Behold, The ARGUS-IS

There’s a new spy camera on the block. The above image is an example of the work of the new Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, the ARGUS-IS. It’s a product of research funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA. It has a viewing capacity of 1.8 gigapixels. One day of use will produce files totaling about six petabytes. (One petabyte equals one thousand terabytes.)

The camera is highly computerized. Flying at 20,000 feet it can cover an area of about twelve square miles, separately tracking all of the vehicles and pedestrians in its field. I’m sure that facial recognition software is not far behind.

This really set me thinking.

Right now our National Security Apparatus (usually referred to simply as “them”) is listening to a huge volume of cell phone calls (usually described as “all of them”) and reading a huge volume of e-mails (see usual description of the cell phone collection). The collection, storage and analysis of this vast amount of data has caused huge spikes in American security budgets.

The system is under stress already. The NSA is currently building a very big new facility called the Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah. It will have about 100,000 square feet of storage servers. Additional facilities are already planned. So the question is, with new technologies like the ARGUS-IS coming on line, what will be required to handle the colossal amounts of new data to be stored and analyzed? More importantly, where will the money come from?


The Real Entitlement Problem

I had a dream after reading about the ARGUS-IS that someday soon we won’t have any money left for anything else but surveillance in particular and for security in general. This, to me, is the real entitlement problem, that the military and the other security apparatus of America are somehow “entitled” to as much money as they say that they need. That simply outlining a problem and requesting money will always result in their being given everything that they ask for.

It was a post-apocalyptic dream where a 1984 style fascist regime (“INGSOC” in the book) had reduced its agenda to protecting us from threats that only the government could designate and define. The population had been reduced to poverty and a mean existence without financial, medical or food security. There would be, of course, a substantial elite that lived pretty well, fiction and non-fiction agree that there will always be a substantial elite. For most people, the only security left would be security against the perceived threat. A threat that would probably be totally imaginary, a threat manufactured by the security apparatus to justify the spending and the oppression.

So, the ARGUS-IS. Let’s see where all of this goes. Whatever comes of it, I suppose it will be interesting. I have a hunch that most of the intelligence generated will be in this vein:

“Mr. Bill Smith left the residence where he is the registered owner at 10:17 a.m. He drove 1.4 miles to the Vons Supermarket in the Villa Marina Shopping Center. He parked in the parking lot and entered the store. He emerged 43 minutes later at 11:15 a.m., pushing a shopping cart. He placed between six and ten bags in the trunk of the car (contents unknown). He returned to his home at 11:22 a.m. It is believed that all of the bags placed in the trunk were transferred to the house.”