Seriously I’ve seen a guy see a bunch of pixels and go “Idk but that reminds me of Mexico” and he was right. There’s no way the three letter companies wouldn’t want that kind of skillset, right?
Who says they don’t already? I knew a guy who worked for a major government agency who’s job was to look over horrible pictures to try to figure out where they were taken.
I bet the most skilled people do work for them, not just youtube. But talking to that guy, it’s a tough job, not for everyone. Instead of a random streetview image it’s a scene of abuse, so…
You can get jobs like that, sure. Normally called GIS analyst (geospatial informations systems)
For a while, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service GIS job applications were less about ticking boxes and more looking at a satellite image of a structure and being asked, “what is this, where is it, and why is it interesting”
And the answer might be "Its ostensibly a wastewater treatment plant, its in southern Iran, and its interesting because the truck parked next to the liquid chemical tank farm has an ISO gas storage trailer, not an ISO liquid storage container as might be expected.
Israel intelligence has a division dedicated to neurodivergent people who scour satellite photos. So wouldn’t be surprised if they have people like this on payroll. A lot of ONSIT already have people like this participating doing geolocation on war footage.
The problem is getting the pictures to work from. People who don’t want to be found aren’t giving the CIA pictures of their locations, and I’d imagine the CIA already knows what road signs look like in different countries, or where certain mountains and other features are.
The problem is getting the pictures. It’s intel collection, not processing.
