you said when you're parents are dead from US bombs, your brothers are in Abu Graib, and your sister was raped and shot by US soldiers.
unless it's in Europe.
Germany? Genocide.
Serbia? Genocide.
Some village full of uncivilized savages? Nah, that's just them being normal.