On Thursday, February 28, 2019, 12:16:48 PM PST, Punk wrote: On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 09:15:51 +1000 [1]jamesd@echeque.com wrote: >> If you are in the city, everything is on CCTV. But you are not going to >> drop something valuable in the middle of the city. > Yet the majority of customers live in the city. Also, surveillance in the city means surveillance when you enter and leave the city. Depends very much on the city. In the big (relatively) city closest to me, Portland Oregon, there are many hundreds of streets that 'leave the city'. Sure, they could all be camera'd, but what good would that do? The pictures could be stored, and would be, but how could it be known if any specific frame represents a "useful" image? Eventually, some kind of AI could be developed, but I doubt whether this would find most activities which would be useful to identify. Placing or retrieving a dead-drop would be one of the most undetectable events that could occur: Drive to a block, get out, walk around in a large grassy area, bend over, pick up something, walk away, drive away. How much video of this would surveillance have to catch to determine that the person surveilled was doing something suspicious...particularly if they didn't already know something was going on. This reminds me that 23 years ago, I first learned about "3M Louvered Film", [2]https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/industrial-manufacturing-us/display-enha ncement-and-protection-films-industrial-manufacturing/light-control-fil ms/ a plastic sheet product that prevents viewing at angles greater than a pre-defined amount. It's now generically available. [3]https://www.shinetsu.info/vc_film This stuff could be placed over a car's license plate, so that a camera well above (or to the side, or both) couldn't read the plate. To be sure, that's not necessarily an unmixed blessing. While it effectively makes a car look like it doesn't have a (readable) license plate, that in itself might be considered suspicious. A few weeks ago, I realized that cemeteries would be excellent locations for placing dead-drops. (no pun intended, but I'll take what I can get !). There are few people who visit cemeteries, but the idea of a person visiting a grave is very plausible. And, some amount of 'searching' is to be expected, so it doesn't look suspicious. Further, there are plenty of gravestones which can be used as markers for the placement and retrieval of those dead-drops, even more precisely than WAAS GPS or L1+L5 GPS. The war continues. Jim Bell × (BUTTON) × (BUTTON) References 1. mailto:jamesd@echeque.com 2. https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/industrial-manufacturing-us/display-enhancement-and-protection-films-industrial-manufacturing/light-control-films/ 3. https://www.shinetsu.info/vc_film