Satellite Monitoring in a Turbulent World?

Arimathea asks: "I've spent the past week searching for information on the Web on how to do utility monitoring of satellites - i'm primarily interested in viewing unedited feeds from major news networks, but I'd also be quite curious to learn about monitoring of government, military, and NASA satellites for voice, data, and video. This information is scattered all over the place. Can anyone provide an introduction on this, pointers to good books, web sites, or equipment providers?"