
The Gorgon Stare, a military drone-surveillance technology - axiomdata316
https://longreads.com/2019/06/21/nothing-kept-me-up-at-night-the-way-the-gorgon-stare-did/
======
kefs
From a previous comment of mine:

Gorgon Stare was featured in PBS Nova Rise of the Drones (2013)

Skip to 30m mark:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP_T45UG1-o?t=30m29s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP_T45UG1-o?t=30m29s)

~~~
brohee
They say that they acquire one million terrabyte a day? Was it a journalist
mistake? It sounds like really a lot for 2013, the budgets must be huge...

~~~
jandrewrogers
The raw storage density of a high-end sensing drone was approaching a petabyte
even back then, so it is a plausible number if you have a large drone fleet.
This roughly matches available COTS flash storage in ultra-dense form factors
at the time. Live streams are likely going to be an extract of the captured
data but you can always pull the storage array when it lands.

------
runjake
ARGUS-IS, which is the successor to GORGON STARE, adds DVR capabilities. So
your feed catches a VBIED detonation and analysts can zoom in and rewind the
footage and find the safe house from which the VBIED departed.

This can be done at effectively metropolitan scale.

IIRC, both these systems are being tested domestically.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-
IS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS)

~~~
godelski
I remember a RadioLab episode[0] that talked about using small planes to do
similar things. Planes that were flying at high up so you won't hear or really
notice them. They go through how they solved a crime in Mexico by tracing
where the crime happened and stepping pictures back to find where the shooter
originated from. The CIA and FBI have been doing this for a long time too. Its
use is just getting more wide spread.

Then I want people to consider Planet [1](formally Planet Labs). Their goal is
to get a picture of Earth every day. They currently have 14 satellites that
get 0.72m resolution (sample)[2]. That's easily enough to see a car. The 3m[3]
seems good enough to do what they describe in the RadioLab episode. Honestly
it is only a matter of time before Planet or another company gets sub 100cm
resolution AND has a constant view of the globe. While this product is
transformative in many different ways and can do a lot of good for humanity
(seriously, it can do a LOT of good) I have _ZERO_ doubt that it will be used
to track people. It really isn't a matter of inventing technology, it is a
matter of how much to spend (inventing more will make it cheaper).

So I think we should think very carefully about this technology. I'm extremely
concerned with privacy but at the same time I do not think we should prevent
the march of innovation (even if you really could). But we've seen how it has
been used. We see how it IS being used. But I want people to also think how it
WILL be used as technology gets better. This isn't a conversation for
tomorrow. We do have to think about it now and decide how we want to handle
these things. I'm not entirely sure how it should be handled. But the idea
that the US, Russia, China, or even NK could have access to constant
monitoring of the entire planet is a scary idea and well past Orwellian. I
think we're far from a constant monitoring being feasible, but we're at least
close enough where the idea is realistic (where it isn't sci-fi anymore).

Side note: I wonder how much more difficult it would be to be a spy if this
technology existed.

[0] [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/wnycs-radiolab/e/eye-in-
the...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/wnycs-radiolab/e/eye-in-the-
sky-39430699)

[1] [https://www.planet.com/products/planet-
imagery/](https://www.planet.com/products/planet-imagery/)

[2]
[https://www.planet.com/assets/images/products/imagery/skysat...](https://www.planet.com/assets/images/products/imagery/skysat_rotterdam.jpg)

[3]
[https://www.planet.com/assets/images/products/imagery/planet...](https://www.planet.com/assets/images/products/imagery/planetscope_sanfrancisco.jpg)

------
manjana
> It’s a way of seeing everybody all the time. Fundamental to liberal
> democracy is the ability to have sacrosanct private spaces. That is where
> the life of civil society exists. It is where our own personal lives exist,
> where we are able to pursue our dreams and passions. And it is often where
> we hold power to account. When you uncover those spaces, you fundamentally
> put all of those things at risk.

Are satellite surveillance not already a threat in this sense? I have heard
such images have a resolution down to 1 cm.

~~~
maroonblazer
Bostrom makes a compelling argument that we may find ourselves needing to
rethink this assumption of privacy in the name of preventing bad actors from
wiping out civilization.

[http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf](http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf)

~~~
salawat
I disagree. His paper comes off more as whataboutism, or a call toward paying
more attention to underlying issues of poor ethical/moral fabric underlying
society today; particularly and most obviously illustrated in the tech
industry today.

Yes. Our ability to effect the world is amplified greatly from what it has
ever been before; but before abandoning essential liberty, perhaps we should
take a moment to collect ourselves, sit down, and realize that if we're
willing to give up everything, then civilization is already lost; therefore,
the proper direction is not further breakdown or restriction of liberties, but
a revival of the collective cilized spirit that hitherto has graced our
ancestors in bringing us to this point.

Technology and our bewitchment by it, and the power conferred through it's use
are things tempered by prudence and an active sense of obligation to those
around us, and those we'll be leaving behind to carry on after us.

I'm incredibly alarmed at the willingness to embrace the sacrifice of
essential liberty nowadays... It's mind boggling.

~~~
harshreality
Hi there, John Stuart Mill.

Bostrom's argument is not at all that bad people do bad things so therefore we
need total surveillance.

It's that some technology (which may be in our near future, but isn't quite
here _yet_ at least) may be so dangerous and so ubiquitous that unless you can
reduce the number of crazy or misguided people (terrorists, violent nihilists,
bored teenagers, or whoever) to zero, civilization will end.

Lamenting the death of classical liberal values is not an argument. If such
technology is feasible, there are only two options: accept the end of
civilization and perhaps humans, or _try_ to prevent use of the technology
through mass surveillance and elimination of privacy. Or drugging everyone, or
some combination. e.g. 1984 or BNW. The counterargument is that those schemes
fundamentally don't work, but that really depends on the nature and
reliability of the surveillance or the drug, doesn't it? Even if they don't
work, the choice is between _trying_ something that probably won't work, and
the certainty of the end of human civilization if nothing is tried.

~~~
salawat
>Hi there, John Stuart Mill.

I've been called a modern day Spinoza, hadn't been called out as Mill yet
though. At least I'm in good company.

>It's that some technology (which may be in our near future, but isn't quite
here yet at least) may be so dangerous and so ubiquitous that unless you can
reduce the number of crazy or misguided people (terrorists, violent nihilists,
bored teenagers, or whoever) to zero, civilization will end.

Yes. I know. That is consistent with my interpretation. What I said spoke not
to the message of the paper, but what it means in the backdrop of current
events. I also strongly disagree with the conclusion that civilization ends
because some crazy gets his hand on a thing. I say civilization ends once
people start panicking about some crazy getting a thing, and seriously
considering we have to either full stop technological development, or cleanse
the world of "problematic sub-populations" for the sake of something that
might not even happen.

>Lamenting the death of classical liberal values is not an argument.

Correct. It isn't. Nor was I attempting to do so. My argument was that seeing
as civilization is already lost if we're considering hitting the full stop
button, drugging the masses, or going off into flights of fancy creating a
world with zero space for essential liberty; the only way to go is up. We have
to reaffirm our commitment to personal liberty, rebuild the civic framework of
trust, and embark on rational, prudent ways of hardening society against
whatever new "threats " there are to be dealt with due to mischief caused by
members of the very civilization we so deem to protect.

Civilization predicated on essentially null liberty, and iron-fisted systemic
control isn't civilization. It's barbarism. Civilization is what you have when
everyone has the means to put one over on everyone else, but we all decide to
build/do something productive instead of trying to cause others harm.

Do some people make the harmful choice? Yes. Those people generally set the
level the rest of us respond on. Creating a self-correcting dynamic.

>If such technology is feasible, there are only two options: accept the end of
civilization and perhaps humans, or try to prevent use of the technology
through mass surveillance and elimination of privacy. Or drugging everyone, or
some combination. e.g. 1984 or BNW. The counterargument is that those schemes
fundamentally don't work, but that really depends on the nature and
reliability of the surveillance or the drug, doesn't it? Even if they don't
work, the choice is between trying something that probably won't work, and the
certainty of the end of human civilization if nothing is tried.

And this is the type of thing that indicates to me, that for at least right
now, civilization is dead or dying. See, humanity doesn't go away when
civilization does. Our works and infrastructure, and everything else don't
just disappear. We just start acting in the most base, animalistic ways
conceivable.

Dystopian literature is _not_ a thrice damned instruction manual. It is a
cautionary tale. A warning, a description of a societal failure state.

To take any option as laid out in these tales and to consider it a valid,
agreeable, or desirable way to advance is to reject the central tenet of
civilization. That people, given the means and freedom to employ them will
generally do positive things, and for the one's that don't, we have ways of
dealing with that; but in the interest of not succumbing to our baser natures
as human beings, we bind the employment of those means through systematized,
impartial codes, so at the very least, we protect ourselves from unraveling
the civic trust that makes our current state of being possible.

It is through the respect of personal liberty, and prudence in the application
of violence or coersion that the state of civility bears fruit.

I'll happily accept the possible risk of sudden existential collapse. If it's
going to be, then it'll be. Everything historically recorded, everything being
actively researched, and everything existing as even a kernel of a nightmare
in a creative's eye is bound by time, space, and the laws of physics. Time we
will have, and make no mistake; nothing creates unity in a civilization like
sudden existential crisis. Some might even argue, that is how our
civilizations mature. By being tested repeatedly, and managing to survive
intact.

In case you thought the following were just platitudes, I recommend you think
about what they really mean before being swayed by this alarmist/surrendering
rhetoric.

Land of the Free, home the Brave.

Those that would sacrifice essential Liberty for Safety, deserve and will find
neither Liberty, nor Safety.

The cost of Liberty is eternal vigilance.

I'll gladly wear Mill's mantle, because someone clearly needs to.

------
captaincrowbar
I keep wondering if the person who came up with the name was a Charlie Stross
fan.

Stross's Laundry Files novels feature a hybrid magical/technological device
codenamed Scorpion Stare. It's a weapon rather than a surveillance technology,
but it's also built into government surveillance systems as a hidden feature.
And the technology behind it was discovered by dissecting actual gorgons
(which are a real thing in the Laundryverse).

~~~
archgoon
Just don't send him an email. :)

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/01/psa-
gorg...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/01/psa-gorgon-
stare.html)

------
dmix
This is great, I hope Gorgon Stare enters the modern lexicon.

It's a adequately intimidating sounding name for an overreaching gov
surveillance program that was intended for warfare zones and being applied to
domestic citizens. Exactly like "Stingrays" from a couple years ago.

~~~
m463
All a terrorist would have to do is a few minor operations on domestic soil,
then stand back and watch as the country folds in on itself. Like airport
security x 1000.

~~~
swagasaurus-rex
Was this not the stated mission of Osama Bin Laden, to bait America into a
taxing war that would drain the economy and see Western civilization spend
itself into bankruptcy?

~~~
i_am_nomad
I think that was the goal he stated retroactively. Before the attacks, he
seemed to legitimately believe he could conventionally destroy the US and
unite the Umma with a long series of 9/11 style operations.

------
brohee
I wonder how they stream 1.8 gigapixels to the ground, even with a low
framerate that's serious bandwidth...

~~~
marviel
I'd guess the optimization there is to tell the drone what "targets" they care
about and to only stream back data within a cone of those targets

------
Animats
Half-meter resolution from a drone - big deal. Digital Globe can do better
from orbit.[1]

Integration of all the imagery from ground-based surveillance cameras is a
bigger threat to privacy. At half a meter, about all you can do is find fires
and follow cars.

[1] [https://platform.digitalglobe.com/earth-imaging-basics-
spati...](https://platform.digitalglobe.com/earth-imaging-basics-spatial-
resolution/)

~~~
cameldrv
It was a revolutionary technology when it was deployed in Iraq. You had
roadside bombs going off constantly.

The workflow was:

1\. Bomb goes off

2\. Plane lands, disk packs taken off, loaded into computer

3\. DVR type interface, zoom to the time/place where the bomb went off.

4\. Rewind. Observe some guys messing around with something on the side of the
road.

5\. Draw a box around their truck.

6\. Run the tape forward. Computer automatically tracks the truck. Observe
where truck goes back to.

7\. Run the tape backward. Observe where truck came from.

8\. Kick down two doors that night.

9\. Integrate this with your mobile phone tracker. Observe all phones that
came to either of the two addresses within a time window.

10\. See what other places these phones went to. Find places that are common
to multiple bombings. Repeat.

11\. You now have the leadership chain.

Roadside bombs essentially stopped being a problem. This was attributed to the
"Anbar Awakening", but my belief is that it was essentially due to these two
technologies.

------
alexanderthe-
For some context on the ancient greek definition of the "Gorgon Stare", read:

[https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/fear/dread-
gorgon](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/fear/dread-gorgon)

------
jacobwilliamroy
I used to live next to a guy who would shoot all drones on sight. The world
needs more people like him.

Edit: so other people have pointed out firing ballistics into the air is
actually really dangerous. Signal jamming the drone seems like a safer kind of
direct action.

Could also indirectly resist the military industrial complex by lobbying state
and federal governments. That would be the safest way to bring down a drone.

~~~
fludlight
Bullets go up, then they come down and kill the neighbors' kids. Don't do
this.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire)

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
I guess it is dangerous to do that in a densely populated area. He would wait
for them to get low and hit em with the bird shot.

Still I think his energy would be better spent talking to our local government
about setting up a drone ban.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Hobos still exist. They typically try to be quiet and go unnoticed so they
won't be rousted by local law enforcement.

Sure, lots of folks see homeless individuals as less than human and would
happily say "Let's shoot them! Problem solved!"

But if some fine upstanding citizen's stray bullet is tracked back to him,
it's potentially felony manslaughter anyway.

~~~
GordonS
Maybe I'm missing something, but what on earth has this got to do with the
parent comment?!

~~~
DoreenMichele
Just because you don't see people and you think the neighbor kids are at
school doesn't mean there aren't people around that could be hit by a stray
bullet. Maybe even people actively trying to not be seen, though they aren't
thieves casing the house or whatever. They are just extremely poor.

I spent nearly six years homeless. I used to see drones above my tent at night
when camped at the foot of some bluffs below expensive housing. I don't
believe the people in the expensive housing had any idea I was there. I did my
best to have tree cover, to come in under cover of darkness and remain quiet
and so forth.

I was trying to avoid telling that personal anecdote because I'm routinely
given shit for telling my personal anecdotes to explain what I mean.

~~~
svieira
To give a voice to the silent - thank you Doreen for telling your story! You
have a unique insight into the problems of the homeless and I for one am
grateful to you for sharing it.

