Beginning Friday, Baltimore’s 600,000 residents will be under constant video surveillance and find themselves recorded whenever they step outdoors by airplanes leased out to the local police department — part of the city’s campaign to combat rising homicide rates.

The program is slated to run as a trial for the next six months to determine the technology’s effectiveness at reducing crime. Up to three aircraft will be equipped with wide-angle cameras to capture all movement in approximately 90 percent of the city.

The cameras will take one photo per second, and the images can be pieced together with software in order to create a continuous visual record to support other surveillance technology already in place, such as street-level cameras, license-plate readers, and gunfire-sound detectors. ...