State of Surveillance

An inside look at emerging technologies that could revolutionize policing - and how intrusively the public is monitored by the government. One system, known as wide-area surveillance, is like a time machine - an entire city is filmed and recorded in real time with aerial cameras. Imagine Google Earth with a rewind button and facial recognition capabilities that could be used to solve crimes. The FBI is rolling out a sprawling data complex containing over 147 million mug shots and sets of fingerprints, many of which belong to people with no criminal record. As new technologies change how police departments do their jobs, both ordinary citizens and law enforcement must grapple with a central question: Where is the line between safer streets and undermining the nation's constitutional values? This special report prompted public scrutiny of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's use of surveillance technologies.