National Geographic

THEY ARE WATCHING YOU 47``````EARTHWATCHINGsystem developed by UC San Diego researchersthat tracks the nearly extinct vaquita porpoise inthe Sea of Cortez. Or the “forest watcher” camerasinstalled to help protect the shrinking timber-lands of Sri Lanka.“If you want a picture of the future,” Orwelldarkly warned in his classic, “imagine a bootstamping on a human face—forever.” This au-thoritarian vision discounts the possibility thatgovernments might use such tools to make thestreets safer. Recall, for example, the footagefrom security cameras that cracked the cases ofthe 2005 London subway and 2013 Boston Mar-athon bombings. Multitudes of more obscureepisodes exist, such as that of Euric Cain, caughtunambiguously on camera shooting a TulaneUniversity medical student named Peter Gold in2015 after Gold prevented him from abducting awoman on the streets of New Orleans. (Gold sur-vived; Cain received a 54-year prison sentencefor a crime rampage that included rapes, armedrobbery, and attempted murder.)At the Port of Boston, the Department ofHomeland Security has tested a cargo-visualizingmethod invented by two MIT physicists, RobertLedoux and William Bertozzi. Using a techniqueknown as nuclear resonance fluorescence—inwhich elements become identifiable by excitingtheir nuclei—the screening device can, withoutopening a freight container, discern the elemen-tal fingerprint of its contents. Unlike a typicalx-ray scan, which shows only shape and density,it can tell the difference between soda and dietsoda, natural and manufactured diamonds, plas-tics and high-energy explosives, and nonnuclearand nuclear material.Does anyone doubt that a more closely inspect-ed world over the past 150 years would have beena safer one? We might know the identity of Jackthe Ripper, whether Lee Harvey Oswald actedalone, and if O. J. Simpson acted at all. Of course,public safety has been the pretext for surveil-lance before and since Orwell’s time. But todaysuch technology can be seen as a lifesaver in moreencompassing ways. Thanks to imagery provid-ed by satellite cameras, relief organizations havelocated refugees near Mosul, encamped in the&KLQDÅ VƃUVWDLUFUDIWFDUULHUEXLOWfrom scratch is launched in Dalian,a port city on the Yellow Sea. Theseimages, taken by Planet’s Dovesatellites, show the ship in a berth(far left), backing into the water(center), and docked (left). Planetcan capture similar developmentsday by day, anywhere in the world.