This Surveillance Camera Can See You Sneeze at 4,000 Feet

With its 19 lenses, the Mantis, one of the world’s most powerful cameras, can capture cities and people in the big picture, and then drill down into extraordinary detail. This tool is now powering the Chinese surveillance state. Photo: Qilai Shen for The Wall Street Journal



More from the Wall Street Journal:

[Loftikaz]

How proud are you making a dictator reach his goals quicker

[AcctistaZ]

Let's be honest. This is an advanced monitoring tool and it's certainly going to be used to destroy whatever is left of priva-see

[ojuno]

"...having a camera that can capture everything is going to change our lives."
for better or worse though?

[funny-video-YouTube-channel]

*The memory storage requirements* for this camera will be insane.

This camera is good for landscape photography. Imagine the small details we can see in the landscape photo, if we had such a camera for personal use :-)

[ronalcorn]

Such technology to me is evil. It's not that the technology isn't great, it's what those who in power do with it. There will always be a few to take advantage of such a device, and use it for ulterior motives. Privacy is something most do NOT want to give up. Also there are satellite cameras that beats this camera by eons.

[AGADKNY]

BUT how will it see through the smog? lol

[cmdr-reflipd]

Just what we needed another tool for the police state.

[danish]

3:52 A gigapixel camera the size of a gopro ?? really !!!

[alexp]

This guy's passion for creation is severely overshadowed by his altruistic vision for how the technology will be used. RIP.

[entrepreneur]

There is no point is bashing this guy. If he doesn't, someone will. You can't stop the future. It's up to us to restrict how it's used by governments because they will ALWAYS get their hands on the latest and greatest.

[gisforgirard]

"having a camera that can capture everything, is going to change our lives" - yeah, you can say that again...

[hhanonymous]

1:21 Video stitching leaves something to be desired. Doubling and overlap can be seen with the camera producer standing in front of the van.

[cfong]

The name of the camera system is fitting. A mantis has not only compound eyes, but also spiky claws to guided by them.

[Razor]

Seems they never worked on getting these security cameras down to the general consumer market. If they could have make a low cost implementation of it where a user can have 4-6 of those cameras, then it could be great for surveillance of the exterior of a house.

[kabatake]

The Chinese and American military already have this technology long ago! It was used mainly for military purposes. The technology has spread to civilian world. Just like GPS was used mainly to track US Navy ships. Now GPS is every where.

[starcrib]

David Bradley is the unfortunate agent of evil. This is destruction.

[JohnDaniels]

"Those who would trade privacy for a bit of security deserve neither privacy nor security". -Ben Franklin

[LSANTUTORIALS]

When your girlfriend tells you have a stupid idea but you do it anyways.

[CyberMacGyver]

Can you imagine live streaming the footage on youtube... people would watch 👀

[russelldunning]

Somehow, I think this technology could be "abused":

"Dissident, you can run but you can't hide!"