Pentagon to implement global DVR-like surveillance?

The Pentagon's Defense Science Board released a report suggesting a pervasive system to observe and record activity in urban areas and hard-to-monitor settings across the globe -- in other words, they'd like to TiVo the entire planet for playback (or at least as much of it as they can for intelligence gathering purposes). The study mentions DVR-like technology that would be used to "run recorded time backwards to help identify and locate even low-level enemy forces," referencing the types of threats U.S. forces encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The proposal also seeks to minimize the use of human personnel, and instead, employ various autonomous monitoring methods, from tiny environmental data-collecting sensors to unmanned aerial vehicles. So basically, the plan is to keep a hawk eye on all areas of concern -- up to tens of thousands of square kilometers with targets as specific as an individual person, object, or activity. No word on if, or when, the military might be rolling this out.

[Via Slashdot]

Read - Reuters
Read - Wired

[Matt W. @ Mar 5th 2007 3:02PM]

Is the project's codename SkyNet perhaps?

[Keystone @ Mar 5th 2007 3:08PM]

Who's going to foot the bill for this nonesense?

[nigel @ Mar 5th 2007 3:24PM]

sounds dumb. if they want to big brother the world, why not work on enhancing the resolution on satellites... im sure that will be standard in 20 years.

[clicclic @ Mar 5th 2007 3:30PM]

Some advice for the DOD: Get this installed before the U.S. dollar is worthless.

Your 'superiors' in congress aren't waiting, that's for sure...

[peecee @ Mar 5th 2007 3:35PM]

how can i download these videos onto my ipod?

[StevO @ Mar 5th 2007 4:12PM]

Big Brother is watching you..

[Dave @ Mar 5th 2007 4:26PM]

What an amazing idea--and yet they supposedly didn't have a decent enough camera on the Pentagon to capture the plane that hit it. Still, they'll have all the pictures they need of my wife sunbathing by the pool. In a post-911 world, we can't afford NOT to have footage of my wife sunbathing by the pool.

[Chiron @ Mar 5th 2007 7:46PM]

"didn't have a decent enough camera on the Pentagon to capture the plane that hit it."

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You mean the Cruise Missile that hit the Pentagon, conveniently where it was under construction? Look at the video footage and pix they DO have! Where are the wings that were supposedly sheared-off on impact? The engines And those smallish holes through walls supposedly made by an airplane fuselage moving at several hundred miles per hour? Waaaaay too small. And why did eyewitnesses report the smell of cordite? I thought passenger jets used jet fuel, not explosives, for propulsion? And why was the video footage that >was< made - such as from parking-lot surveillance cameras, security cameras at your local 7-11, traffic cameras, and anything else that might have provided even a cursory glimpse of what transpired, why was it summarily confiscated - except for that piece of footage that managed to escape showing a fast-moving, shiny SOMETHING not much larger than a car (if that), hugging the ground on its way to the Pentagram..er..Pentagon? The whole thing stinks.

Like cordite.

c

[Peter @ Mar 5th 2007 5:19PM]

Ceiling cat is watching you.

[John @ Mar 5th 2007 5:27PM]

This is old news. NATO has been doing this with down-looking AWACS radar and VCR tapes for 20+ years-mostly to look for supply and refueling depots. All they're doing is freshing it up with hi-rez video and digital storage methods.

@Dave: the family nature of this forum prohibits me from making the freakishly caustic remark owed to the dopey comments about your wife, your married, she sunbathes, we get it.

[Lachlan @ Mar 5th 2007 5:49PM]

anyone seen the movie 'deja vu'?

oh the familiarities...

i'm getting a slight sense of... deja vu

[James @ Mar 5th 2007 6:00PM]

Won't they be surprised when the billions they spend are thwarted by a $2 can of shaving creme or silly-string?

[Smilesaurus @ Mar 5th 2007 7:02PM]

You think this is a waste of money? A lot of the stuff the DoD has been doing in the past 20 years has been a waste of money (like developing and maintaining WMDs) and giving weapons to other countries like candy on Halloween.
That aside, this article is not news. Domestic and foreign domestic (oxymoron?) surveillance has been going on for quite a while. Has it been as high level as mentioned in the article? Probably in a few areas.

I don't even want to start about legitimacy (the US threw that out the window a long, long time ago) ^_^

[Skyler @ Mar 6th 2007 2:59AM]

Developing and maintaining WMD's in the United States is certainly no waste of money, considering the large number of rogue states that would like to use theirs on us, and the two major players that may stand us, but don't exactly like us (and who use proxy wars instead of premptive nuclear annihilation to fight us) i.e. Russia and China. MAD is certainly a scary concept, but one that also WORKS. Without our nukes, we would have gone to war many times over with Russia. The same is most likely true of China now and in the next 25 years. To think otherwise is idiocy and shows a complete lack of understanding of the past, present, and future global power balances.

[Chiron @ Mar 5th 2007 7:46PM]

Why the surveil the entire globe when the terrorists are all in Washington? Oh yeah, they travel too.

[Chiron @ Mar 6th 2007 12:22AM]

"Freakishly caustic" (surely not!) comment withdrawn. Rather tame, as freakishly caustic remarks go. Perhaps you're running out of superlatives?

c

[DrunkenCP @ Mar 6th 2007 9:38AM]

What does a scanner see?
Dave's wife sunbathing.
Note that it sounds mostly like a hardware upgrade for existing surveillance systems, so it's more likely than not just more pork-barrel crap, not the advance of America as a surveillance state. When they start on about "observing and intercepting terrorists within our own borders in real time before they attack" then it's time to freak out.

[Xzavier @ Mar 6th 2007 11:27AM]

Well the pentagon is going to need a lot of those things this March 17th!

www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3870&Itemid=223
www.MarchOnPentagon.com

[steve @ Mar 6th 2007 1:02PM]

Is it time for:
"In Cheney US, DVR records you!"

[Smilesaurus @ Mar 7th 2007 11:24PM]

"Developing and maintaining WMD's in the United States is certainly no waste of money, considering the large number of rogue states that would like to use theirs on us, and the two major players that may stand us, but don't exactly like us (and who use proxy wars instead of premptive nuclear annihilation to fight us) i.e. Russia and China. MAD is certainly a scary concept, but one that also WORKS. Without our nukes, we would have gone to war many times over with Russia. The same is most likely true of China now and in the next 25 years. To think otherwise is idiocy and shows a complete lack of understanding of the past, present, and future global power balances."
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Uh, yeah, I did look at the past, and the nation that has killed the most people using nukes to date? Iran.... nevermind, actually, it was the US.
What's scary is that we have liers with high positions in office threatening to attack other countries... that + WMDs = evil.

Keeping the nukes the US had from a while a go is fine (since disposing of them is costly and dangerous), but creating new ones (nukes and non-nukes) when we already have a sufficient amount to destroy all life on earth, THAT is a waste of money. At the moment, the US is in no position to be playing the "good guy" roll in the world......

[Smilesaurus @ Mar 7th 2007 11:26PM]

misspelled "role"....

[james @ Mar 12th 2007 2:02PM]

THE DVR-MONITORING IS ALREADY HAPPENING IN GWINNETT CO.I.VE BEEN LOOK AT A PLACE IN THE SKY AT NITE FOR A WHILE AND SEE FLASHES LIKE FROM A CAMRA. P.S UFOS? ARE DVRS.THINK YOU ARE NOT BEING WATCHED THINK AGAIN;MY OPINION ONLEY THANKS