Hawkeye could bring “eye in the sky” surveillance to cities

Remember the “eye in the sky” idea, where satellites are powerful enough to keep track of every single person on earth, with street cameras helping it keep track of our movement, coming in and going out? Well, it seems that such an idea is about to be realized soon, where such a surveillance system has already been flying above America’s cities, being able to look out for crime round the clock – sounds like something Bruce Wayne/Batman would love to have.

When sheriff’s deputies here noticed a burst of necklace snatchings from women walking through town, they turned to an unlikely source to help solve the crimes: a retired Air Force veteran named Ross McNutt. McNutt and his Ohio-based company, Persistent Surveillance Systems, persuaded the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to use his surveillance technology to monitor Compton’s streets from the air and track suspects from the moment the snatching occurred. The system, known as wide-area surveillance, is something of a time machine – the entire city is filmed and recorded in real time. Imagine Google Earth with a rewind button and the ability to play back the movement of cars and people as they scurry about the city.