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Technology Review has an out on advances in lidar technology. The article is a reminder of just how many fronts there are where we鈥檙e seeing large technological advances with possible implications for surveillance.

Lidar is like radar except it uses lasers instead of sound radio waves鈥攆iring off bursts of lasers in quick succession to collect precise distance measurements in order to create a three-dimensional map of any space. Many good uses are being discovered for this鈥攍idar is used by geologists to create highly detailed maps of the earth鈥檚 surface, for example. Archaeologists used the technology to clusters of architectural structures hidden in the Honduran rainforest, which some claimed to be the legendary lost city of La Ciudad Blanca (鈥渢he White City鈥�). Lidar was also used to reveal in the jungles of Peru and an in Cambodia. Lidar is also used by Google and other makers of robotic cars to help the vehicles sense their surroundings.

The technology is apparently advancing rapidly. In 2013, lidar was used to reveal vast hidden structures around the famous Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia. 鈥淎mazingly,鈥� Technology Review in June 2013, the Angkor Wat scanning operation took only 20 hours to capture imagery 鈥渢hat would have taken many years to assemble on the ground, if at all.鈥� The that Technology Review is now reporting on, however, is four times faster and more detailed, going from one-meter resolution to a resolution of 30 centimeters. And in its latest story Technology Review reports on a new generation of the technology that is another 10 times better still, and could have done the Angkor Wat job in about half an hour.

Obviously one potential surveillance use of lidar is for manned or unmanned aerial surveillance. Lidar can be used not only for highly detailed 3D images鈥攚ith the ability to see through some barriers such as foliage鈥攂ut also for such functions as change detection, in which even small changes in a landscape, such as tire tracks, are automatically flagged.

Lidar can also be used to track people through different locations, including crowded spaces. Combined with other technologies such as face recognition or cell phone tracking, the technology could prove a powerful part of a tracking system. As this Raytheon video entitled 鈥溾�� boasts, 鈥淟idar can segment, classify, and track people. Thee tracks can be used to determine people鈥檚 activity, steer other sensors, monitor violations of geo-fences, et cetera.鈥�

There may well be other clever uses for this technology that nobody has thought of yet.

Of course we don鈥檛 know whether, given all the technologies we鈥檙e facing, lidar will be significant in the surveillance space. But the larger point here is, we have a lot of very powerful sensing and surveillance technologies coming at us from all directions. When it comes to our privacy laws and institutions, we鈥檙e in no way ready for the continuing onslaught.