The Military-Style Surveillance Technology Being Tested in American Cities
In the eyes of the law, there’s no difference between a photo taken by a smartphone through an airplane window and one taken by an ultrapowerful camera in a helicopter hovering over your backyard.
Say you’re on a commercial flight and you pass over a city. You pull out your phone and take a picture. Much of the area that you have photographed is private property, but have you violated anybody’s privacy? You’d probably say no, and you’d be right. But what if, instead of your phone, you use a professional camera equipped with a telescopic lens that’s strong enough to make out individual people in their backyards? Though your actions might raise some eyebrows among your fellow passengers, they are, from a legal standpoint,
