Check out this amazing video the state of the art in spy camera technology today.  This device straps to the underside of a high-altitude jet or it can be mounted into a continuously flying drone circling the earth or even just floating in a stationary location.

With 1.8gigapixels, the ARGUS-IS can track a bird in flight from 17,500 feet. Or, it can track, live, any number of cars in a detailed area while still maintaining the broader context. Viewers can open up to 65 windows simultaneously and the cameras store every image every day, for a total of 1 million terabytes a day saved.

The ARGUS array is made up of several cameras and other types of imaging systems. The output of the imaging system is used to create extremely large, 1.8GP high-resolution mosaic images and video. There are 358 chips collecting the visual data, translating them into digital format and sending them to ground servers.