TTL is an abbreviation for: Long Range, Non-cooperative, Biometric Tagging, Tracking and Location systems. The Army is developing drones that will recognize your face and track you, based on how you look. The Pentagon has tried all kinds of technologies to keep track of its foes — tiny transmitters, lingering scents, and “human thermal fingerprints.” The military calls the effort “Tagging, Tracking, and Locating,” or “TTL.” This technology is not perfect so a more exact technology is in the works.
“If this works out, we’ll have the ability to track people persistently across wide areas,” says Tim Faltemier, the lead biometrics researcher at Progeny Systems Corporation, which recently won one of the Army contracts. “A guy can go under a bridge or inside a house. But when he comes out, we’ll know it was the same guy that went in.”
Progeny is working on their drone-mounted, “Long Range, Non-cooperative, Biometric Tagging, Tracking and Location” system. It is one several firms that has developed algorithms for the military that use two-dimensional images to construct a model of a face. “This overcomes a basic limitation in current TTL operations where… objects of interest only appear periodically from sheltered positions or crowds,” the Army noted in its announcement of the project.
If Progeny can get close enough, Faltemier says his technology can even tell identical twins apart. It also claims the software can help the military “not only learn the identity of subjects but also their associations and social groups. [1]
The military, NSA, NRO, ONI, CIA, and the FBI can gain access to a satellite and dedicate it to observe a single person, a group of people or area for an indefinite period. And all of these spy agencies use them on a daily basis to watch targets. Spy agencies in the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, India, Japan, Red China and Israel also have access to satellites, which they use on a daily basis to spy on their own people but also on targets outside their respective nations.
Private corporations also have their own satellites and use them to snoop on people and facilities around the world; these corporations rent out their satellites to other corporations and people. The most infamous of these corporations is Google, which makes Google Earth available to just about anyone. [2]
Endnotes
[1] Shachtman, Noah. “Army Tracking Plan: Drones That Never Forget a Face.” 9.28.2011.(www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/progeny-systems-corporation)
[2] www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/earthpro-compare.html