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NASA Building Network of Smart Cameras Across US
kkleiner writes "A major government agency is looking to blanket the US with cameras that will never stop their surveillance. But don't worry, privacy pundits, those cameras will be spying on the sky, not civilians. NASA's All-sky Fireball Network is a series of cameras that track meteorites as they enter the atmosphere. With careful triangulation, NASA can not only know where the meteorites will land, they can determine where they came from as well. One of the coolest parts of the All-sky Fireball Network is that it's fully automated. Meteors are detected by a computer which sends images, video clips, and data analysis to William Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. Now you can get the same information as Cooke, too – the All-sky Fireball Network's website publicly records all the data for you to peruse."
If it's pointing up and is a fixed camera who is it going to be spying on?
What are the scientific/"practical" aims of this exercise, if any in particular? What is the type of camera used?
So what happens when hundred of meteorite hunters and wanna be's jump in their cars with in minutes and race to an area all wanting to find it ? Most likely going onto private properties hoping to get lucky looking for a 6ft tall rock and trampling the little pebble into the ground.
Considering the cuts that are being pushed through the House, especially for research of earth/space science stuff like tsunami warnings, I can't help but wonder whether it'll just get defunded in a few months. I hope not. This looks interesting, but no amount of federal funding for scientific research is safe from the politicians right now.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
If it's pointing up and is a fixed camera who is it going to be spying on?
Alien terrorists, obviously. They're the most dangerous kind, of course.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
MacAndrew...but don' tell him. We want all his secretes because he is such an interesting guy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I had just been visiting the USArray site to watch the animations associated with the Japan Earthquake right before I read this article. It's a similar idea.
Proverbs 21:19
Once a few of these cameras are vandalized, we'll need cameras that point down to protect them.
This should be great for tracking UFOs!
then they have nothing to fear.
I just want to give props to the guy or gal who came up with "All-sky Fireball Network" that name is so full of win I can't stand it. To bad it'll likely be referred to as the ASFN. Maybe we can get scientists to name our legislation packages for us!
Given that MacAndrew appears to be some species of Moonbat, fixed cameras pointing up are probably the best way to spy on him.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Mile high club inductees, obviously!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This isn't a concern at all. All you have to do is attach some infrared LED's to your tinfoil hat, and you'll be safe from CCD based cameras along with malicious electromagnetic signals. But seriously, the 'tech infrastructure' (a bunch of cameras?) needed to watch the whole sky would be completely different than what would be needed to watch the whole country. One camera pointed upwards with a wide angle lens would effectively cover many, many square miles of sky area if all you need to do is make out streaks of light. And they would all be spaced out evenly across the country, meaning the vast majority of them would be located in the middle of nowhere. Not even the most evil government regime in history would have any desire for this.
No kidding.
In South Jersey they have been installing lots of solar panels on telephone poles, each one about 1/4 square meter or so. They did not count on the fact that telephone poles and wires are a favorite hang out for birds. I've seen some that are totally covered.
These cameras will be smaller targets, but the bird problem remains.
They're actually setting up to track us all everywhere we go in our flying cars.
I'm thinking weatherproof housings with windshield wipers over the window, but that's just me. Yes, somebody is going to have to visit these on a regular basis for cleaning and maintenance.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You miss my point! I was playing paranoid and mostly grumpy about the expansion of security cameras and hidden cameras "gotcha" stings. There will be little difficulty getting coverage, it's mostly there already, and then there are the little remote control airplanes etc. No NASA needed (and the project does sound cool).
So smile. :)
<tinfoil>Yes... Cameras pointed at the sky... Just make sure there's not a second camera in the opposite end pointing down.</tinfoil>
What, at the ants?
"The network currently consists of 3 cameras placed in locations in north Alabama, northwest Georgia, and southern Tennessee. The network is growing all the time, with plans to place a total of 15 cameras..." http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/
"This looks interesting" is a lot more legitimate a reason than some of the random tax breaks we've pissed our money away on.
So it's "better than bad" and therefore "good"?
Bow-ties are cool.
<tinfoil>Yes... Cameras pointed at the sky... Just make sure there's not a second camera in the opposite end pointing down.</tinfoil>
Or even a giant mirror!
Bow-ties are cool.
Someone should ask the meteorites how they feel about that.
You miss my point! I was playing paranoid and mostly grumpy about the expansion of security cameras and hidden cameras "gotcha" stings. There will be little difficulty getting coverage, it's mostly there already, and then there are the little remote control airplanes etc. No NASA needed (and the project does sound cool).
So smile. :)
The exact name of the law eludes me, but there does exist one of those Internet Laws(tm) that posits that the more extreme and crazy a viewpoint (in this case, that of the paranoids), the more likely an attempt at making a parody or satire of said viewpoint will be indistinguishable from the viewpoint's legitimate views.
Or in other words, the tinfoil hat brigade quite seriously would say that, so the irony was lost and everyone assumes you to be one of them. Better luck next time!
pointing up doesn't mean crap if its on the ground
Only a matter of time before DHS builds stereoscopic aerial drone mirrors to fly over them cameras so they can turn them on the populace and get images in micro HD of everyone for thousands of miles. Given the resolution current optical and digital devices are capable of, it's conceivable this is a kaliedoscopic effort to capture all human activity at once.
This is all just part of their plan to find the stash of freeze dried ice cream I lifted from the Air and Space Museum in 1983. That stuff is still buried out in the desert somewhere and no one is going to get it. That's all that's going to be left after civilization crumbles, you know.
Signed,
Superman
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The three cameras are pointed straight up and out in the middle of fields.
Per the article
http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/whats-hitting-earth.jpg
So once again - If it's pointing up and is a fixed camera who is it going to be spying on?
and how soon after they get finished building this will they be visited by the NSA with a "request" to install some minor software patches the public need not know about?
All those airplanes, of course.
But if you have IR LEDs, you need a power source for them. The use of this creates an electromagnetic signature that could be identifiable through the unique interference pattern of your body and possibly radiated by the foil hat, thus enabling easier tracking from EM sensors monitoring passing objects.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
This sounds a lot like my SETINE idea, "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Near Earth" http://www.setine.com/
For this I was thinking of having 2 camera, wide angle high res still , and a Servo controlled 1080i HD camera with 35x Zoom like they use in high end CCTV systems.
The idea is the one camera would spot objects in the sky that don't follow expected patterns. The second on would zoom in and track it, and record it.
These could then be collected on the Internet and use crowd sourcing to ID objects and improve image processing algorithms for object identification.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
whoops, there was bug in the control mechanism leading to some of cameras accidentally following black car
There will be little difficulty getting coverage, it's mostly there already, and then there are the little remote control airplanes etc.
Interesting, I think this might (ultimately?) be to catch the citizens who want their own UAVs.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
--
Marvin (with the pain in all the diodes down the left-hand side).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
... you dumbfucks!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I suppose the government is going to start coming after all the meteorites.
Fireball tracking? Why? If it lands, we know where, and we know where it came from too, space. It's a UFO tracking system. "Fireballs" my arse!
Most people are mostly good most of the time.
Does the hardware allow for this? Also, won't the government have public specifications that would expose this possibility?