I have become extra-sensitive to surveillance and reconnaissance issues since working for Goodrich SRS, but today caught me completely off guard. I was driving home from work and I noticed an SUV coming towards me with all kinds of strange equipment on it’s roof. It looked like two cameras 90 degrees from each other pointing towards the front corners of the car. It’s possible there was another pair of cameras pointing towards the rear corners of the car. The car was also equipped with some antennae, and had some companies’ logo on the sides that sported some text about surveying or somesuch.
After the car passed me I continued to look in my rear-view mirror and noticed that the entire back window had a huge Microsoft Windows Live Local logo across the back. My guess is that MS is doing some of their “Street Side” imaging of storefronts, etc.
Terrible writing, but good story about surveillance, is The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks. It’s a bit cheesy…but it makes you wonder!
can you hear me now?
I have seen these trucks going about. Usually they are the Verizon “can you hear me now” guy who has a zillion multi carrier antennas on their truck comparing coverage for the various services. Now that 3g data services are becomming possible, they are now resurveying their coverage for the new high bandwidth services.