As part of an ongoing investigation into the surveillance technology California police departments have access to, I was asked to help illustrate two aspects:
Wide-area surveillance – this is when entire cities are literally being filmed in real time from a Cessna aircraft. It acts as a quasi time machine that allows authorities to go back in time and watch any location for suspicious activity.
Facial recognition – police offices now carry tablets that allow them to simply snap a photo of a suspect and have it return all of their personally identifying information such as mugshots, arrest history, current address, and more.
Illustration like this is typically out of my comfort zone and I rarely do it, but it helped out CIR’s video team in a pinch. It was used to produce an animation that was part of an hour long segment aired on KQED television.
