Bill Gates, Airbus, Softbank back EarthNow plan to cover Earth with real-time video surveillance satellites

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, theninja35 said:

Well, if you want to go there, then why haven't you considered this?:

 

Those same cameras could be used to watch a crime happen in live time. Police could be on the scene much quicker and would immediately know what's happening and who the perpetrator is. Little Jimmy might be abducted for five minutes before the police can rescue him. Missing children would no longer be missing because they could be found and tracked.The ability to see someone break into a house as soon as they enter would allow police to know exactly what they're dealing with. It would be about as close to Minority Report as we could get, as far as police response goes, anyway.

 

Also, what makes you think that the resolution on these will be good enough to track individuals, anyway? They specifically mention "large whales" and "fishing boats," neither of which are small objects. And we don't even know how detailed that would be. As far as we know, the boat could be two pixels long.

 

If you read the FAQ: Simultaneously, the “Spot View Imagers” can zoom in and see specific locations in more detail. For privacy protection, the resolution of the imagers will not be capable of monitoring an individual person. 

 

Look, I disagree with a mass-surveillance system, especially one that's accessible by anyone, but there is a lot of skepticism in this thread. Please tell me no one here actually thinks Bill Gates owns the coronavirus...

LMAO, Yeah Gates copyrighted the Virus back in 2017, 3 years before it existed.

 

I'm sceptical because once the precedence is set it becomes easier for them to increase resolution in the future and much harder for us to stop them doing it.

 

Like I said, most bad things start out with good intentions. They build the biggest mass surveillance system ever created with the intention of helping the world but in 10, 20 years time who knows where it ends up. We all know what governments around the world are capable of given the chance.

[Letgomyleghoe]

2 hours ago, MS-DOS Guy said:

You can't just make a claim with no evidence. How is this horrible? Can you provide some details as to why you don't like it, since personally, I think it's really beneficial since it allows people to view the world from outer space, each technological advancement we make, is another step into the future. And I think this is just one of them, although that may be subjective. I think it's really cool that we are expanding our eyes into space. And as the points OP made, it sounds nothing short of incredible.  

Whenever you walk around outside, you can be seen. whatever you do Outside you can be seen. This violates privacy laws imo

[SpaceGhostC2C]

13 minutes ago, theninja35 said:

 

Those same cameras could be used to watch a crime happen in live time. Police could be on the scene much quicker and would immediately know what's happening and who the perpetrator is. Little Jimmy might be abducted for five minutes before the police can rescue him. Missing children would no longer be missing because they could be found and tracked.The ability to see someone break into a house as soon as they enter would allow police to know exactly what they're dealing with. It would be about as close to Minority Report as we could get, as far as police response goes, anyway.

No, it would absolutely not be that. 
You see, this, as it is, is perfectly useful for tracking a pre-determined target of interest. To have any value as a "detection system for things you didn't know were about to happen" you would need an amazing level of automated, ultra-fast image scanning, of every square meter observed from the satellite, able to tell a crime from people just going about their lives with enough precision so as to a) be effective and b) not overwhelm the still limited police resources with false positives, and still only when happening in an area with unblocked satellite sight (not needed for tracking, as you can predict where the target will show up next based on last observable position and trajectory).

If anything, it's more like NSA's "we're collecting terabyte after terabyte of data while being physically unable to make any reasonable use of it for preventive purposes" situation.

 

So, while the argument "isn't torture great? It can make a terrorist tell the location of a bomb!" is flawed in itself, it doesn't even enter the picture in this case, not unless we project a science-fiction future, at which point we may as well assume literally Minority Report-style technology (which, by the way, wasn't meant as an utopia ).

On the other hand, no further technological development is needed to keep track a known, already identified target .

 

13 minutes ago, theninja35 said:

Look, I disagree with a mass-surveillance system, especially one that's accessible by anyone, but there is a lot of skepticism in this thread. 

"Skepticism" is when you find something hard to believe. In that regard, I'd say the only "skeptics" in this thread would be those seeing nothing wrong coming out of this  

[Curious Pineapple]

21 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

LMAO, Yeah Gates copyrighted the Virus back in 2017, 3 years before it existed.

 

I'm sceptical because once the precedence is set it becomes easier for them to increase resolution in the future and much harder for us to stop them doing it.

 

Like I said, most bad things start out with good intentions. They build the biggest mass surveillance system ever created with the intention of helping the world but in 10, 20 years time who knows where it ends up. We all know what governments around the world are capable of given the chance.

Copyright on a virus. Got some spare tinfoil here to go with your toilet roll stash if you need it.

[Delicieuxz]

36 minutes ago, theninja35 said:

Well, if you want to go there, then why haven't you considered this?:

 

Those same cameras could be used to watch a crime happen in live time. Police could be on the scene much quicker and would immediately know what's happening and who the perpetrator is. Little Jimmy might be abducted for five minutes before the police can rescue him. Missing children would no longer be missing because they could be found and tracked.The ability to see someone break into a house as soon as they enter would allow police to know exactly what they're dealing with. It would be about as close to Minority Report as we could get, as far as police response goes, anyway.

How would police know when a kid is being kidnapped? How would police know when someone is breaking into a house? Having surveillance doesn't mean there's a magic ability to know what is happening everywhere. There would have to be people monitoring footage to notice something happening in real-time - which would mean everyone is being monitored at all times, which would be a nightmare situation. And aside from how horrible that situation would be, there aren't enough police to persistently watch even a tiny fraction of all kids even if that was all the police did while ignoring all other types of crime.

 

I also think that there's nothing about the capability that necessarily would mean that police would be able to identify a perpetrator. Police first have to have to know where and when a crime took place. With a child abduction, that could be a major endeavour to figure out. And that's if the police would have archives of the footage for every square-inch of the cities they are investigating in. But in addition to those obstacles, whoever does the abducting would be working with the knowledge of the technology they used to facilitate their crime and they would take steps to prevent identification.

 

I think that enhanced crime-investigation capabilities granted by ubiquitous real-time surveillance don't at all come close to offsetting the enhanced crime capabilities enabled by that same system.

 

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Also, what makes you think that the resolution on these will be good enough to track individuals, anyway? They specifically mention "large whales" and "fishing boats," neither of which are small objects. And we don't even know how detailed that would be. As far as we know, the boat could be two pixels long.

That argument potentially works a lot more against the idea of identifying a perpetrator than against tracking an already-identified target victim. All that's needed to identify a target victim is matching the movements of a speck of a person to the movements of a person who is targeted. If they leave an elementary school and go to a certain house each day, that's enough to know that the person is a certain child who lives at a certain house.

 

But if the resolution isn't enough to identify specific people based on the image quality alone, then that means it can't be used to prove a person perpetrated a crime.

 

Quote

If you read the FAQ: Simultaneously, the “Spot View Imagers” can zoom in and see specific locations in more detail. For privacy protection, the resolution of the imagers will not be capable of monitoring an individual person. 

That might only mean that people are blurred or not high-res enough to identify who they are based on the image. But people can also be identified by their location movements.

 

The FAQ sounds like there isn't much of a limitation to what they're able to see:

 

"WHAT IS THE RESOLUTION?
The native video resolution, combined with image enhancement techniques, is designed to enable event monitoring and tracking applications consistent with existing and future customer requirements."

 

And their privacy comment sounds like their privacy protections are additive to the system's capabilities, and not hard-limitations on it. Which would mean that paying customers (corporations, governments, law enforcement) probably could use the system without those privacy protections, just like the NSA already ignores the law to go to all lengths to spy on anybody they want.

 

"HOW WILL YOU ADDRESS PRIVACY CONCERNS?
Privacy is fundamental to EarthNow. We will hire a “Chief Privacy Officer” to ensure that we not only meet the privacy laws in jurisdictions where we operate, but also that we respect societal privacy. We will work closely with governments and the public at large to address privacy concerns, while providing visual Earth coverage for the benefit of humanity and our planet."

[ARikozuM]

31 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Most bad things that happen begin with good intentions.

 

As for all the people worried about privacy, when they're talking about monitoring fishing ships I don't think the resolution will be high enough to monitor people so I think we're all safe from having the NSA watch us growing weed in our sheds or having sex in the pool. At best you'll probably be about this big (-->o<--) on the image.

Can't tell if that's a "blip" or an "O-face"...

 

Either way, not good. 

[Delicieuxz]

19 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Copyright on a virus. Got some spare tinfoil here to go with your toilet roll stash if you need it.

I'm sure they meant patented. Methods of producing the virus might be patented, or modified versions of the strain could be patented. I don't know what Bill Gates' relation to any patents related to coronavirus is, but there is a patent for culturing coronavirus.

[Curious Pineapple]

2 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

I'm sure they meant patented. Methods of producing the virus might be patented, or modified versions of the strain could be patented. I don't know what Bill Gates' relation to any patents related to coronavirus is, but there is a patent for it.

I've seen that so many times, it's a, now I don't want to seem rude here, VACCINE FOR FUCKING BIRDS.

 

It's right there in the patent, unless "The respiratory infection predisposes chickens to secondary bacterial infections which can be fatal in chicks." relates to humans of course

[PlayStation 2]

NOT A DYSTOPIA NOT A DYSTOPIA NOT A DYSTOPIA NOT A DYSTOPIA 

[theninja35]

Just now, SpaceGhostC2C said:

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"As close as we can get to Minority Report" does not mean we're predetermining crimes. This is real life, dude, come on. We're not fortune tellers lol..."As close as we can get" means we can see it in real-time, and police can respond almost immediately. An immediate response time is the fastest time possible without using an inaccurate prediction system.

 

Just now, Delicieuxz said:

--

I mentioned how tracking can be used for police. If a criminal can track a specific kid (out of how many hundreds?) that gets on a bus from school and heads home, what makes you think that police wouldn't be able to track a criminal? If little Jimmy was somehow taken from his home, you don't think that the police could record his abductee's every movement and turn from the second that Jimmy was abducted? If a criminal can track a little kid on the cameras, then a criminal's vehicle could be tracked even easier. Maybe response time wouldn't be immediate, but if a police department recorded their area on one of the 500 satellites, they could follow traces back and investigations would come to a conclusion far quicker. As long as someone knew where Jimmy was last spotted and when, it would not be hard to track what happened to him after that.

 

Also, it seems like you're pushing the meaning of the FAQs. Event monitoring doesn't sound like stalking a kid to me, it sounds like watching a hurricane or a forest fire. Just in-line with what they want the service to be able to do. And if you don't want governments spying on you, then you should address the administrations that were working on that some 20 years ago or more.

 

Anyway, there are only 500 satellites. Even if they implement more, that's only a handful per country. Maybe not even, considering it sounds like there are going to be satellites located above more remote areas and oceanic areas. Those cameras would have to be unbelievably high resolution to even be able to spot a person on a live camera, let alone track their every movement without suffering from serious detail loss. Google Maps might have a fraction of the satellites, but those satellites run all over the Earth constantly and use data that might be acquired years before it's stitched together with new data and implemented onto Google Maps. There is no way only 500 satellites can provide more detail than the Maps satellites while still being only seconds off of real-time.

[Master Disaster]

31 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Copyright on a virus. Got some spare tinfoil here to go with your toilet roll stash if you need it.

It was sarcasm and TBH pretty obvious sarcasm.

[justpoet]

While technologically cool…this shouldn't happen.  There are tons of reasons against it, many mentioned in the thread already, and I would indeed be sending notes to congress and others to object.

 

That being said…the reason I went through the thread is to be disappointed.  How has nobody brought out the very obvious reference of Gates being involved with a massive satellite system.  NURV in the movie Antitrust. 

 

[Curious Pineapple]

23 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

It was sarcasm and TBH pretty obvious sarcasm.

I've seen it said so many times recently by people who believe it that may sarc-o-meter has had a buffer overflow and crashed.

[Chriller]

3 hours ago, MS-DOS Guy said:

What do you mean by "modifying the lens"? 

I would imagine they mean modify the lens to have some form of zoom that would make the image appear as if they were standing 10 feet away from something rather than 50 feet, as an example.

[Delicieuxz]

1 hour ago, Curious Pineapple said:

I've seen that so many times, it's a, now I don't want to seem rude here, VACCINE FOR FUCKING BIRDS.

 

It's right there in the patent, unless "The respiratory infection predisposes chickens to secondary bacterial infections which can be fatal in chicks." relates to humans of course

It's a method to produce a strain of coronavirus in order to use it as a vaccine. But it's still a strain of coronavirus.

[Curious Pineapple]

Just now, Delicieuxz said:

It's a method to produce the virus in order to use it as a vaccine. It's still the virus.

Its an attenuated version of a coronavirus, not the current SARS-COV-2 virus. There's more than one coronavirus you know

[Delicieuxz]

1 minute ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Its an attenuated version of a coronavirus, not the current SARS-COV-2 virus. There's more than one coronavirus you know

I'm aware of that.

[Curious Pineapple]

1 minute ago, Delicieuxz said:

I'm aware of that.

So what does a 3 year old vaccine patent for a different virus have to do with the current pandemic?

[Delicieuxz]

5 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

So what does a 3 year old vaccine patent for a different virus have to do with the current pandemic?

I didn't comment on whether it relates to Covid-19. I only said, in response to the contention over the idea of copyrighting a virus, that I didn't know if Bill Gates has any association with patents for coronavirus but that viruses can be patented and there is a patent for culturing coronavirus:

 

1 hour ago, Delicieuxz said:

I'm sure they meant patented. Methods of producing the virus might be patented, or modified versions of the strain could be patented. I don't know what Bill Gates' relation to any patents related to coronavirus is, but there is a patent for culturing coronavirus.

 

[Curious Pineapple]

1 minute ago, Delicieuxz said:

I didn't comment on whether it relates to Covid-19. I only said, in response to the contention over the idea of copyrighting a virus, that I didn't know if Bill Gates has any association with patents for coronavirus but that viruses can be patented and there is a patent for culturing coronavirus:

 

 

You edited your post after I replied, initially you said "there is a patent for it"....

[Delicieuxz]

Just now, Curious Pineapple said:

You edited your post after I replied, initially you said "there is a patent for it"....

I think I had edited it before you submitted your post. You probably clicked the quote button before I had submitted my edit.

 

Either way, the edit for clarity doesn't change what was I was saying. There is a patent for it. Specifically, for culturing it. That's still a patent for coronavirus.

[PocketNerd]

Someone forgot to put a Big Brother joke in the thread title.

[Delicieuxz]

1 hour ago, theninja35 said:

I mentioned how tracking can be used for police. If a criminal can track a specific kid (out of how many hundreds?) that gets on a bus from school and heads home, what makes you think that police wouldn't be able to track a criminal? If little Jimmy was somehow taken from his home, you don't think that the police could record his abductee's every movement and turn from the second that Jimmy was abducted? If a criminal can track a little kid on the cameras, then a criminal's vehicle could be tracked even easier. Maybe response time wouldn't be immediate, but if a police department recorded their area on one of the 500 satellites, they could follow traces back and investigations would come to a conclusion far quicker. As long as someone knew where Jimmy was last spotted and when, it would not be hard to track what happened to him after that.

That scenario relies on there being archives of all recorded footage for police to look back into and examine. I don't know if that will or won't be the case, but I wonder how much storage space would be required to store a day to a few days of high-resolution satellite footage covering all of Earth.

 

However, if someone wanted to kill someone, they could find the movement patterns of their target and then attack them when they're vulnerable and away from witnesses. But the perpetrator might then mask their own movement by afterwards walking into a busy place like a mall and changing clothes before walking out again.

 

If a person wants to rob a house, they could scout out a vehicle to use for the robbery (a lot of robberies are done using stolen vehicles), then use public transportation, especially something like a subway, to hide their movement history to reach the vehicle they're going to steal. Then use that stolen vehicle for the robbery, then take the vehicle with the stolen goods in it into an underground parking lot, transfer the goods to another car that was waiting, and then leave the underground parking after some time in that other vehicle. It is also common for stolen vehicles used in robberies to be abandoned afterwards.

 

If a person aims to abduct someone, I don't know exactly what they might do, but I wouldn't be surprised if they could find ways to cut-off the visual trail.

 

Quote

Also, it seems like you're pushing the meaning of the FAQs. Event monitoring doesn't sound like stalking a kid to me, it sounds like watching a hurricane or a forest fire. Just in-line with what they want the service to be able to do. And if you don't want governments spying on you, then you should address the administrations that were working on that some 20 years ago or more.

 

Anyway, there are only 500 satellites. Even if they implement more, that's only a handful per country. Maybe not even, considering it sounds like there are going to be satellites located above more remote areas and oceanic areas. Those cameras would have to be unbelievably high resolution to even be able to spot a person on a live camera, let alone track their every movement without suffering from serious detail loss. Google Maps might have a fraction of the satellites, but those satellites run all over the Earth constantly and use data that might be acquired years before it's stitched together with new data and implemented onto Google Maps. There is no way only 500 satellites can provide more detail than the Maps satellites while still being only seconds off of real-time.

I don't personally know how satellites are designed. So, I can't comment on how broad of a territory a satellite camera might cover in high-res, or if a single satellite can have dozens of cameras or lenses on it.

[Delicieuxz]

3 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

Someone forgot to put a Big Brother joke in the thread title.

What's a good one?

[Mihle]

If its high enough resolution to track people, then I hate it.

If its only enough resolution to track ships and forest fires, but not people, then go ahead, I want it.