CCTV To Get 'X-Ray' Vision

From Engadget via New Scientist:

[A] Carnegie Mellon University team has created an augmented reality car system to see through any massive obstacle. The objective: Avoid car collisions. The Carnegie Mellon team, lead by Yaser Sheikh, thinks that the system could be easily implemented by tapping into the CCTV camera networks available in most major cities.

I am not sure about the feasibility of our individual vehicles tapping into a city's surveillance network. I see huge technical and legal issues in that. However, the Carnegie Mellon research, like that at Photosynth and others, points to new interface paradigms made possible when we abandon the traditional 1:1 relationship between physical CCTV cameras and their resulting surveillance monitoring feeds. Combining feeds and 'augmenting reality' can provide more context and transmit more information using less data...and you can also see through walls, which is cool.