Urthecast HD video from the ISS

[Homer J Simpson]

Thought this was kind of cool. Videos pretty amazing when you consider they are taken from 400 km while at 7.5 km/s.

My other thought was imagine what the NSA's capability must be.

http://www.universetoday.com/120911/exquisite-views-of-earths-cities-featured-in-first-ultra-hd-videos-from-space-station/

[Mechanical Menace]

My other thought was imagine what the NSA's capability must be.

The NRO donated a pair of late 90s satellites to NASA in 2012. For reconnaissance the optics are obsolete, astrophysicists are drooling at the thought of getting their hands on them. They are even planning to use one of them to replace WFIRST. WFIRST, if it goes ahead, won't launch until the mid 2020s. It's upgraded replacement will/may use decades old spook castoffs...

[Homer J Simpson]

Thinking some more I wonder if they, (NSA, CIA),  currently have the resolution to do facial recognition from orbit?

I would not be surprised. If not now very soon I would imagine.

Science fiction stuff.

Identify and track a person in real time from orbit. Relay the GPS coordinates to the drone and no more target. All could be done automatically.

I'm not a "conspiracy theory" guy but its possible from a technology point of view.
 

[Mechanical Menace]

Thinking some more I wonder if they, (NSA, CIA),  currently have the resolution to do facial recognition from orbit?

With their apparent focus on very wide fields of view I doubt they have resolution much higher than say half a foot squared, I bet they could say "that person is reading a paper" but not what the headline is. And TBH I rarely walk around looking at the sky

And with all the other options to get that sort of information it seems like you'd be gimping the satellite to get it to do something you can do much better in the atmosphere or on the ground.

[SeanB]

My old office is on Google Earth at 15cm resolution. Don't know what the original resolution was, but I could read out a lot of the road markings clearly. Step outside the boundary and it dropped back to 2m or worse resolution though.

[Halcyon]

Thinking some more I wonder if they, (NSA, CIA),  currently have the resolution to do facial recognition from orbit?

Much of the reason why classified buildings and structures are completely hidden from view from aerial or satellite imagery. Even antennas and satellite dishes are hidden or obscured by domes to prevent inferences being make about their operating frequency or TX/RX direction.

The most you'll see in Google Earth are some air conditioning units on the roof or everything under a big hanger/warehouse.

Satellite time and resources for this sort of 'viewing' is expensive, but perhaps one day we'll see a time where it can be used by domestic Policing organisations as well.