Looking at the map, outside the big cities, it seems mostly concentrated on highways. Does anyone know if it's realistic for a plane flying a mile high to grab, say, license plates and driver photos? Would this be legal? How close to the highway on the map would they have to be, hypothetically?
I don't have any doubts. The BBC reported, in 2014, that spy satellites had a 10cm resolution. This is good enough to see if you are holding a cell phone or not.
Most definitely there was a very good video about lead engineer (I think) talking in front of a hexagon spy satellite from the 1970s a lot of the information on it is declassified now, but he did say that the resolution on them still was and all he could say was that in the 1970s "I could read a newspaper on a table" and that's all he'd say on the matter.
imagine how far technology has come along since then
