Shadow Analysis Could Spot Terrorists

Hugh Pickens writes:

"An engineer at Jet Propulsion Labs says it should be possible to identify people from the way they walk — a technique called gait analysis, whose power lies in the fact that a person's walking style is very hard to disguise. Adrian Stoica has written software that recognizes human movement in aerial and satellite video footage by isolating moving shadows and using data on the time of day and the camera angle to correct shadows that are elongated or foreshortened. In tests on footage shot from the sixth floor of a building, Stoica says his software was indeed able to extract useful gait data. Extending the idea to satellites could prove trickier, though. Space imaging expert Bhupendra Jasani at King's College London says geostationary satellites simply don't have the resolution to provide useful detail. 'I find it hard to believe they could apply this technique from space,' says Jasani."

Comments on the article speculate on the maximum resolution possible from KH-11 and KH-12 spy satellites.

Oh, this is just more fun after hearing about the blatant violations of First Amendment rights at the NRC.

So now the government will be able to spy on us even easier. Great!

more reason to move countries! chruser, hows sweden? do you guys like american's?

Kidding me! No one likes Americans. We are just a bunch of rich ass bullies.

Kidding me! No one likes Americans. We are just a bunch of rich ass bullies.

The Rich ass part is untrue. I think the majority of Americans are either poor or middle class.

I was talking about the country, not the people. The country is a rich ass bully. Better?

I was talking about the country, not the people. The country is a rich ass bully. Better?

Nope, we're not rich at all. We're in debt!

You're wrong. The USA is in debt to its citizens, who in turn are rich relative to the rest of the world.

Agreed, despite the trade deficit we continue to be the wealthiest country in the world.

So now the government will be able to spy on us even easier. Great!

We don't give a shit about you. What the government have to gain by knowing that your at the park? This technology is to help find dangerous criminals, terrorist and the likes. Embrace it.

You're wrong. JD wants to know what every human is doing every second.

I heard about this in the news... I don't really trust satellites, or people for that matter, to determine whether to kill someone or not by the way they walk.

I heard about this in the news... I don't really trust satellites, or people for that matter, to determine whether to kill someone or not by the way they walk.

Well good thing its not like that. There's no laser death ray that fires from space on a target after its shadow has been identified. It would be used to locate a person, so that authorities could capture them and if that person is who they were trying to find send them through the correct channels of investigation.

With the orbital lasers, you mean?

Can you really be sure? Even if you can document that the US has never put such a system up there (as if that were even posible), who's to say Russia didn't deploy such a system during the cold war and turn over control for some sort of payment when they fell on hard times?

NASA has already designed a Space Solar Power satellite which can, in theory, convert sunlight in space to electricity and beam it back to Earth via the microwave spectrum. The received power (on Earth) will be in gigawatt order, and I presuppose the beam divergence will be small enough for the beam to be able to cause some significant damage even in small temporal frames, should it be used for such alternative purposes.

Now, I wonder if it could be possible to retrieve gait data from people inside buildings via infrared or x-ray spectrum satellites, given sufficient power output and resolution...

I wasn't saying that some laser would come from the satellite, I don't trust it to determine whether or not the person(s) should be killed or captured.

I wasn't saying that some laser would come from the satellite, I don't trust it to determine whether or not the person(s) should be killed or captured.

I don't think that's what it does. I don't think it says that you're a terrorist because of the way you walk. I think what it does is identifies who you are based on the way you walk. For instance, if they're looking for a specific person, they could use this to find them. It won't say "this person is a terrorist."

Ah, I see.

Interesting.