Surveillance and Mapping Software Together at Last

It seems like a lot of cities are announcing large scale facial recognition systems these days, which will definitely require an increase in data storage capabilities to store more and better footage. What I find more interesting than the storage angle in this piece, is mention of combining Microsoft’s Virtual Earth (which could just as easily be Google Earth, for that matter) with surveillance video--presumably this will/could be used to map in real time the location of bad guys and dispatch law enforcement as appropriate. It’s an interesting approach and no doubt going to be much more useful than the giant video walls normally deployed.