For your protection, citizen

[Nasor]

the system spies on you as a matter of course.
i'm sure you are aware of military spy satellites and goodies such as echelon and carnivore. google earth is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to spying. military satellites can read your license number in real time.

Spy satillites almost certainly can't read your license number in real time. You can calculate how small of an object you can see using a lense of a certian size from a certain distance away, and even with the largest possible lenses spy satellites probably can't get resolution high enough to read a license plate from space (we can get an idea of the largest possible lense size because we know about the rockets that the government uses to launch satellites.

You could probably improve the resolution greatly by taking many pictures of the same area and averaging them, but that would but much much slower than real time.

 

[leopold]

Spy satillites almost certainly can't read your license number in real time. You can calculate how small of an object you can see using a lense of a certian size from a certain distance away, and even with the largest possible lenses spy satellites probably can't get resolution high enough to read a license plate from space

if that's what you want to believe then be my guest.
i find it hard to believe they can squeeze 10 million transistors onto an area the size of my thumbnail, but the fact remains that they can.

 

[spidergoat]

Yeah, but there is technology to track your cell phone even if it's off. They can even turn on the microphone and listen, or snap a picture or video with the camera.

 

[leopold]

man, now THAT is creepy just knowing that.
i just removed my cells battery. that'll show 'em!

 

[swarm]

The jamming of the phone system by non emergency calls is and has been a problem for first responders during a crisis.

Personally I think knocking out cell phones is hilarious. They should definitely test the system frequently.

Get off the ear crack and talk to the person beside you.

 

[Nasor]

if that's what you want to believe then be my guest.
i find it hard to believe they can squeeze 10 million transistors onto an area the size of my thumbnail, but the fact remains that they can.

Squeezing 10 million transitors into a small area doesn't violate any known laws of physics. There are basic laws of optics that govern how small of an area you can focus on using a given distance, lense size, and light wavelength. I supposes it's possible that the government has discovered some clever way to control light in unusual ways that's unknown to the rest of the physics or optics community, but if the spy satellites consist of a digital camera with a really big lense then they probably can't read license plates.

 

[leopold]

Squeezing 10 million transitors into a small area doesn't violate any known laws of physics.

there is a minimum size a transistor can be so yes, there will be a minimum area 10 million transistors can be squeezed into.

There are basic laws of optics that govern how small of an area you can focus on using a given distance, lense size, and light wavelength. I supposes it's possible that the government has discovered some clever way to control light in unusual ways that's unknown to the rest of the physics or optics community, but if the spy satellites consist of a digital camera with a really big lense then they probably can't read license plates.

you are making a lot of assumptions here.
first of all is visible light. there are different ways to photograph objects than the visible spectrum.
second is the orbit, or distance, from the object. you are assuming the satellites remain in a fixed orbit, which is not the case.

the military readily admits it can resolve objects of 10 inches. you can take it to the bank that they can resolve objects much smaller than that.

 

[Nasor]

you are making a lot of assumptions here.
first of all is visible light. there are different ways to photograph objects than the visible spectrum.

True, but if you try to move to much shorter wavelegths than near-uv you run into many problems. For one thing, once the wavelegths get too short you run into trouble with not being able control the light with optics in the normal way. Also, the atmosphere is great at absorbing UV light (which is good for us, since it protects us from it) but it would make it very hard to see much that was going on near the ground if you were in orbit with a uv camera.

If you try to go to longer wavelengths (IR, microwave, etc) the resolution/lense size problem just gets worse.

second is the orbit, or distance, from the object. you are assuming the satellites remain in a fixed orbit, which is not the case.

Yeah, but there's a minimum hieght that satellites can be at and still have a stable orbit. I don't know what they might be able to do it they were willing to launch spy satellites that would orbit a few times and burn up, but I doubt they do that.

the military readily admits it can resolve objects of 10 inches. you can take it to the bank that they can resolve objects much smaller than that.

I think if you do that math for a 4-meter lense (which is probably the biggest they could get based on the payload bays of the launch vehicles that exist) you get a minimum resolution of about 5 cm if you're looking at the ground from a low earth orbit. You could probably make out where the plate was one the car, but I doubt very much that you could read it.

But of course I'm certainly not an expert on this sort of stuff, there might be some freaky technology out there that I don't know about.

 

[leopold]

paul wolfowitz (spelling?) stated "it's pretty nice to be able to read a license plate from orbit."

it's been about 10 years or so but i read in a magazine called "omni" that the military was working on resolving a dinner fork on the ground.

there are quite possibly other ways of focusing light or other EM radiation than by optical lenses. magnetic coils comes to mind.

 

[swarm]

Given ideal conditions I was told they can resolve headlines on newspapers. But license plates are rarely visible from directly over head.

 

[Nasor]

Shrug You can believe what you want. If I had to bet on it, I would wager that stories about them being able to resolve newspaper headlines, dinner forks, etc. are either just urban myths that have been repeated around the intelligence community by people who don't know better, or deliberate misinformation to scare/intimidate potential enemies. "Oh no, don't take the manual for the new flying submarine outside! The Americans will read it with their satellites!"

And no, you can't focus light with magnetic coils.

 

[leopold]

Shrug You can believe what you want. If I had to bet on it, I would wager that stories about them being able to resolve newspaper headlines, dinner forks, etc. are either just urban myths that have been repeated around the intelligence community by people who don't know better, or deliberate misinformation to scare/intimidate potential enemies. "Oh no, don't take the manual for the new flying submarine outside! The Americans will read it with their satellites!"

it's a fact they can resolve 10". i'm positive they can resolve your license plate, but i'm skeptical about the dinner fork.

And no, you can't focus light with magnetic coils.

even if that light was converted to electrons?
there is such a thing as the photo electric effect.

 

[Nasor]

it's a fact they can resolve 10". i'm positive they can resolve your license plate, but i'm skeptical about the dinner fork.

I agree that they could probably resolve the plate itself, I just doubt they could actually read the numbers/letters.

even if that light was converted to electrons?
there is such a thing as the photo electric effect.

The photo-electric effect sends the ejected electrons in random directions, so you would lose any information that the light might have been carrying.

 

[swarm]

Shrug as you care, that's what I was told by someone I trust to have had valid information at the time, a physicist who became disillusioned and withdrew from the satellite program.