1
00:00:00,200 --> 00:00:04,560
Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight From Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio,

2
00:00:05,040 --> 00:00:08,160
Speaker 1: we are back with Arthur Holland up Michelle his book

3
00:00:08,360 --> 00:00:12,080
Speaker 1: Eyes in the Sky. We're talking about this incredible technology

4
00:00:12,119 --> 00:00:14,640
Speaker 1: and Arthur, we were talking about the good and the

5
00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:18,160
Speaker 1: possible bad with this kind of technology. In your opinion,

6
00:00:18,560 --> 00:00:22,120
Speaker 1: what could be the bad part of this? Well, look,

7
00:00:22,560 --> 00:00:25,919
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is, there has not been

8
00:00:25,960 --> 00:00:30,440
Speaker 1: a single surveillance technology in history that I can think of, that,

9
00:00:31,560 --> 00:00:34,720
Speaker 1: despite having been created perhaps of the best intentions, has

10
00:00:34,800 --> 00:00:39,840
Speaker 1: not given rise to unintended consequences or has just straight

11
00:00:39,920 --> 00:00:43,040
Speaker 1: up been abused. And the same could very much be

12
00:00:43,080 --> 00:00:47,280
Speaker 1: possible for Rise in the Sky. It gives you tremendous power.

13
00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:52,199
Speaker 1: I mean, you can see a person's every move for

14
00:00:52,520 --> 00:00:55,520
Speaker 1: hours and hours on end. You can find out who

15
00:00:55,560 --> 00:01:00,360
Speaker 1: they're associated with, you can find out whether they equent

16
00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:05,920
Speaker 1: particular areas of you know, political meetings or you know,

17
00:01:06,120 --> 00:01:11,440
Speaker 1: sites of worship or businesses, give give you a sense

18
00:01:11,480 --> 00:01:14,520
Speaker 1: of what they're into and what they're all about. And

19
00:01:14,880 --> 00:01:18,000
Speaker 1: that gives you tremendous power, something that you may not

20
00:01:18,360 --> 00:01:23,240
Speaker 1: necessarily have at ground level. How did the technology develop?

21
00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:26,679
Speaker 1: Who came up with this? Well, let me ask you

22
00:01:26,720 --> 00:01:28,600
Speaker 1: the question. Actually, let's start with the question. Actually, you

23
00:01:28,640 --> 00:01:32,480
Speaker 1: have you heard of a movie called Enemy of the State. Yes, yes,

24
00:01:32,640 --> 00:01:36,759
Speaker 1: a great Will Smith movie from nineteen ninety eight about

25
00:01:37,440 --> 00:01:41,280
Speaker 1: the NSA sort of rogue cell within the NSA. There's

26
00:01:41,280 --> 00:01:45,800
Speaker 1: this satellite in that movie, a totally fictional satellite that

27
00:01:45,959 --> 00:01:49,040
Speaker 1: is able to scan the entire stan seaboard and track

28
00:01:49,080 --> 00:01:52,520
Speaker 1: Will Smith wherever he goes. Well, there was an engineer

29
00:01:52,760 --> 00:01:57,080
Speaker 1: from a government lab watching that movie in nineteen ninety eight,

30
00:01:57,400 --> 00:02:01,000
Speaker 1: and he was so inspired by that satellite he said,

31
00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:04,240
Speaker 1: what if we made one of those? And that was

32
00:02:04,280 --> 00:02:08,800
Speaker 1: actually the seed of inspiration that gave rise to this

33
00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:16,480
Speaker 1: technology which has an uncanny resemblance to that satellite in

34
00:02:16,480 --> 00:02:19,639
Speaker 1: an Enemy of the State. So they looked at the

35
00:02:19,960 --> 00:02:21,919
Speaker 1: technology and they said, well, you know, maybe we can't

36
00:02:21,919 --> 00:02:23,520
Speaker 1: make a satellite, but let's see what we can do.

37
00:02:23,560 --> 00:02:26,040
Speaker 1: And they strapped some cameras together and they use some

38
00:02:26,520 --> 00:02:31,320
Speaker 1: clever image processing techniques. And then the CIA got very

39
00:02:31,360 --> 00:02:34,240
Speaker 1: interested in what they were doing because they saw that

40
00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:36,680
Speaker 1: there was a possibility that they might be able to

41
00:02:36,800 --> 00:02:42,079
Speaker 1: use it to go against insurgent networks in Iraq. These

42
00:02:42,120 --> 00:02:47,760
Speaker 1: are groups that operate very diffusely in large cities, you

43
00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:49,600
Speaker 1: may be able to find out who they are by

44
00:02:49,639 --> 00:02:52,480
Speaker 1: tracking them from where they've come and where they're going

45
00:02:52,520 --> 00:02:55,760
Speaker 1: to just using a single idea attack as your first

46
00:02:55,840 --> 00:02:59,280
Speaker 1: sort of starting off point. And again, since you can

47
00:02:59,280 --> 00:03:01,359
Speaker 1: watch the whole area, it doesn't matter if you weren't

48
00:03:01,360 --> 00:03:05,799
Speaker 1: pointing there with your telescopic cameras. The camera sees everything, right,

49
00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:09,280
Speaker 1: And so that sort of started this race against the

50
00:03:09,320 --> 00:03:13,639
Speaker 1: Clark program to try and get this technology into the

51
00:03:13,680 --> 00:03:16,920
Speaker 1: battlefield as quickly as possible, because these groups really did

52
00:03:17,040 --> 00:03:19,000
Speaker 1: believe that they were going to be able to make

53
00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:22,320
Speaker 1: a difference to actually stop the tide of violence in

54
00:03:22,360 --> 00:03:27,280
Speaker 1: these ied attacks and try and you try to change

55
00:03:27,280 --> 00:03:30,640
Speaker 1: the tide of of the war. And so these technologies

56
00:03:30,680 --> 00:03:35,760
Speaker 1: were initially deployed in two thousand and six and they

57
00:03:35,800 --> 00:03:38,960
Speaker 1: continue to be used today. Might they have found Osama

58
00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:43,440
Speaker 1: Bin laden with this kind of technology, they would have

59
00:03:43,760 --> 00:03:47,960
Speaker 1: had to be there, you know, well in advance, because

60
00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:51,440
Speaker 1: it's a technology that works best for something like that

61
00:03:51,520 --> 00:03:54,839
Speaker 1: if you're watching an area persistently over days and days

62
00:03:54,880 --> 00:03:56,840
Speaker 1: and perhaps even weeks, so that you can really figure

63
00:03:56,880 --> 00:04:00,320
Speaker 1: out what the patterns of the network are and who's

64
00:04:00,440 --> 00:04:03,280
Speaker 1: the boss. The other thing is that a summer in

65
00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:08,320
Speaker 1: laden right after the invasion in Afghanistan went up into

66
00:04:08,320 --> 00:04:14,000
Speaker 1: the mountains and as far as we know, and this

67
00:04:14,120 --> 00:04:18,240
Speaker 1: technology is better suited for cities because the city is

68
00:04:18,240 --> 00:04:24,960
Speaker 1: a relatively concentrated area. You know, it's not going to

69
00:04:25,160 --> 00:04:29,320
Speaker 1: be able to surveil thousands of square kilometers at once,

70
00:04:29,520 --> 00:04:30,960
Speaker 1: but if they were able to narrow it down to

71
00:04:30,960 --> 00:04:34,520
Speaker 1: a particular area, who knows. Yes, I mean it's very possible.

72
00:04:34,640 --> 00:04:39,119
Speaker 1: What is the two sixteen Baltimore event or Operation Arthur

73
00:04:39,440 --> 00:04:46,080
Speaker 1: sure So in um In two thousand and sixteen, the

74
00:04:46,160 --> 00:04:53,000
Speaker 1: Baltimore Police Department set up a secret effort to deploy

75
00:04:53,320 --> 00:04:58,040
Speaker 1: one of these cameras over the city of Baltimore persistently,

76
00:04:58,080 --> 00:05:01,560
Speaker 1: that is to say, every day, with the aim of

77
00:05:02,520 --> 00:05:08,280
Speaker 1: conducting surveillance over the people of Baltimore to solve, as

78
00:05:08,480 --> 00:05:15,000
Speaker 1: one document put it, unsolvable crime. The only hitch was

79
00:05:15,080 --> 00:05:18,880
Speaker 1: that the people of Baltimore were not told about this operation.

80
00:05:19,279 --> 00:05:23,600
Speaker 1: And this plane conducted hundreds and hundreds of hours of

81
00:05:23,680 --> 00:05:26,520
Speaker 1: surveillance of the entire city, I mean thirty two square

82
00:05:26,520 --> 00:05:33,279
Speaker 1: miles before it was revealed, and then that the police

83
00:05:33,279 --> 00:05:35,200
Speaker 1: department had to close it down because there was a

84
00:05:35,200 --> 00:05:40,359
Speaker 1: lot of public pushback. I spent two truly eye opening

85
00:05:40,440 --> 00:05:46,120
Speaker 1: days in Baltimore observing the operation in full swing when

86
00:05:46,160 --> 00:05:49,239
Speaker 1: it was still completely secret. And so I was sitting

87
00:05:49,279 --> 00:05:52,720
Speaker 1: there in the control room watching the whole city of Baltimore.

88
00:05:53,200 --> 00:05:54,920
Speaker 1: And then I went out into the street and I

89
00:05:55,040 --> 00:05:57,640
Speaker 1: knew that the plane was flying. And I looked around

90
00:05:57,680 --> 00:06:00,760
Speaker 1: me and nobody else did, and that was really strange

91
00:06:00,760 --> 00:06:02,640
Speaker 1: thing that was weird. I didn't feel right to me.

92
00:06:03,839 --> 00:06:09,160
Speaker 1: That must have been kind of unnerving. Yeah, it was.

93
00:06:09,520 --> 00:06:12,159
Speaker 1: It was quite incredible. I sat in on a briefing

94
00:06:13,360 --> 00:06:18,600
Speaker 1: where the analysts showed how they had tracked a number

95
00:06:18,640 --> 00:06:21,799
Speaker 1: of individuals who had been involved in a lethal shooting

96
00:06:22,320 --> 00:06:25,760
Speaker 1: for hours on end as they moved through the city,

97
00:06:25,960 --> 00:06:28,880
Speaker 1: both backwards in time and forwards in time. And at

98
00:06:28,920 --> 00:06:33,159
Speaker 1: one point I recognized the street where these murder suspects

99
00:06:33,160 --> 00:06:36,360
Speaker 1: were driving along, and I realized it was the street

100
00:06:36,400 --> 00:06:40,160
Speaker 1: where the office was located. And then I stepped out

101
00:06:40,200 --> 00:06:43,600
Speaker 1: onto that street and it was a pretty spooky experience.

102
00:06:44,080 --> 00:06:47,719
Speaker 1: Now the technology is called the wide area Emotion imagery,

103
00:06:47,920 --> 00:06:52,880
Speaker 1: right correct, And it's where will it be in your

104
00:06:52,880 --> 00:06:56,359
Speaker 1: opinion in ten years? Well, there are a few things

105
00:06:56,360 --> 00:07:01,360
Speaker 1: that are happening. One is that the camera technology is improving.

106
00:07:01,680 --> 00:07:08,000
Speaker 1: So the earliest iterations of this technology weighed about a

107
00:07:08,080 --> 00:07:11,880
Speaker 1: thousand pounds. That means you needed a very large aircraft

108
00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:14,480
Speaker 1: to be able to carry it. Now you can get

109
00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:18,880
Speaker 1: that same performance in a thirty pound camera. Don't think

110
00:07:18,920 --> 00:07:22,560
Speaker 1: about that. And they do advice satellite, you can do

111
00:07:22,600 --> 00:07:25,360
Speaker 1: it vice satellite as well. And so we're going to

112
00:07:25,440 --> 00:07:28,680
Speaker 1: see a couple of things happening. One is, as the

113
00:07:28,720 --> 00:07:30,840
Speaker 1: technology gets smaller, you're probably going to be able to

114
00:07:30,840 --> 00:07:32,960
Speaker 1: see it on drones. You're gonna be able to have

115
00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:35,000
Speaker 1: swarms of drones that are going to cover up very,

116
00:07:35,120 --> 00:07:39,440
Speaker 1: very large areas and they're all networked together. You're also

117
00:07:39,480 --> 00:07:43,080
Speaker 1: going to see that same fundamental technology appearing at ground

118
00:07:43,160 --> 00:07:47,080
Speaker 1: level on CCTV cameras. So you have cameras that instead

119
00:07:47,080 --> 00:07:49,560
Speaker 1: of you know, having to rely on chance to see

120
00:07:49,560 --> 00:07:52,440
Speaker 1: if you know, the bank robo happened to be in

121
00:07:52,480 --> 00:07:55,120
Speaker 1: frame at the right time, these cameras will get a

122
00:07:55,200 --> 00:07:58,400
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty degree view of everything around them.

123
00:07:58,560 --> 00:08:01,800
Speaker 1: There was one camera that was installed in Logan Airport

124
00:08:01,920 --> 00:08:05,120
Speaker 1: in Boston in Terminal A, and the single camera was

125
00:08:05,200 --> 00:08:08,160
Speaker 1: able to see pretty much everybody in the entire terminal

126
00:08:08,600 --> 00:08:12,160
Speaker 1: at one. And then the other thing, as you mentioned,

127
00:08:12,240 --> 00:08:16,200
Speaker 1: is satellite. So as satellite technology improves and satellites becomes

128
00:08:16,240 --> 00:08:19,520
Speaker 1: smaller and cheaper to launch, and as the imaging technology

129
00:08:19,600 --> 00:08:22,960
Speaker 1: gets cheaper and smaller, you're going to be able to

130
00:08:22,960 --> 00:08:27,760
Speaker 1: have constellations of satellites that don't just take the images

131
00:08:27,800 --> 00:08:31,920
Speaker 1: that you see in Google Earth. They take video, and

132
00:08:31,960 --> 00:08:36,000
Speaker 1: so it's likened to Google Earth, but moving. And you

133
00:08:36,040 --> 00:08:38,599
Speaker 1: just think about that for a second. You see the

134
00:08:38,679 --> 00:08:40,800
Speaker 1: days when there's going to be a police chase and

135
00:08:40,800 --> 00:08:42,959
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, out of the skies they

136
00:08:43,080 --> 00:08:49,200
Speaker 1: blow up the car. Well, that might be a little drastic,

137
00:08:49,280 --> 00:08:52,400
Speaker 1: as you know, with all of the threats that have

138
00:08:52,600 --> 00:08:56,040
Speaker 1: existed and all of probably even the temptation to do

139
00:08:56,160 --> 00:09:00,360
Speaker 1: something like that, in the last you know, twenty years,

140
00:09:01,600 --> 00:09:04,920
Speaker 1: police departments have not done that. And I think there's

141
00:09:05,080 --> 00:09:10,000
Speaker 1: there's a pretty strong policy reason for that. That being said,

142
00:09:10,040 --> 00:09:13,400
Speaker 1: there's no reason why they wouldn't send the drones up

143
00:09:13,480 --> 00:09:16,760
Speaker 1: to you know, chase the card in that manner, And

144
00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:19,720
Speaker 1: actually that's something that happens fairly regularly. Now, is this

145
00:09:19,840 --> 00:09:24,640
Speaker 1: kind of technology violating our constitutional rights at all. Well,

146
00:09:24,960 --> 00:09:29,640
Speaker 1: at the moment, as current privacy law stands, this technology

147
00:09:29,679 --> 00:09:35,680
Speaker 1: is completely legal, illegal legal. Yes. In fact, I have

148
00:09:35,920 --> 00:09:41,439
Speaker 1: operated one of these cameras over the city of Albuquerque

149
00:09:41,440 --> 00:09:45,800
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, and I needed no special permission, I

150
00:09:45,880 --> 00:09:51,240
Speaker 1: needed no certification. We didn't even have to inform the

151
00:09:51,280 --> 00:09:54,560
Speaker 1: air traffic control power that of what we were doing.

152
00:09:54,600 --> 00:09:58,320
Speaker 1: We just said we were doing a photomission. And that

153
00:09:58,480 --> 00:10:02,480
Speaker 1: is because look, if you're doing a cross country if

154
00:10:02,480 --> 00:10:05,360
Speaker 1: you're in an airplane taking a cross country flight and

155
00:10:05,440 --> 00:10:08,319
Speaker 1: you pop your hamround out of the window and you

156
00:10:08,880 --> 00:10:12,240
Speaker 1: take an image, you know you obviously haven't done anything illegal.

157
00:10:13,240 --> 00:10:15,680
Speaker 1: That's because the airspace is public. It's like taking a

158
00:10:15,679 --> 00:10:17,680
Speaker 1: picture in a park. If someone happens to be in

159
00:10:17,720 --> 00:10:23,160
Speaker 1: your image, it's their problem, not yours. Well, that's essentially

160
00:10:23,200 --> 00:10:25,800
Speaker 1: the extent of how the law defines it, and so

161
00:10:25,880 --> 00:10:29,000
Speaker 1: that can be interpreted in all sorts of different ways.

162
00:10:29,200 --> 00:10:31,200
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you have an iPhone and you're taking

163
00:10:31,200 --> 00:10:33,920
Speaker 1: a camera from taking an image from the sky, but

164
00:10:34,040 --> 00:10:37,839
Speaker 1: someone else has a camera that is hundreds of times

165
00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:41,120
Speaker 1: more powerful, and then they're passing that information over to

166
00:10:41,200 --> 00:10:46,240
Speaker 1: law enforcement. That falls under the same set of you

167
00:10:46,280 --> 00:10:49,920
Speaker 1: know rules, and that's where that's where, that's the rub,

168
00:10:50,160 --> 00:10:54,320
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's why the regulations seem to be

169
00:10:54,360 --> 00:10:56,520
Speaker 1: at a point where they have some catching up to do.

170
00:10:57,559 --> 00:11:00,960
Speaker 1: That's amazing. It is so then when you think of it,

171
00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:05,120
Speaker 1: it is it's it's it's quite astounding having seen what

172
00:11:05,240 --> 00:11:10,800
Speaker 1: this technology is capable of to think that it is,

173
00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:15,120
Speaker 1: as one source put it to me, no different to

174
00:11:15,200 --> 00:11:20,080
Speaker 1: someone sticking a GoPro on the side of assessna. You know,

175
00:11:20,480 --> 00:11:23,520
Speaker 1: that's that's clearly not the case. You can do all

176
00:11:23,520 --> 00:11:26,199
Speaker 1: sorts of things with this that you can't just do

177
00:11:26,280 --> 00:11:29,400
Speaker 1: with a drone or even a helicopter with a very

178
00:11:29,559 --> 00:11:33,640
Speaker 1: powerful paloscopic camera. What kind of technology, Arthur, do we

179
00:11:33,720 --> 00:11:36,559
Speaker 1: have on our satellites now that could compare to this?

180
00:11:37,600 --> 00:11:41,840
Speaker 1: So the moment, by and large, at least satellites that

181
00:11:41,880 --> 00:11:47,520
Speaker 1: we know about only do still imaging, that is to say,

182
00:11:47,559 --> 00:11:54,320
Speaker 1: they take still photographs. There have been some experiments to

183
00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:59,839
Speaker 1: make videos from satellites. The problem with that is that

184
00:12:00,760 --> 00:12:05,520
Speaker 1: a satellite travels at seventeen thousand miles an hour. It

185
00:12:05,760 --> 00:12:08,080
Speaker 1: crosses from one end of the horizon to the other

186
00:12:08,160 --> 00:12:11,840
Speaker 1: in about ninety seconds, which means that you may be

187
00:12:11,880 --> 00:12:14,680
Speaker 1: able to get a good video clip of whatever you

188
00:12:14,720 --> 00:12:16,800
Speaker 1: want to look at. That video kit will only be

189
00:12:17,360 --> 00:12:22,080
Speaker 1: ninety seconds long unless another satellite picks it up or

190
00:12:22,120 --> 00:12:26,320
Speaker 1: something like that exactly. And so if you have enough satellites,

191
00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:29,560
Speaker 1: which previously was very very expensive. Every satellite cost half

192
00:12:29,559 --> 00:12:33,480
Speaker 1: a billion dollars or more. Now that much cheaper. If

193
00:12:33,480 --> 00:12:36,320
Speaker 1: you have enough, then as soon as the first satellite

194
00:12:36,320 --> 00:12:40,960
Speaker 1: passes over the horizon, the second satellite is ready on

195
00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:44,959
Speaker 1: the other side to pick up the feed. There are

196
00:12:44,960 --> 00:12:48,680
Speaker 1: some other technical challenges involved in that, but all of

197
00:12:48,720 --> 00:12:56,240
Speaker 1: the technological barriers that previously existed to space based video

198
00:12:56,320 --> 00:12:59,920
Speaker 1: surveillance a very very quickly beginning to fall. And in fact,

199
00:13:00,760 --> 00:13:06,320
Speaker 1: there is a company that just made an announcement last

200
00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:12,720
Speaker 1: year that they were going to do video from space

201
00:13:13,880 --> 00:13:17,280
Speaker 1: at large, and it's a company with investments from I

202
00:13:17,320 --> 00:13:20,360
Speaker 1: think Bill Gates and soft Bank, So it you know,

203
00:13:20,440 --> 00:13:25,000
Speaker 1: it's it's clearly, it's clearly it's a serious proposition. Listen

204
00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:28,160
Speaker 1: to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one

205
00:13:28,200 --> 00:13:31,240
Speaker 1: am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot

206
00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:32,040
Speaker 1: com for more