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Spysats Keeping Watch on the U.S.
Anonymous And Slightly Nervous Coward writes "USA Today is carrying an AP story that claims three years' worth of domestic satellite surveillance courtesy of a DoD agecy called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Their work includes getting cooperation from entities pointing cameras onto private property such as hotels (all you HOPE and Defcon attendees, please wave for the camera). The agency seems to be taking the aw-shucks line on what they know and to what extent they evaluate the data they get, but it's clear that their mandate is seriously overpowering the oversight structures that would normally be watching it."
"Spysats" have always watched the U.S. starting with the very first Corona flights going on to the KH series from the 60's until the latest KH-12/13 Improved Crystal series. This is absolutely nothing new with organizations like the National Geospatial-Intelligence agency, that National Reconnaissance Office, the National Imaging and Mapping Agency and CIA having long standing contracts and plans to surveil regions within the boundaries of the U.S..
When I was the subject of a recruiting effort in college for an un-named agency one of the things we discussed was merging of data modalities that would be far more powerful than capabilities then in place with the SR-71. These modalities were developed in urban areas within the U.S. such as Los Angeles and New York and a most public example was that one could see directly the collection of these data here in Salt Lake City at the last winter Olympics. Overflights of both aircraft and satellites to capture visual data, background radiation readings and other data were used in urban planning for placement of services, sniper teams, counter sniper teams and other responders. Teams were scouring this town taking images for overlay onto satellite data to build 3D models for all sorts of planning, so, yeah this is nothing new.
What I am surprised at is how little folks know about the geospatial imaging community. It is a huge growth industry and the software that I currently use has been cobbled together from three different sources that most commonly runs on a variety of platforms from Solaris, to IRIX to Linux and Windows. I would love to see some of the code recompiled to run on OS X as some of the first code for geospatial imaging I ever saw ran on NeXTstep, not to mention that OS X is an ideal OS for this community. PCIGeomatics, ESRI, RSI etc..... are you listening?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Weird... first 3 times I tried to load this story, I saw
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
with no story.
Conspiracy? I think so.
If the information here is so aw-shucks and harmless, then getting it released to the public under the FOIA should be easy. That way we can all benefit from it.
when I put tinfoil all over the roof of my house... but who's laughing now?
... pointing cameras onto private property such as hotels...
How exactly do spy satellites see into hotels? HOPE is (at least when I went two times ago) was INSIDE the hotel. The only ones in fear of being seen by the sats would be the smokers and the stage crew moving crap all day...
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
"but it's clear that their mandate is seriously overpowering the oversight structures that would normally be watching it."
reading the article i dont know how it is CLEAR anything is happening. could the poster explain how anything is clear.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Repeat after me: "You have no right to privacy in public." (especially when you are outdoors)
Seriously, which three of you didn't already think the goverment was doing this?
- Necron69
"USA Today is carrying an AP story that claims three years' worth of domestic satellite surveillance courtesy of a DoD agecy called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
What is the end of that sentence supposed to say? As it stands, it doesn't say or mean anything to me. I guess it's just another crappy editing job done at Slashdot. I'm willing to forgive spelling/grammar mistakes, but when the write-up doesn't even mean anything, it's gone too far. By the way, why doesn't Slashdot load properly over half the time when I read the comments now? I'm using Firefox; it just started last week.
I remember Opus worrying about this when Milo told him that there were Satellites that could see you doing those private unmentionable things. Opus ended up on the cover of USA Today scratching his armpit the next day. Maybe we ought to track the number of pizza's ordered by the analysis centers when Defcon, Hope, and skin fests like the Oscars happen.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
"But who's laughing now?"
The Alcoa Corporation, makers of Reynolds Wrap.
This is basically The Sims for the NSA.
Next thing you know you'll feel compelled to take a swim, only later you'll notice the ladder has been removed...
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency used to be called the National imagery and mapping agency reston. The just changed the name of the agency some time in the last 6 months. I work very close to this agency in Northern Virginia. Before 9/11, you couldn't distinguish this building from any other office block. Post 9/11, there are armed guards and security checkpoints.
But they spam my browser too!
So why should I care if I show up on some satellite images?
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
How are we not supposed to go anywhere with "security concerns" when all of America has "security concerns" and is under surveilance? Are you suggesting that if we do not wish the government to spy on us we should just leave America?
If they want to watch me run around in my underwear so be it, I however, am not responsible for any cost incurred for couseling or psychiatric care :)
when in doubt press enter and we'll figure it out later..
...and flee in terror!!! x'D
;-)
Okay, now I know I am being watched from space, by security cameras and by my busybody neighbour. Now I feel much better
Kisses
--
You'd stumble in my footsteps (Depeche Mode, "Walking in my shoes")
Mapquest and Terraserver et al have been offering up USGS satellite photos for years. What they're proposing to do here is not a more intensive form of surveillance, but a more complete job of mapping. All the information retreived by this system, AFAIK, would just be used to construct, say, 3D models of public buildings and cities, all of which information is easily available to the average pedestrian.
Always a godfather; never a god. -Gore Vidal
I don't know about most people out there, but I use my mac for a few reasons: Software consistantcy, comfortable keyboard (White iBook G3), and Cocoa. According to your little list of types of people that use macs, I fit in excatly...zero. Think Troll.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
with stuff like the patriot act, i will repeat "You have no right to privacy"
bush, cheney, and ashcroft have to go, or this will no longer be the land of the free
vodka, straight up, thank you!
I understand that when I am in a public venue I have no right to privacy. I think everybody understands that.
But what bothers me is that I am losing my anonynimity. The founding fathers never thought this one through, because there were no such things as databases that could keep images of all public spaces, faces, and events and allow cross-checking. That bothers me. If I decide to go down to the visit some local political nut-job to hear what they have to say, I don't expect to be catalogued and cross-referenced, even though I am performing a public act.
No, I have nothing to hide. And yes, I understand that everybody is nice and the government is here to help me. But last I checked, our system of government in the USA was not built upon "Aw Shucks", but a system of checks and balances that assumed that power corrupts. We seem to be forgetting this somehow.
Roughly twice a month, the agency is called upon to help with the security of events inside the United States. Even more routinely, it is asked to help prepare imagery and related information to protect against possible attacks on critical sites.
I'm not saying that spying is good, but it'll take quite a bit before they can spy on all the Americans at the rate of twice a month.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
National Map (National Map Viewer)
(and the somewhat related National Atlas)
All this time I thought is was a Major League Baseball "Spysat"
Even Time mag. knows we are more wide open than any nation, having declared itself at war, has any reason to be. [time may or may not be money but Time wants your money to read past cover stories]
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I own one of four cars where I work that are the same make, model, year, color, and package. The only way I can tell them apart after a long day at work (when I forget exactly where I parked) is by looking at the dirt pattern. Each vehicle is distinctive -- except when washed, obviously.
Speak truth to power.
Close them.
Whether or not you agree with the government doing this, feeling as if you are personally threatened by it is pretty unreasonable. The government has many high and low profile criminals to violate the rights of before they move on to the average citizen who may have some beliefs that are perceived as threatening to government or society.
That isn't to say we should ignore questionable acts on the part of our government, but we should be realistic about their implictions. The right to privacy is an important one, but that does not mean we should expect to never have to take steps to protect it ourselves.
They didn't go anywhere, dill-boy. You can still have congress look into the matter and the Supreme Court can still rule this unconstitutional.
They don't share your opinion you say? Well, then it must be corrupt!
Great, now we're turning into England. How long do you think it'll take before the United States surpases England as the country that spies the most on its own citizenry?
mbbac
Use it to find and take care of meth labs.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I have a EULA (End User License Agreement) specifically forbidding the use of any image(s) of me being used for commercial or government use taped to the top of my tin-foil hat.
Exactly, every other leader in the world would have understood what a memo titled "Bin Laden determined to strike inside the United States" meant and would have actually done something about it (something other than going on vacation, that is.)
Current death toll from Amnesty International's actions in Nepal: 9000
Mind explaining how, exactly, Amnesty International has a "death toll" attributale to their actions in Nepal?
just built an obstacle course in my backyard for my kids. Better get my guns registered befor...NO CARRIER...
sorry about the off-topic post but I think it's time to set off the alarms.
I don't know much about it except we were being attacked by multiple sources and they where doing dictionary crack attempts on our sshd. Once a firewall rule was added they tried a few more times and then stopped sending SYN packets even.
kevin Mitnick Jr. is going to have a new toy, very powerful toy.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
For instance, the agency has modified basic maps of the nation's capital to highlight the location of hospitals, linking them to data on the number of beds or the burn unit in each
Obviously my mad Photoshop and HTML image map skillz are needed by our government. Later, RazorFish!
I feel so much better about it now.
mbbac
According to Executive Order 12333, signed by President Reagan in 1981, members of the U.S. intelligence community can collect, retain and pass along information about U.S. companies or people only in certain cases.
I thought to myself: Why was this order originally imposed?
I mean, after all, we're talking about spying on US citizens here. Turns out, the law was passed in response to the intelligence agencies already spying on citizens. Reagan, and others, wanted to establish what reasons were legitimate to spy on their own citizens. Where were the citizens of the country involved in the process of making this?
Sources that would seem to support this.
Here's an idea. How about we quit giving current Presidents and congressional leaders the means through which they can enslave us? Everyone here does realize that the President can legitimately declare martial law right now as there are enough men and women in the armed forces right now that would not find this disturbing or even questionable. Very few Americans are exercising their right to own a gun, so there is nothing that can be done about it.
So they take aerial photos, and map out what hospitals are close to big events incase shit happens. Yea, they probably need to have stronger oversight from another agency, no oversight when dealing with this kind of data is bad. Thats about all I got out of this.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
In the article the following quotes appear: The agency is not interested in information on U.S. citizens, stresses Americas office director Bert Beaulieu. "We couldn't care less about individuals and people and companies," he said. But that's not good enough for secrecy expert Steven Aftergood, who oversees a project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. "What it all boils down to is 'Trust us. Our intentions are good,'" he said. Considering my trust of the "good intentions" of spy satellite division of the government isn't exactly at a stellar magnitude, I want to know who is overseeing this group? Are there any regulations on this group and if so, who creates those? I'm not concerned due to any paranoia, I just want to know how much authority this group really has.
How else are we going to immantize the eschaticon on schedule?!!!
> The government has many high and low profile criminals to violate the rights of before they mov
Good point.
First they have to lock up all the subversive journalists, bloggers, singers, and speakers.
Not until they've moved everyone who speaks out into the gulag will people like you, who are good, quiet, obedient pink star wearing citizens, have anything to fear...
Uncle Sam loves Us and wants to keep Us safe. He wants to make sure you don't accidentally do or say something that hurts Us--for Our own good and for the good of The State. Praise be to Flag.
Spatial data is neat, tho, I think it is nice that the US Gov't does this -- and publishes the data for free. Without things like TIGER, we wouldn't exist!.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Even though the parent post has been modded off-topic, troll, flamebait, etc. Some rethuglican will still claim that all the mods are communists.
Looks like I'm going to need to put a wider brim on my tinfoil hat.
---
Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who don't know how, supervise
I don't know where you live, but here in California, windows are transparent.
MM--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
This is news? why be suprised? if you prefer to be a sheep instead of american, then you need to be watched over.so, you've all got what you wanted, now why the hell are you whining? you should have took-up arms years ago, it's too late now.
The wealthy criminals of this country are running the show, deal with it.
Yo should have killed the rich.
(FBI agent to Homer): But all we've ascertained from sattelite photos is that its not on the roof . . .
From: The Trouble With Trillions
I'd be willing to bet that the gov't keeps that information classified.
Regardless, this technology the NGA has light years behind what the NSA uses.
I could really care less as long as the quote "...But the NGA couldn't take actions to target a specific individual, such as highlight a suspect's home, unless the information was linked directly to a national security issue" remains truthful.
# fuser -v
#
What I'd like to know is are they using satellites to look for radiation where it shouldn't be (i.e. borders with Canada or Mexico and ships near coastlines)?
Is there technology to see radiation (plutonium) signatures from space in real-time or near real-time?
I would hope so.
Let's take a bunch of senior congressmen (the kind who get the juicy oversight committee jobs) who have long histories of spending 1/4th of our tax dollars on the largest military in history and give them the job of oversight for whizzy tech projects out of the Defense Department. Sounds like a recipe for success to me!
Oversight is useless unless its done by and for public interest. Fat cats who regularly porkbarrel for the defense industry are not for the public interest.
It has something to do with sponsoring or supporting or more likely not opting to crush (because really, Amnesty can disarm rebellions like no other) a leftist opposition group.
Guess I'd better not take this up...
Although if Elizabeth Hurley wants to, that's OK by me.
Chip H.
But, at the same time, why should we pay our tax dollars to have the military spy on US citicens, when they could be looking for terrorists?
You weren't under the impression that those hijackers magically appeared here from Afghanistan right before their flights, were you?
his assertion is that privacy is dead, not because Big Brother in D.C. is watching, but because Big Defense Contrator is watching. The government, sick of trying to ram through legislation on what it can and can't do with data it collects on its citizens, is now sub-contracting all kinds of tasks. For example, perhaps the Feds can't do a nation-wide driver's license photo scan without inciting privacy concerns; however, if most of the states sub-contract out their photo processing to a contractor on advice from big brother, then that contractor hires itself to the big brother and sells *RESULTS* from some data mining query (but never the data itself), then big brother hasn't violated any privacy rights. Similarly for phone logs, criminal databases, airline data, medicare, drivers license, health databases, traffic tickets etc.
he told me the name of the database we should all really be afraid of, bigger than Echelon, but i forgot its name.
His bio for those who are interested: Steven Rambam is a licensed private investigator and the owner and CEO of Pallorium, Inc., an investigative agency with offices and affiliates throughout the world. During the past 23 years, he has conducted and coordinated investigations in more than 50 countries and in nearly every U.S. state and Canadian province. For the past 13 years, he has also been the owner and director of PallTech, an online service which provides database and investigative support services to investigative agencies, special investigative units (SIUs), and law enforcement. PallTech offers interactive and non-interactive access to nearly 600 data sources, including five major proprietary databases such as Skiptrace America and BusinessFinder America. The Skiptrace America database, which currently contains more than 5.3 billion unique records, is believed to be the largest individual reference database in the United States, excluding those databases maintained by the three U.S. credit bureaus. More than a decade ago Rambam forced the tightening of airport security in Texas airports by publicly exposing those airports' security flaws. In 1997 he exposed the presence in Canada of 162 Nazi war criminals and also conducted investigations which resulted in the prosecution and conviction of war criminals on murder charges. He is also the inspiration for "Rambam the detective" in Kinky Friedman's series of murder mysteries.
"while intelligence budgets have increased dramatically in the last five years, congressional oversight budgets have not." Why is it that da gummint has one half watching the other half, and each of 'em is taking more of OUR money to do it ? Geez....
Oops, read it as "Spetznatz". Not too far from the truth, eh?
I find this cover more disturbingly familiar...
this last weeks cover.
We all should have seen this comming. It is as Thomas Hobbes says in his writting, Leviathan. Basically, we give up some of our rights, so that a large beast, our government, can come in and take over to restore order. The difference is we are not the Fiji islands asking the British for help. We raised this one ourselfs. So bring out the offering plates, I think he's getting hungry again.
If you try GlobeExplorer, you get an uncensored image until the last two zoom levels. Then the White House turns brown.
Actually, the AP article does not explicitly state that this agency is directing satellites to acquire new imagery inside the U.S. Perhaps, they are, perhaps they aren't. Personally, I'm not too worried about anyone watching my public activities. If I was concerned about seeing me, I'd stay home.
Of, course, who's going to exercise oversight of all those Russian, Chinese, French, Indian and Israeli reconn satellites?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
What it means is that anything the government doesn't make speicifcly illegal for you to do is legal. So they can't say "Well you can't do that because we didn't make a law saying you can," they have to make a law saying you CAN'T before you aren't allowed.
Nowhere in there is public privacy or anonymity implied or stated. I can't find anywhere in the constution that it talks about public privacy, in fact. It talks about being secure in your house, person, papers, etc which is taken to mean that your private property is off limits except with a warrant, but nowhere does it talk about any right to be left alone in public.
I think the problem is that people confuse privacy and anonymity. You have a right to privacy in that the government can't search or look in your house without your permission, can't tap your phone without permission, and so on. That's privacy. What you want in a right to anonymity, which is the ability to be unkown and unwatched in public. Sorry, that's not a right that's listed or implied anywhere.
It also doesn't seem very natural. Seems that if you are in public, you are subject to being watched. In almost every store I go to there are security cameras watching what I do. This doesn't seem unnatural to me, I appreciate that I am not anonymous and invisible in public. If I want privacy, I retreat back to my house, close the door and draw the blinds. The government knows I live there, but then they didn't need a satalite for that, my Driver License and tax payments tell them that, but they don't know what I'm doing there unless they can get a warrant to check it out.
Just remember that the 9th and 10th are NOT saying the government can't make new laws to restrict rights. If they said that, the constution would be all we'd have and that's not much. They say that UNLESS the government makes a law restricting something, it's not illegal. That's not the case in all societies, in some the government must declare something to be legal, or it's illegal by default. The 9th and 10th just say that if the feds have no law on it, the states may maek a law, and if the states have no law, the people are free to do it and that just because some rights are listed, doesn't mean you don't have more than that unless a law is passed.
As far as I know, the NGA doesn't operate like the CIA or FBI, in that it doesn't involve itself with surveillance of indivuals or businesses, etc directly. It basically gets tasked to geospatially analyze an area or scene. In addition to doing 3d modeling (which can be used for mission planning, etc.), (using LIDAR to map sniper vectors, etc), capabilities include identifying materials on the ground from space-based or aerial assets. (Multispectral or Hyperspectral analysis) Much of the agency's ability to analyze is derived from commercial or unclassified platforms. On the opposite side of the spectrum (pun intended), much of what national asset capabilities are used for are, in effect, as a highly accurate reference. So, when you are classifying endmembers in a hyperspectral satellite image, you use classified geo-referenced imagery to pinpoint a targeted area. Geospatial is absolutely amazing, and like the first poster stated, I can't believe more people aren't involved in it (good for me). It truly is an area that is blowing up, and offsetting the losses in other IT areas. One of the main reasons for that is that it's not only pressing buttons and coding all day long. It involves elements of programming, analysis, geography, geology, hydrology, ground-truthing (field work) and countless others. It takes alot of knowledge in many fields to be an expert. Many experts have one niche, and know relatively little in others.
uce@ftc.gov
I'd rather the US government stop creating terrorists. Then we wouldn't have to go looking for them.
The level of detail varies widely, depending on the threat and what the FBI or another agency needs.
"In most cases, it's not intrusive," said the NGA's associate general counsel, Laura Jennings. "It is information to help secure an event and to have people prepared to respond should there be an attack, or to analyze the area where a threat has been made."
yeah, so what about the cases that are intrusive?
Audere est Facere
The war in Iraq is a video game for adults?
1: Implant TEMPORARY subdermal GPS enabled microchips into evern millitary and civillian person working or serving in the middle eastern hotzone (or any hotzone for that matter. But right now, it's Iraq). This will allow you to pinpoint with a very high level of precision the exact location of personnel should they be kidnapped.
3: Rescue the hostage and have a much better chance of killing the kidnappers.
Yes, I realize the privacy implications and the conspiracy implications of it all but, at some point, there IS a tradeoff between unabridged rights and personal and group safety.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Hear me out on this. I'm as appalled as anyone by governments overstepping their bounds and spying on its own citizens (and anyone who thinks THEIR government is innocent of this is deluding themselves)
I firmly believe that the "slippery slope" we keep worrying about is inevitable. How do we safeguard ourselves? Simple: overload the system. Anyone who works in intelligence-related activities will tell you that the volume of information gathered is not the problem, but analyzing, filtering, and properly dessiminating(sp?) it is. RFID chips, GPS tracking, shopping membership cards, etc. as well as many other forms of gathering information on members of the general public already exist, and more are being developed every day. The ability to make use of that information effectively is not keeping pace however.
Extrapolating to a logical conclusion, I believe that the time will come (in the not so distant future) where agencies both public and private will have so much information on every single individual that any item of information as well as the individual associated with it will become meaningless. It's only a matter of time before everyone has been to a meeting, read a book, posted a message, etc. that the only effective way of managing such minutiae will be to discard them.
Those in the data-mining industry may argue that they will find practical ways to deal with such massive amounts of information, and they may be right. But I hope not.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
"But, at the same time, why should we pay our tax dollars to have the military spy on US citicens (sic), when they could be looking for terrorists?"
They are.
Sure it might get worse one day. Hell, we've come close to nuking this planet back a hundred million years in evolution. We've wiped out thousands of species, and keep wiping them out. We're changing the biosphere from de-forestation in South America.
If they start using it (the spy camera network) to catch me popping fireworks in city limits, I'll take issue with it. Until then, I'm just not individualistic enough to sweat it.
At some point you really do have to conform, for society to function...
The article says it can carry 4,000 pounds, and loiter at 12 miles altitude for a year:
Why did they even bother mapping out Simi Valley, it's probably the most boring (though nearly crime free) city in the entire world? And I should know, I live here after all ;-)
There *are* uses of surveillance that I think cross the line. However the examples mentioned in the article are, I think, quite reasonable. If we do use the technology we have *within reasonable limits* - thats good. However, we also need a new national dialogue on preventing a surveillance society that ignores reasonable limits as well.
But, lets face it, nobody wants to see real terrorism occur, either, when we could have been doing something..but weren't.
Its a slippery slope..
Never look up.
Even Gene Hackman knows that.
Maybe it's just a clever way of saying, "Nine thousand people have died in Nepal, since Amnesty International took up their cause. So what's AI good for, anyway?"
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I, for one, welcome our new Republican overlords...
I don't know where you live, but here in California, windows are transparent.
He lives in florida, you insensitive clod. His windows are made of plywood and fastned with nails.
It's called the Posse Comitatus Act.
It's the magnitude of the paranoid situations that amuses me. That the idea that the bad US government could even do the "cataloging me" of attending outdoor meetings (based on the top-of-your-head shots satellites give) is so laughable is something that the presumably techo-savvy geeks here aught to understand.
Climb on down off your paranoid ladders, guys. You (despite your beliefs) are simply not important enough to generate that scrutiny.
However, any such "terrible" use of information won't happen, we're assured.
Interesting that environmental destruction or pollution apparently isn't a threat according to the powers that be. As long as you're running a plant, you can dump any "suspicious substances" you like and these guys won't snitch, apparently.
to never go outside again!
The thing that everybody seems to be ignoring is that we have no constitutional rights till the state of national emergency declared somewhere in the 1930's ( IIRC ) is recinded.
Don't believe a word of the bible. It's fundamental concept, God the Creator, is just plain wrong.
I wonder if you genitals are governed by quantum mechanics.
Do you balls swap places randomly?
"merging the geo-spatial data with up-to-date information from the National Weather Service"
.) Hell, there's stuff from the Spanish-American War that is still considered Classified. What the hell can still be worth considering Secret after over a century?
Nice in theory, but by the time that the data can be pried from the clenched rectal orfice of military censors any cloud would have dissipated. How many years did it take for the Bhopal victims to find out that accurate GIS info even existed for their area? It's been two decades and they still don't have access to it, just the outdated, inaccurate maps that the Indian government had. (Admittedly, they're Indians suing a US company, but still . .
The cult of secrecy within the US military community is astounding. Knowledge is power, and people become career military folks because they want power. They're not going to hand it over to civilians just because it might be a nice thing to do.
The (in)security agencies, like the FBI, CIA, and NSA, are even worse. They still refuse to release the security camera tapes from the store across the street from the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, or the ones from in front of the Pentagon, or most of the airport tapes from 9-11. Wouldn't that be in the public interest? Apparently not.
"could be used for personal surveillance. Um, not."
The combination of live feeds and GIS most certainly CAN be used for surveillance. On a whim one day, I tracked my wife's trip to the mall, using only the publicly available traffic camera images provided by the City of Bellevue (WA) on the Internet. The images only update twice a minute but I was still able to tell within 30 seconds of her arrival time at the mall. Think about the information available by access to the direct feed of those cameras, and combine it with image recognition software and the three dimensional viewing noted in the article.
This is not pie-in-the-sky futuristic dreaming, this is today's off-the-shelf technology. I wonder what Admiral Poindexter is working on now that he has been taken off the Database Of Everything project.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
If X amount of dollars is required to monitor an organization with a budget of Y dollars, do you not think it clear that you need at least 2X dollars to monitor that same organization when its budget doubles or triples (or quintuples, as is the case for one agency)? Instead oversight budgets have either maintained the same funding levels (which means that they decrease after inflation) or those funding levels have actually been reduced. This was Newt Gingrich's bit of genious. He realized that they didn't need to get rid of pesky groups like the EPA, FDA, and military auditors. All he had to do was reduce their budgets to the point where they couldn't do their job, and his sponsors' problems went away.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
If there aren't terrorist attacks happening in the US right now, it's because the terrorists don't WANT to attack us. This stuff isn't rocket science, they don't need extensive networks, sophisticated training, or suicide bombers. Just hijacking a gasoline tanker, driving it into a tunnel at rush hour, jackknifing it across all lanes, opening the petcocks, and shooting it with a flare gun from a safe distance would kill hundreds. Shutting down the country's second-largest export is a simple matter of shooting up the electrical substations and/or power lines that feed Boeing with a deer rifle. I think that Al Qaeda is largely a myth. Osama Binladden is a civil engineer. He built roads, bridges, and power dams. He certainly knows how to destroy them quickly and easily, but it doesn't happen. Why?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Mapquest and Terraserver et al have been offering up USGS satellite photos for years
They don't anymore. Go check Mapquest. All the aerial photo links are GONE. Maybe this got to co$ting them too much, maybe the USAPATRIOT act forbids them to? Terraserver won't give you any decent resolution unless you buy a ($10/week, $120/year) subscription.
The problem I have with all this surveilence data being gathered is that _I_ can't get at it. This _does_ make it useless to the general citizen, and therefore an intrusion on his privacy. If I could see the pretty pictures, and maybe use them for navigation, I'd feel a lot less ill-used.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
W? Ridge???
:-)
Oh, you meant Washington and Jefferson.
I think maybe that explains the difference
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?