Right now, a Cessna plane outfitted with multiple cameras is flying over Baltimore to conduct wide-area surveillance. Those four to six cameras can capture an area of about 30 square miles. The real-time images are stitched together and continuously transmitted at a rate of one per second to analysts on the ground.

The public has no clue the Cessna is flying and filming overhead, sometimes for 10 hours a day, or that the Baltimore Police Department has been tapping into that surveillance to fight crime. It’s being conducted by a private company, Persistent Surveillance Systems; the surveillance has not been publicly disclosed and is being funded by a private donor.

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