Eyes in the Sky

The fascinating history and unnerving future of high-tech aerial surveillance, from its secret military origins to its growing use on American citizens. "Eyes in the Sky is the authoritative account of how the Pentagon developed a godlike surveillance device that will someday be used over every major city on the planet. This new technology--and its most powerful iteration to date, Gorgon Stare--can track thousands of moving targets at once over vast areas, following you backward and forward in time to expose where you came from and where you're going. With a little help from AI, it will even predict crimes before they happen. In wartime, this formidable tool has saved countless lives; it can be similarly transformative in peacetime. But if misused, it could become the most nightmarish visual surveillance system ever created. Drawing on extensive access within the agencies, labs, and companies that created Gorgon Stare and other weapons like it, [this book] reveals how a top-secret team of scientists devised an unprecedented way of watching everything, how the technology has already been deployed in American skies, and how we might still capitalize on its great promise while avoiding its potential perils."--Dust jacket.