City-wide Surveillance From a Single Point

Dec 4th 2020

Wide-Area Motion Imagery
References

Wide-Area Motion Imagery

Darkroom is starting a small rubrick concerning privacy. We will detail different active technologies and try to bring awareness towards them.

There is not much information available on Wide-Area Motion Imagery. Only a couple good results can be found through various search engines. They do give us a small glimpse into what WAMI actually is. An exerpt from wikipedia reads:

Wide-area motion imagery (WAMI) is an approach to surveillance, reconnaissance, and intelligence-gathering that employs specialized software and a powerful camera system—usually airborne, and for extended periods of time—to detect and track hundreds of people and vehicles moving out in the open, over a city-sized area, kilometers in diameter. For this reason, WAMI is sometimes referred to as wide-area persistent surveillance (WAPS) or wide-area airborne surveillance (WAAS).

A WAMI sensor images the entirety of its coverage area in real time. It also records and archives that imagery in a database for real-time and forensic analysis. WAMI operators can use this live and recorded imagery to spot activity otherwise missed by standard video cameras with narrower fields of view, analyze these activities in context, distinguish threats from normal patterns of behavior, and perform the work of a larger force.

Military and security personnel are the typical users of WAMI, employing the technology for such missions as force protection, base security, route reconnaissance, border security, counter-terrorism, and event security. However, WAMI systems can also be used for disaster response, traffic pattern analysis, wildlife protection, and law enforcement.

Here are a couple of publically available example videos of what this technology is capable of doing:

The very first WAMI system was developed in the early 2000s by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory team led by John Marion, as part of the Sonoma Persistent Surveillance Program. In 2005, the sensor transitioned to the U.S. Department of Defense, and in 2006, the Army sent the system—dubbed Constant Hawk—to Iraq on Short 360-300 turboprop aircraft as part of a Quick Reaction Capability. Three years later, Constant Hawk also deployed to Afghanistan.

Weighing 1500 pounds, Constant Hawk initially comprised six electro-optical 11-megapixel cameras that covered 25 square kilometers. This payload was later upgraded to six 16-megapixel cameras.

Since the deployment of Constant Hawk, WAMI systems have gotten smaller, lighter, and more capable. The current generation Kestrel Block II, for instance, employs eight electro-optical/infrared cameras that, together, form a 440-megapixel mosaic and cover 113 square kilometers. Yet this WAMI system weighs less than 85 pounds—light enough to be mounted on a tethered blimp, or aerostat, which can be kept aloft for weeks at a time.

This technology is capable of taking very high quality images of a metrapolitan area and is accurate enough to track individual people and vehichles. It is city-wide surveillance filmed from a single point.

Long term trials of this technology have been conducted in Baltimore, Compton, and other major cities without ever informing residents or the city leaders. A lot of these trials have been done by a company Persistent Surveillance Systems (ironic abbreviation).

What is more concerning about this technology, is the lack of media coverage about it. Many will go on about their days without even knowing that something like this exists, or is even possible.

City-wide Surveillance From a Single Point

Table of Contents

Wide-Area Motion Imagery

References