The Cessnas are coming! The Cessnas are coming!

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_945.shtml




Low-flying Cessna 172s, flying in grid patterns over major cities, and snapping images of every square foot from just about every direction. They are coming, according the AP’s Ben Dobbin in his article, “Aerial-Imaging Becoming Indispensable Tool.” Indispensable to whom, Ben? Not me. Indispensable to what sane, red-blooded, busy or even indolent American?

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One hundred five1people now work for this profitable company that’s ramping up for a perennial doubling of sales no less that could top $100 million by 2008. Well, there’s the American Dream if I ever heard it. Build a better mousetrap and catch more mice. Why Pictometry has been “showered with calls from Wall Street this year about its potential plans to go public.” In fact, if it wasn’t so pernicious, it would be ridiculous.

News of their weirdness reached me in an e-mail from a reader, just Liz, who was freaked about those planes buzzing night and day over her neighborhood in South Carolina. Well, toots, now you know. And guess what? Two Israeli companies, Ofek and Idan (is that from the bible?), say they developed the same oblique-imaging system (now there’s a euphemism for spying).

But Pictometry says they haven’t “delivered” outside Israel, why the very country whose back-door spying sleights of hand were used in our Promis software, sold to all our allies. And then they put in a Trojan to spy on us. Never know once you start stuffing your nose in other’s people’s places. In fact, so far (and this will probably come as a huge surprise to you) Pictometry’s aerial images are “mostly used by law enforcement and other government agencies.” What like Homeland Security, the NSA, your local paranoid cops?

In fact, in Arlington County, Va., coincidentally the first county mapped in 2001, firefighters, bless their hearts, were able to quickly size up the damage when “terrorists” slammed a jetliner into the Pentagon. Ho. Wait a minute. What, you mean Hani Hanjor, who couldn’t even fly a Cessna? Or was it the remote-controlled version of the F77’s 757 or the A-3 Skywarrior or the Global Hawk? What did they see? I and a bunch of 9/11 info-freaks would love to take a peek, just how quickly they sized up the damage, removed the fuselage, body and/or baggage and all other crucial evidence, expanding the size of the entry and exit holes.

I mean in if we’re playing sneak-a-peek, you show me yours and I’ll you mine, evidence that is.
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and the neo con bushmilhousegang keeps on doing whatever they want

Some modern military maps have the 1km by 1km grid overlain on an aerial photograph. It really makes land navigation a cinch.

I'm a Google Earth junkie!

I use http://local.live.com all the time for for pre-site survey's when installing VSAT dishes around the country. They have a bird's eye in some area's that give you great resolution.

Joe

with aerials taken in the late 1930's. You can see what an ecological disaster suburban sprawl has been. The massive flooding happening while you read this is a result of this. Just compare the amount of area paved over since then. go to http://www.pennpilot.psu.edu/