The Pentagon recently released new details about a 1.8 gigapixel surveillance camera it has mounted on a drone. Here's an extract from a PBS documentary that gives you an idea of what that means in practice:
On first viewing, there is a certain 'gee whiz' factor to this camera and its capabilities, but on reflection, what's remarkable is how unexotic this now seems.
Sure, there's a lot of processing power required to make the information from such a powerful camera usable, but if that seems out of reach for anyone but the Pentagon, Moore's Law will surely take care of it soon enough. We live in a world in which a private company can release detailed satellite maps of North Korea, in which a father-and-son team can launch and recover a camera that take images from near-space, and in which almost everyone carries a video camera with them all the time. And the non-government use of UAVs is still in its infancy.
For good or ill, surveillance has been democratised.
