Pentagon is testing hi-tech, solar-powered surveillance balloons over 6 states in the Midwest

The U.S. military is testing high-altitude balloons as a monitoring tool over parts of the Midwest, as first reported by The Guardian. The goal is to easily follow multiple boats and cars for long periods of time, with the hope of locating security threats, as well as drug trafficking. Right now, the 25 solar-powered balloons will float above six states in the Midwest from a launching point of South Dakota. The other states are Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri, with the balloons finishing up their journeys in central Illinois.

Before anyone reaches for a tin-foil hat, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) confirm these details. Of course, this sort of surveillance is (understandably) unnerving, if not outright terrifying, to many.

The balloons use hi-tech radars that, reportedly, can track multiple cars or boats at once, at any time of day or night, and in any kind of weather. These sensors can pick up all moving cars and boats within a 25-mile range below a balloon. Notably, these tests received an FCC license to operate from the middle of July until September.

The solar-powered balloons fly at altitudes up to 65,000 feet. They can hang over an area longer than a plane, making them preferable for this kind of surveillance. While no one is actually inside the balloons, they do have the technology to share data among them and to transmit that data to ground receivers.

The obvious question, of course: Is this sort of monitoring even legal? While specific points of interest (drug trafficking, for example) are noted in the documents, the surveillance, as described, suggests that every single car or boat could be monitored by this system. That raises a lot of privacy concerns.