Think you can hide in a crowd? Think again.
Here is a photo of the 2011 Stanley Cup crowd in Vancouver BC. This picture was taken using a camera with 70,000 x 30,000 pixels (2100 MegaPixels). Clicking through this link or on the image takes you to Gigapixel.com, where you can use your mouse roller to zoom into the image. However, we are not talking your normal zoom, here. You can zoom into ANY FACE in the crowd!
Impressive technology.
Now, imagine security cameras everywhere taking continuous images with this level of granularity along with face recognition software scanning each face in the crowd and comparing it against a growing database of images. You cannot hide in even a crowd of 1 million people. The implications are mind-boggling.
Updates:
- Jun2014: As we would have expected but now know, the NSA has been vacuuming up millions of images in cyberspace and running facial recognition software against them.