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{{quote|''I am the eye in the sky''<br />
''Looking at you''<br />
''I can read your mind''|'''[[
Much loved things of the [[Spy Drama]] and one that they most frequently mess up on, the omnipresent "eye-in-the-sky" is always shown to be a whole lot more useful than it truly is.
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== Anime/Manga ==
* Near in ''[[
* Used very straight in the ''[[
== [[Fan Fiction]] ==
* In ''[[
* ''[[
== [[Film]] ==
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Enemy of the State]]''. When Dean meets Brill on a rooftop, [[The Government]] agents assigned to track Dean try to determine Brill's identity, but can only see the top of his head. When one agent asks why they can't just move the camera, the technician replies that the satellite is at least 200 miles in the air, so the only angle it can look at is straight down.
* Averted in ''[[Behind Enemy Lines]]''. When the Admiral uses a spy satellite to try and find his lost pilot, he is only able to see the area for a few short minutes before the satellite moves out of position.
* Averted in a [[Zig
** The novel and the movie actually focus on the limitations of the spy satellites, noting that the terrorists know when they will fly overhead and thus they hide any suspicious activity. They are only able to get those ambiguous satellite photos by re-routing the satellites to fly over at a new time.
** And the raid on the terrorist camp is deliberately timed to take place when a satellite is overhead, so that the guys back at the CIA can watch it, in real time.
* The orbital particle beam cannon in ''[[Under Siege]] 2: Dark Territory'' had a video lens that was powerful enough to focus on the breasts of a topless sunbather in Los Angeles in crystal-clear real time.
** That's probably why the camera was added anyway.
* ''[[Men in Black (
** Of course, like everything else the Men in Black use, from their guns to their cars, the satellites in question are undoubtedly made with advanced alien technology, so it's sort of justified.
* Soundwave in ''[[Transformers:
* Used in ''[[
== [[Literature]] ==
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== [[Live Action Television]] ==
* ''[[24
* ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' constantly relies on this to feed intel to its super-agents as they work in the field. Many of the show's plot points hinge on this trope.
* Used often in the sixth season of ''[[Power Rangers]]'', though all PR seasons have used it to some extent whenever the Rangers are watching a monster attacking the [[City of Adventure]]. Unless it's specifically a tech-based season though, this is generally [[Magitek]] instead of full out [[Spy Satellites]].
* ''[[
* ''[[Jericho]]'''s track record with satellites is... schizophrenic. On the one hand, you get reasonable-looking still photos from satellites. On the other, you get Hawkins' satellite feeds... which appear to be filmed right at ground level.
* ''[[Fringe]]'' is guilty of this one to a large degree. Not only did they pull up spy sat footage of an area, but it was from hours ago when there would have been no reason for a spy sat to even be looking there. The writers apparently want the viewer to believe that the entire surface of the Earth is not only under constant surveillance but also being archived.
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** It's a show about a secret government group that researches weirdness that violates the laws of physics. Absolute surveillance is hardly impossible.
*** Technology clearly ''is'' much more advanced. No one bats an eye when one recurring character is outfitted with a fully functional cyborg arm.
* Generally averted in ''[[
* In an episode of ''[[Thunder in Paradise]]'', one of the heroes looks for a spy satellite nearby to [[Hollywood Hacking|hack into]] from his [[Cool Boat]], finds one, and acts as a [[Mission Control]] for his partner.
== [[Music]] ==
* "The Electric Eye" by [[
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* While you can't actually buy one in the game, ''[[
== [[Video Games]] ==
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Parodied in ''[[
** Later averted in the storyline [http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=070205 Aylee], where a plan takes advantage of the gaps in satellite coverage.
* Parodied (deconstructed?) by ''Partially Clips'', which points out that to get good footage of Iraq, a spy satellite would need to be in low polar orbit. Anything in low polar orbit must pass over every point on earth sooner or later. And when it's passing over New Jersey, there's no legitimate military work to be done so the soldiers and technicians running it probably watch skinnydippers.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[
* One episode of ''[[The Simpsons (
** In "Brother's Little Helper" Bart is convinced that a satellite is spying on him. At the end of the episode he uses a tank to shoot it down. Mark McGwire admits that the [[Useful Notes/Baseball|MLB]] is spying on everyone, pretty much all the time. When Bart asks why, McGwire says that he could tell the terrifying truth or he could hit some dingers instead for the people. The crowd wants to watch him play, and he takes the massive printout and tries to hide it under his hat.
* In ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', [[The Question]] claims that topically applied flourite doesn't prevent tooth decay, but instead makes teeth detectable by [[The Conspiracy|Their]] spy satellite.
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* There is a way of increasing satellite resolution to near-fictional levels that has been suggested as at least having been experimented with: if you put two satellites in the same orbit, one just slightly trailing the other, and aim them at the same target, you can combine the images to get greater resolution by creating the equivalent of a virtual lens that is much bigger than the individual lens on an individual satellite.
** Actually that would not work. This technique ("interferometry") does not result in pictures, it (currently) works only for wavelengths up to infrared at most, and it would require the sats to be positioned with sub-wavelength precision - not possible in the drag of the upper atmosphere, even at 200 miles.
** A similar concept is used in ''[[
** This is known as distributed optics, and actually has a much more useful application in the creation of enormous "virtual telescopes". A telescope's resolving power is limited by the size of its primary mirror (if using a reflecting telescope), and those in orbit can obviously be larger than those on the ground - however, past a certain point, it's impossible to lift them into orbit safely. The idea is to use many smaller mirrors spread out over a large area, which act as small parts of a larger mirror. It takes a lot longer to gather the light needed for an exposure, but it is at a MUCH higher resolution. With a large enough array, we could see extra-solar planets with as much detail as we can see Earth.
** The creatively named Very Large Array has already applied the technology to radio telescopes.
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