Eye in the Sky

Summary

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Radiolab – "Eye in the Sky" (June 18, 2015)

Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich, with Minouche Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark (from WNYC’s Note to Self)
Theme: The episode investigates "eye in the sky" surveillance technology originally developed for military use and its controversial potential for use by civilian police departments. Through technical breakdowns, real-world case studies, and ethical debate, the episode asks: If we can watch everything, should we?

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Overview

The episode centers around the invention and consequences of wide-area aerial surveillance technology—originally developed to combat insurgency in Iraq—and its attempted use in U.S. cities like Dayton, Ohio. The hosts (with reporting by Note to Self’s Minouche Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark) discuss technical details, dramatic real-life stories, public reactions, and the profound privacy versus security questions the technology raises.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to the Technology and Its Inventor

• Ross McNutt (military engineer, ex-Air Force, MIT PhD, founder of Persistent Surveillance Systems) developed “Project AngelFire”: a plane-mounted camera array capable of continuously photographing entire cities and tracking incidents as they unfold—backwards and forwards in time ([03:01], [04:59]).
  • "Bombs going off are pretty easy to detect in images. The problem is, how do you go from a bomb going off backwards in time to be able to figure out who planted it?" (Ross McNutt, [04:26])
• The system was conceived during the Iraq War to combat IED attacks (improvised explosive devices) ([03:35]–[04:14]).

2. How the System Works

• Cameras attached to a plane fly 15–16,000 feet above a city, taking high-resolution images every second, covering 25 square miles.
  • "Every second it takes a still image of the entire city... and then beams it down to an operator." ([06:04])
• Operators can scrub backwards/forwards in time, following the path of suspects or vehicles after (and before) a major incident ([06:33], [07:01]).

3. Transition to Civilian Use: Dayton, Ohio Case Study

• After military applications, McNutt pitched the technology to U.S. police forces to address urban crime.
  • "The U.S. cities have just as large a problem... Only it's not IEDs, it's crime." (Ross McNutt, [09:09])
• Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl agreed to a test: A five-day surveillance of the city ([09:26], [10:01]).
• Case Example: Tracking a burglary in real time by following a blurry image of a white van, culminating in a rapid police response and arrest ([10:23]–[12:07]).
  • Analyst Alex Blassingame describes the process: "The human brain and the human eyes are very, very evolved to pick out movement." ([11:23])

4. Ethical Tension: Safety vs. Privacy

• The hosts and reporters oscillate between awe at the technology’s power and deep discomfort about its implications.
  • "This is so weird. This is like having a superpower." (Robert Krulwich, [12:15])
  • "I just feel sad. It's like we're all just these little dots. It just seems like the antithesis of what... police departments seem to be trying to do..." (Minouche Zomorodi, [12:25])
• The technology theoretically supports oversight of both officers and citizens.
  • "There’s nothing in this system that prevents you from having effective community policing at the same time... This lets us watch all the officers in a 25 square mile area all at once." (Ross McNutt, [13:14])
• Robert Krulwich worries about the misuse of such surveillance in everyday life (e.g. tracking cheat spouses, red light runners, realtors checking on tenants):
  • "If the information exists that will show what my pixel was actually doing, then I'm a little less free." ([13:45])

5. Juarez, Mexico: High-Stakes Deployment

• The team describes deployment in Juarez, Mexico (one of the world’s most violent cities at the time, with 300 murders a month, 52 kidnappings a week) ([15:59]–[16:08]).
• Case study: Following the murder of a female police officer, analysts use footage to identify stakeout vehicles and map connections, discovering a cartel headquarters ([17:04]–[20:01]).
  • "If you follow all four of these cars... you find out who they meet up with... and you see that a whole bunch of those cars are headed to one place... This house appears to be their cartel headquarters." (Ross McNutt, [19:55])
• A U.S. government source claims this data was instrumental in bringing down a cartel responsible for ~1,500 murders ([20:17]).

6. Emotional Reactions & Philosophical Debate

• Reporters and hosts debate their changed feelings after seeing the dramatic results:
  • "I felt ashamed of myself, because the reason why I'm so excited about it is... it's in a country where I don't live." (Minouche Zomorodi, [20:58])
  • Reporter Andy confesses: "I stopped being a good journalist because I picked a side. It feels wrong to not solve these crimes that we can solve." ([21:16])
• Jad struggles with the abstractness of privacy loss:
  • "The advantages are always so concrete and the trade-offs always feel so abstract. I feel like… there's something being lost here, but I can never quite put my finger on it." ([14:24])

7. Community Response: Dayton’s Public Forum

• Despite impressive demonstrations, Dayton ultimately rejects the technology after public debate ([23:22]–[25:59]).
  • City Commission’s Cary Gray recounts a divided room: Some wanted the technology ("I'm not doing anything wrong, so I don't care what people see me doing"), others saw it as a "grotesque invasion of privacy," with the rest unsure but asking technical questions ([23:50]–[25:20]).
  • "There was no way that you could trust government with this volume of information and this breadth of information." (Cary Gray, [24:35])
• The debate stalls adoption for now, with the technology’s future hanging in the balance ([26:02]–[26:11]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Ross McNutt on Military Motivation:
  "I had 38 students working for me—for two years—but eventually they developed what became known as Project Angelfire." ([05:01])
• Jad Abumrad on Modern Dilemmas:
  "Today we’re going to look at the can and the should." ([02:48])
• Robert Krulwich’s Ethical Worry:
  "If the information exists that will show what my pixel was actually doing, then I’m a little less free." ([13:45])
• Minouche’s Emotional Conflict:
  "I felt ashamed of myself, because ... it’s still not okay for us." ([20:58])
• Andy Mills’ Conversion:
  "I stopped being a good journalist because I picked a side. It feels wrong to not solve these crimes that we can solve." ([21:16])
• City Commission’s Public Sentiment:
  "A quarter of the people were supportive... another group... believed that this was a grotesque invasion of privacy... the rest didn't have enough information." (Cary Gray, [23:50])

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Important Segments and Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |----------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Introduction to Ross McNutt and Project AngelFire | 02:59–05:01 | | Technical Explanation of Surveillance System | 05:01–07:13 | | Dayton, OH Trial: Real-world Police Use | 09:09–12:07 | | Privacy vs. Security Debate | 12:11–14:44 | | Juarez, Mexico: Surveillance in Extreme Violence | 15:59–20:48 | | Emotional/Philosophical Reactions by Hosts/Reporters | 20:48–22:43 | | Dayton Public Forum — Community Reception | 23:22–25:59 |

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Episode Tone and Language

The episode blends storytelling, investigative journalism, and philosophical inquiry with the show's characteristic curiosity and playfulness—often punctuated with moments of awe, anxiety, and wry humor. The language balances technical accuracy, emotional honesty, and accessibility, capturing both the fascination with technological possibility and the unease about its social ramifications.

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Summary

“Eye in the Sky” is a richly reported, nuanced exploration of ever-watching surveillance technology, tracing its journey from military innovation to American cities. Through dramatic real-world cases, personal confessions of ethical discomfort, and a contentious community debate in Dayton, Radiolab grapples with the essential modern dilemma: When technology makes omniscience possible, what kind of society do we choose to build?

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Transcript

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[B]

Oh, wait, you're listening.

[D]

Okay. All right.

[E]

Okay.

[D]

All right.

[B]

You're listening to Radiolab Radio Lab from wny.

[F]

So how did you guys find out about this? How'd you get into it?

[B]

I think it was. Somebody was reading about it.

[F]

This is Minouche Zamorodi.

[B]

Was you reading about it?

[G]

Right.

[H]

And that's her producer, Alex Goldmark.

[B]

And I just said his name is McNutt. And I just wanted to do a show where I get to say that name at least 10 times, please. But then, like, we actually read it, and it was weird and interesting and brought up lots of issues. Technology is remaking what is possible for.

[C]

Individuals and for institutions and for the international order.

[F]

I'm Jad Abumrad.

[H]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[F]

This is Radiolab. So here we are at this moment in time where we're faced with these.

[H]

Decisions about what we want our future to look like. Be like.

[C]

There are fewer and fewer technical constraints.

[H]

On what we can do.

[C]

That places a special obligation on us.

[H]

To ask tough questions about what we should do.

[F]

Today. We're gonna look at the can and the should with our Friends down the hall, Manoush Sammorodi and Alex Goldmark. They run a great podcast called Note to Sel. You will be our guides into the world of McNutt.

[C]

Yes, my name's Ross McNutt.

[B]

So the McNutt, as I refer to him, he's an ex military guy, did.

[C]

20 years in the Air Force. I enjoyed it.

[F]

I did a lot of good, like, combat military.

[B]

He was an engineer in the military.

[G]

Yeah. I mean, I think he's actually special military.

[C]

My background, I've got a PhD in rapid product development out of MIT. And what I do is I teach young people how to build new systems.

[B]

And the new system, that's the system that we want to talk about. That kind of began in 2004. Ross was teaching a course at a military college.

[C]

It was at the Air Force Institute of Technology here at Wright Patterson in Dayton.

[B]

He says one day in 2004, the whole school gathered together for a rally.

[C]

And our commander got up in front of the whole school and said, we need to do something to help the war effort.

[A]

Terrible violence today in the Iraqi city of Basra.

[B]

So at that time in the Iraq war, before the surge, things were not going well.

[A]

Suicide bombs ripped through police buildings and city streets.

[C]

IEDs going all. All over the place.

[B]

Constant news about IEDs going off everywhere. Soldiers being blown up. In one week, I got blown up three times.

[C]

And to be honest with you, in 2004, it looked like we were going to lose.

[B]

So Ross, he gets together some of his students, some of his colleagues, and they decide, you know, let's sit down and see if we can find a solution quickly. Find a solution to figuring out who is planting all these roadside bombs.

[C]

Yeah, bombs going off are pretty easy to detect in images. The problem is, how do you go from a bomb going off backwards in time to be able to figure out who planted it? So somehow it just came out.

[I]

Was it like you guys sitting around?

[C]

It was at a bar. We were working on the back of a napkin and drawing out different ideas and throwing them around and seeing what happens.

[G]

They were just like, hey, let's use planes. Let's try this, let's try that.

[C]

And then they hit on it. This one stuck. And we sort of drew this out on the back of an envelope.

[B]

Making it took a little while.

[C]

I had 38 students working for me.

[B]

For two years, but eventually they developed what became known as Project Angelfire. And here's how it worked. They take a small plane, and on the belly of the plane, they hook up this Array of cameras sort of swivel around.

[C]

It's a camera system we design and.

[B]

Build, super high end. And then the pilot, ready, he takes off, Flies the plane high over Fallujah.

[C]

In the military, we were up at about 15 to 16,000ft to stay out of the missile range.

[B]

Let's say I'm an Iraqi on the ground in Fallujah and I look up, what would I see?

[C]

You wouldn't see us, you wouldn't hear us, or you wouldn't see us flying.

[G]

Just below the clouds, doing an orbit over Fallujah. Circle, circle, circle for six hours at a time.

[B]

And every second, click, click, click, click.

[G]

Every second it takes a still image of the entire city of Fallujah, 25 square miles, and then beams it down to an operator.

[C]

We take a picture, process it, downlink it, process it, downlink it, every single second.

[B]

So the plane is stamping picture after picture after picture. But here's what makes the system so powerful. The operator on the ground has, let's say, an entire day's worth of these high res pictures of the entire city of Fallujah. And then let's say there's an explosion.

[A]

Officials say at least 20 people were killed in explosions at a market and wounds, 11 others.

[B]

First the operator would pull up the most current image of the city, zoom into the place within Fallujah where it happened, and then click, Click, click in 1 second, increments. Go back in time and see who was there, what happened.

[G]

When was the last time somebody fiddled around in that roadside. Yeah, and you're like, okay, I've gone back two hours and ah, it's that car.

[B]

Fast forward, click, click, click. They can now follow that car forward in time to see where it goes.

[G]

And you see that it went to a house in another neighborhood two miles away. Well, that's where you dispatch your troops to, right?

[C]

Then basically we'd be able to send either the special forces in or the Marines in and sort of take appropriate action.

[B]

It's not like they release a lot of statistics about how well their technology has worked, but you will find several quotes from officers saying that yes, Project Angelfire did save lives, but the reason why we decided to do this story is because it's not just a military thing, Right? Like with a lot of these technologies, they maybe start in the military, but then they trickle down all the way down to all of us. And actually in this case, trickled down to Dayton, Ohio.

[I]

Ross Group Incorporated.

[C]

You think that's it?

[B]

By his first name?

[I]

Yeah, it'd be Weird.

[B]

Oh, you gotta go with the nut. Producer Andy Mills and I actually went to Dayton, Ohio to visit Ross at his business, Persistent Surveillance System. There it is.

[F]

Persistent Surveillance Systems. Right. That feels Orwellian.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

These are the lenses and the motors here basically control it.

[B]

So first we went over to his workshop where he actually works and makes the cameras.

[C]

These are more powerful than some of the best military systems.

[B]

Like we could see him actually making them and how they get attached to the bottoms of the airplane.

[I]

Oh, so many airplanes.

[B]

Then we went over to the hangar where he has all the airplanes. They're beautiful.

[C]

So Overall, we've got 27 airplanes. We operate after you guys.

[B]

Oh my God, it's big. And then he showed us their command center. And this is where you have a bunch of people sitting in front of these enormous screens. This is like your viewing room.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

And this is where all the plane pictures end up. Because Ross's basic idea in taking this technology from Fallujah to a city like Dayton, Ohio is, is basically this.

[C]

The US cities has just as large a problem as we do in Afghanistan and Iraq. Only it's not IEDs, it's crime.

[D]

We've had a lot of major events this year. We've had four officer involved shootings so far this year. Our homicides are up this year.

[B]

So this is Dayton Police Chief Richard Biel.

[D]

B I E H L. I talked.

[B]

To him last summer. A couple years ago, Ross called him up and was like, look, a city.

[C]

Like Dayton, Ohio, we've got 28,000 crimes a year. About 10,000 part one crimes.

[B]

Murder, rape, assault.

[C]

10,000 part one crimes comes out to be $480 million a year.

[B]

But McNutt is like, for about the price of a police helicopter, we believe.

[C]

That we would be able to decrease crime by 30 to 40%. 30% decrease in that is $155 million a year.

[B]

The Dayton police were like, alrighty, let's give it a shot.

[D]

We basically set up a test in June of 2012 for a five day flight.

[B]

Air prop, here we go.

[D]

Just see for ourselves what it was capable of doing.

[B]

They sent the plane up in the air, it started doing its thing just like in Fallujah. And within just a few hours, there.

[D]

Is a call of this breaking, entering in progress with a description of a van.

[B]

It was an older white box truck, just a regular random moving truck. This is Angie Horn, she's the one who called 911. She was just home on her lunch break and she sees a moving van pull up in front of her neighbor's house. A guy gets out, breaks in, starts moving furniture out. We, you know, we immediately called the police. They got there relatively quickly, from what I remember, but he had already taken off.

[G]

Now, normally in a case like this, the police would be like, well, how do we follow him?

[C]

We don't know where he went.

[G]

But in this case, the police contact persistent surveillance systems, and ultimately they get connected to this guy.

[E]

My name is Alex Blassingame. I'm the senior analyst for the company.

[G]

Alex pulls up the image of Dayton, zooms in, clicks backwards about five minutes until he sees this little grainy white dot appear in front of her neighbor's house.

[E]

This is the vehicle here that we're wanting to track.

[B]

I'm sorry, what vehicle? I barely see anything.

[E]

Right. So the image looks real blurry. But the human brain and the human eyes are very, very evolved to pick out movement.

[B]

You gotta understand that from two miles up, a car looks just like a random shape. People, they look like pixels. Alex has trained himself to pick out movement.

[E]

I'm gonna put a tag down on where he's at.

[B]

He places an orange circle over that random little shape, and then click, click, click.

[E]

He moves forward, forward, forward to follow him to his real time location.

[G]

Alex follows it up some roads, finds out that it is parked in a.

[E]

Parking lot six blocks away.

[G]

He calls up the people in the field, goes, go over there. They get there, they see the guy, they see a truck full of stuff. They send a different cop over to pick up the witness. Witness goes, yep, that's the guy.

[F]

Oh, the lady who called.

[G]

Yeah, this is minutes later.

[F]

No kidding.

[G]

That could have been a murderer, right? That could have been an armed robber. It could have been a lot of things.

[H]

This is so weird. This is like having a superpower.

[C]

It is cool.

[H]

This is actually better than Batman. You can't go back forth in time if you're a superhero.

[B]

I just feel sad. It's like we're all just these little dots. It just seems like the antithesis of what a lot of police departments seem to be trying to do in the aftermath of Ferguson and Staten island and other horrific things that have happened, which is getting the police on the streets, making personal connections, creating relationships.

[C]

There's nothing in this system that prevents you from having effective community policing at the same time. And, oh, by the way, this may dramatically help that community relations. The reason they're putting body cams on police officers is to try to get the police officers to be more respectful because they can be seen. Well, this lets us Watch all the officers in a 25 square mile area all at once.

[H]

But then you can watch so many other people all at once. Here's other things that people in Dayton do, like Romeo and Juliet, they sometimes meet without their parents permission in the playground and smooch. There are going to be divorce lawyers who are going to be tracking Aaron's spouses. There are going to be traffic police who are watching who goes through the red light. There are going to be realtors who are wondering who are how many tenants do you really have in that building? And I guess the thought might be that if the information exists that will show what my pixel was actually doing, then, then I'm a little less free.

[C]

There is a clear trade off between security and privacy. And you know, in our major cities where we have, you know, tens of thousands of major crimes, you are a lot less free when you can't leave your house at night.

[H]

There's obviously a huge advantage to knowing what you know, but then there's a huge thing to knowing what you know. Knowledge all by itself is sort of a, is pregnant with, with funny.

[F]

You know, here's my problem with, with the, with this, with all of these privacy stories. It's like when you're talking about these technologies, the advantages are always so concrete and the trade offs always feel so abstract. I feel like there is, there's, there's something being lost here, but I can never quite put my finger on it. It's weird.

[B]

Oh, Jad, that weirdness that you're feeling. Yes, it's gonna get a lot weirder.

[F]

We'll be right back.

[B]

Hey, this is Jenny Lanahan From Round Lake, N.Y. radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail].

[F]

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krylwich, this is Radiolab. And we'll continue our collaboration with Minouche Samirodi and Alex Goldmark. From Note to Self.

[H]

And our subject is and remains Eyes in the Sky.

[F]

And the situation when we left it is that Manouch and one of our producers, Andy Mills, had gone down to Dayton, Ohio to Talk with Ross McNutt, check out his technology. And after the Dayton demo, how were you feeling about things?

[B]

Well, I was feeling like you have not convinced me. I am not going for this. And then I saw Juarez, Mexico and that. Well, I mean, that's what made me start to think otherwise.

[E]

Juarez, especially at the time we did this they averaged 300 murders a month and 52 kidnappings a week.

[I]

300 murders a month?

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

McNutt and the gang, they got a contract. We've been asked not to say for whom. And they went down south, set themselves up in a hotel room, got the plane up in the sky, and then whoever the client was started bringing them crime reports.

[E]

So this is kind of what you never want to see happen, but this is kind of why the system was up.

[B]

Alex pulls up on the screen this very grainy aerial shot of Juarez.

[E]

This is Juarez, Mexico.

[B]

It looks like any city, right? You've got, like, grids of streets and cars and houses. And then, like, over on the left of the screen there, he points to this dark little square. It's a vehicle that's going down the street.

[E]

This is a female police officer. She was actually headed to work on this morning. So we'll kind of go through it here.

[B]

He starts at the beginning, and you see there's her house, and her car is parked outside. You see that, like, teeny little pixel gets in her car.

[E]

She pulls out of her driveway that.

[B]

Was her home, starts to drive to.

[E]

Work, and then right when she leaves, if you look up here, he points.

[B]

To the upper left of the screen.

[E]

Several cars were parked up on the corner. As soon as she left her driveway, those cars become active.

[I]

So this is a stakeout.

[E]

Yeah, they were waiting for her to leave.

[B]

He's so zoomed in that you can see it's like a Tic Tac moving down the street. And then two more Tic Tacs come.

[E]

Alongside until they get right about here.

[B]

He's clicking forward on the photo, and.

[E]

You see right there is a speed bump.

[B]

These cars just inch closer.

[E]

So she'll kind of hesitate there, which is unfortunate.

[B]

So she's driving down the street, and there's these cars following behind her. And then there's this car up ahead.

[E]

Of her, a vehicle that had been parked here for 15, 20, 30 minutes, all of a sudden backs out into traffic and seemingly slows them down, almost gets in an accident right here, which gives these guys enough time to catch up. This is where they're going to pull up beside her.

[B]

And then suddenly, um, Alex says, right there, this is the point where here.

[E]

The first car pulls up and shoots her multiple times.

[B]

She was shot in the head.

[E]

Multiple times in the head. Right here. She's actually gonna roll through the intersection.

[B]

Her car continues to go even though she's been shot in the head.

[E]

There is a parked car behind this tree, and you'll actually see this parked car move when she runs into it and then these guys take off.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It was not fun to watch. It was upsetting. But what happens next made me really start to understand what this technology is.

[C]

Capable of real quickly. Just show you some of the other.

[B]

Ross walks in, he takes that moment, horrible moment, and then he starts to like, shoot back and forth in time.

[C]

So suspect car one, here's his path before the murder, here's his path after the murders.

[B]

He actually takes the two cars from that murder. And you see, he draws on the map, you see that they meet up with two other cars.

[C]

See that guy there that were involved.

[B]

In a different murder. Now, one murder becomes two, two cars.

[G]

Become three car stops.

[B]

And if you follow all four of these cars drawing lines as they move through the city, you find out who they meet up with. 4 becomes 8, 8 becomes 16, so on and so on. And you have all these lines crisscrossing the city. And then you see that a whole bunch of those cars are headed to one place.

[C]

This house, this house appears to be their cartel headquarters.

[B]

And. And that's when you start to think, well, that's how you have to take something like this down. It's not a one shot thing like solving the crime. It's about cracking an entire system.

[I]

In fact, this is Andy here. When I was doing some background research on this part of the story, I spoke with this one source from the US Government who told me that this information that Rasa just showed us, like it was one of the primary tools used to dismantle an entire cartel in Juarez. And that apparently the leader of that cartel was responsible for something like 1500 murders.

[D]

Whoa.

[F]

So I got asked, so I got asked again. So how are you feeling at this point? Are you happy or scared or. I don't know.

[B]

I felt ashamed of myself because I thought, oh, the reason why I'm so excited about it is it's because it's in a country where I don't live and I'm an outsider and I think of it as being messed up. So it's okay for them, but it's still not okay for us. What did you think, Andy?

[D]

I mean.

[I]

Like, this is where I stopped being a good journalist because I picked a side. It feels wrong to not solve these crimes that we can solve.

[F]

And what if this plane is on top of New York?

[B]

Good God. Really?

[I]

For me, it became look.

[B]

But do you remember like after 9, 11, when you'd walk down the street and you'd hear the F16 circling over the city. And I just remember the feeling in my stomach was like nausea, like I felt sick. It felt gross. It felt like we had no autonomy over ourselves. And at that point I was scared enough that I could live with it. But right now I don't feel that way. And look, it's a very privileged position to be able to say that we shouldn't have it. I get that.

[I]

I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like, I became a convert because somebody got kidnapped today. And if we had an eye in the sky, we might be able to get the kid back in a few minutes, hours compared to like, you see the stats on Amber Alerts, they're not good.

[B]

Yeah, but what we're talking about is like. And I'm not saying that I'm like anti McNutt at all, but what I'm saying is, like, it's very easy to paint it as we're going to get bad guys. And I just don't think it's that simple. The McNutt and company, they seem like decent people. They have set limitations for themselves. They have said they will not use photography that could get any closer. They've made a moral choice with that. How do we know other people will make the same moral choice?

[I]

He's saying that even though this thing might solve a ton of crimes, might save lives, it's still not worth the risk because it just asks a level of trust in government that we shouldn't give. Is that what you're saying?

[B]

For now, yes.

[H]

So back to Dayton. What happened in Dayton?

[D]

Well, I was pretty impressed. I was pretty impressed.

[B]

After that five day demo, the police.

[D]

Chief, Richard Beale, I recommended that we enter into a contract with Persistence Valence Systems.

[B]

And so they took it to the City Commission.

[D]

Hi, this is Cary Gray.

[B]

Oh, hey, Kerry. It's Mnuchin, New York. And according to Cary Gray, director of.

[D]

The City Commission office for the City of Dayton Ohio committee, saw the presentation.

[B]

And they liked it.

[D]

The City Commission was interested in the.

[B]

Presentation, but they decided that before they go forward, they should have a public so they could just, you know, sort of hear from the people.

[D]

There was about 75 or so people there.

[B]

And he says that the people of Dayton, like, much like the people of Radiolab and note to self, were very divided.

[D]

A quarter of the people were supportive of this technology and they were frustrated with the amount of crime. Their belief was, I'm not doing anything wrong, so I don't care what people see me doing. We want this implemented and we want it implemented very Broadly.

[B]

So a quarter of them were like, you know, bring it on. They were basically in the Andy camp.

[D]

Woo hoo.

[B]

But then there was another group, slightly.

[D]

Smaller, but not by much, maybe 15%.

[B]

That was the Robert Mnuch camp who.

[D]

Believed that this was a grotesque invasion of privacy. And some of the people spoke in very impassioned terms. So yay. I think calling it grotesque invasion of privacy would pretty much reflect the way this group was feeling.

[B]

This group too.

[D]

And that there was no way that you could trust government with this volume of information and this breadth of information.

[B]

So you had your pros and your cons. The rest of the people, like the.

[D]

Majority maybe had some feelings one way or another, but just didn't have enough information. And so they came and kind of.

[B]

Asked questions like, how long will persistent surveillance systems keep the images? 90 days. How far can they zoom in? Can they see my face? No. So they had a lot of questions, which Carrie seems to think that they could have answered. They could have gotten everybody on board. But in the end, even though the room was basically divided into three parts, the naysayers were so loud and so impassioned that they sort of defined the conversation as we do.

[D]

So we took that lesson to understand that there was going to be some significant education that was going to be needed and some significant hurdles that were going to have to be crossed. Before that we were able to do a broad based implementation. And based on the amount of time that was going to have to be spent, we decided there were other more immediate techniques that could be used that could be invested in. And we took the money that could have been spent on this and spent it on some other activities.

[F]

It seems like what you're saying is that, like, it was just going to be too hard to get people over the hurdle. So, like, it's not worth it.

[D]

Yeah, I think that's probably accurate.

[B]

So the plane is off the table, so to speak.

[D]

It's off the table for right now, but that doesn't mean that it's never coming back on the table, which I.

[B]

Think is fair to say is frustrating to him.

[C]

Right now we've got about $150 million worth of proposals sitting out there for a large number of cities. Baltimore, Philadelphia. We've been to Moscow, we've been to London. We're waiting for them to make decisions. We've done Compton and to Rome.

[I]

So Compton's like, maybe Juarez is like, maybe Dayton is like maybe.

[C]

There's a whole lot of maybes out there.

[B]

And what McNutt and his team are doing now. And this is actually what they were doing when we went to visit them.

[I]

They're analyzing what we're doing here in Dayton is we are looking at a turnpike or something.

[B]

Yeah. Traffic in New Jersey. They're studying traffic problems.

[E]

We look at congested areas which are typically, especially in that part of the country, exits and on ramps. Any kind of junction in a highway.

[C]

No. Sometimes you just want to scream.

[B]

Mcnutt, McNutt, McNutt, McNutt. I think that might be 10 times.

[F]

Thank you, Minouche.

[B]

Thank you.

[H]

Thank you, Alex.

[G]

Yeah, sure.

[F]

Special thanks this hour, of course, to Manouche Samaroni and Alex Goldmark, also to Dan Tucker and George Scholes. And I would urge everybody listening right now to go to itunes and download the latest podcast from Note to Self. It's a show that's all about grappling with the difficult questions of living in a digital world. And their latest podcast, it's got a story that I don't believe anyone else has really told. It's a story about another kind of technology that can sort of see into your private spaces. And this one is arguably way more invasive than the one we talked about in this podcast, Note to Self on itunes. Check it out. We'll also link you there from Radiolab.org I'm Chad Abumrad.

[A]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[F]

Thanks for listening. Yep, we'll be watching.

[D]

My name is. I live on Van Avenue in Dayton. I'm here to register my concern regarding.

[B]

The airborne surveillance that was discussed earlier. A great eye lidless breathed in flames. Do military contractors watch over the globe? I'd also like to register my concern.

[C]

With the so called surveillance program. This was the stuff of science fiction.

[B]

When Orwell wrote 1994. What policies does Dayton have in place.

[I]

To prevent using the data in a racially biased way?

[F]

This piece was produced by andy mills and we had original music from dylan keefe.

[B]

Received at 4:50pm hey, it's manisha morodi, the host of wnyc's note to self. This is alex goldmark with the credits. Radiolab is produced by jad abumrad. Their staff, our staff includes brenna farrell, alan horne, dylan keefe, matt kielty, lynn levy, andy mills, lateef nasser, melissa o', donnell, kelsey padgett, arianne wack, molly webster, soren wheeler and jamie york with help from damiano. Is it damiano or damiano? With help from damiano marchetti, molly jacobson and alexandra lee young.

[G]

Our fact checkers are eva dasher and michelle harris.

[B]

That's it.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Okay, bye. End of message.

[A]

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