The novelty here is a further reduction in cost by mounting it on balloons, but gorgon stare platforms for total surveillance have been rolled out in cities in the U.S. for several years now with plane-mounted camera arrays. Baltimore’s PD deployed it in secret in 2016 with money from a private donor without even informing the mayor.

The cost is rapidly falling to the point of inevitability for government actors and possibility for private players. Amazon balloons could track your physical shopping behavior to better target you with ads. Criminals could observe people and car movements in entire neighborhoods to better target burglaries and carjackings. The genie is pretty much out of the bottle.