"You can see a manhole cover from space"

What might that mean for police investigations? That's really up to you.

Back in October 2014 Ray Harris and Ray Purdy began a sort of "space detective agency." According to a follow up piece on the BBC website years later (just this April 5th), written by a Paul Marks "The detectives watching you" - presumably to catch up on things - the media not surprisingly caught on with gusto. 

They just didn't really understand. They heard "space detective agency" and thought that meant that all the spy technology movies and TV depict for coolness points were realized. (Sigh. No, settle down media. Anyone else tired of the CSI effect?)

One Ray is a lawyer, "a space lawyer", the other is a geographer "schooled in geospatial imagery". Marks provides a great paragraph here: 

Their familiarity with imaging satellites, and how the law applies, gives them a distinct advantage. And the technology can be extremely useful. “With resolution as high as 30 centimetres you can see a mailbox or a manhole cover from space now,” says Purdy.

The piece illustrates through examples what Air & Space Evidence can't do: constant high resolution video, identify suspected persons, identify suspected vehicles, etc. The piece explains that the best images are still just snapshots from space. In other words, yes, you can see that the manhole cover was there ... and if you're lucky enough to have the images, yes, you should be able to see that the cover is suddenly not. Good, it was stolen. Right. Moving on.

But that doesn't mean video isn't possible. The BBC piece even puts in a 30 second video of surveillance over Dubai. (Spoiler: I'd joke that people look like ants ... but ... watch the clip, you'll understand.)

How's this useful?

Timelines. With cases that need to prove locations of things over a period of time, this sounds perfect technology to help: existence of illegal landfills, near-by suspects to an area of interest to help narrow down the possibilities, etc. Law enforcement should know not one technology is ever a silver bullet in the monster of any crime - just one more tool in the cog of the machine. (However that saying goes.) Space images helped forensics in one case, explains Marks, "scraped-off hull paint, for instance – from the accident site could then help identify...".

But privacy laws, big brother, watching us, surveillance regulations, blah blah blah. The article explains that the European Commission that any images taken "under 2.5 metre resolution needing careful checks before it can be released."

Again, this is up to you. Start thinking outside the box - maybe your case could benefit from a series of pictures from space - maybe not. 

It's not like there's a high resolution webcam up there ... right?