I'd feel better about this tech if I trusted the folks who would run it
Canadian Inventor Lets Everyone Be an Armchair Spy
Mon Nov 29, 2004 06:55 PM ET
By Larissa Liepins
TORONTO (Reuters) - New Internet-based technology could soon turn regular computer users into armchair spies, a Canadian inventor said on Monday.
Vincent Tao, an engineer at Toronto's York University said he has invented a mapping and surveillance tool called SAME (see anywhere, map anywhere), that produces images so sharp that geographic co-ordinates typed into a Web site can reveal the make of a car parked on the street.
Tao said SAME works by taking satellite images of the Earth and combining them with real-time remote sensors that monitor traffic and weather.
The information is reformatted on a searchable Web site that can capture ground-level images of the Earth with little or no time delay.
The resolution is 2 feet -- fine enough to determine the make of a car, though not the details of a human face, according to Tao.
"This is real-time streaming technology. It's like (the online directory) MapQuest or the navigation system in your car, but three-dimensional," he said in an interview on Monday.
"You'll see a globe, like a virtual Earth, and then you can fly in from outer space and zoom all the way in to a city and even to street level, which will be updated by very nice, high-resolution imagery."
