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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.
... 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
Repeat after me: "You have no right to privacy in public." (especially when you are outdoors)
Slippery slope. Yeah, we have "no right" to privacy in public. Yeah, we know that the government and Major League Baseball have been spying on us for years from the eyes in the skies... What I want to know is what we are doing to stop them from continuing their infiltration into our personal lives that we live behind closed doors.
According to YOU you're not. What happens when the government decides differently? What if going to an AA meeting is suddenly grounds for a background check, and then that information is suddenly available to your employer, who doesn't want any 'freakin' alcoholics' on the payroll?
Or what about attending that civil-rights protest? Or the million man march? Or your wife/girlfriend/daughter going to an abortion clinic? See what I mean? Just assuming you aren't doing anything wrong doesn't mean that the gov can't decide otherwise.
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.
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.
Well, actually there's starting to be precedent against high-tech surveillance technologies being employed in an invasive manner. A few months back, there was a case brought where a guy who was growing certain types of plants in his attic via the use of sun lamps was caught when a local LEO decided to scan the residence at night with a thermal imaging device. After the arrest of the grower, said grower brought suit, claiming it was a warrantless search, therefore inadmissible. The case went up the legal ladder to the Supreme Court, who decided that indeed, the use of the thermal imaging device violated the 4th Amendment Right's (Protection from Unlawful Search and Seizure) of the grower. Then, they turned around and said that aerial surveillance didn't need any such warrant. I'm not going to try and figure out the following, "In his discussion of the effect of the evolution of technology on privacy rights, Justice Scalia stated that technology enabling human flight has uncovered portions of the house and its curtilage that once were private. But, he held, the Kyllo case had to confront the limits on the power of technology to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy." So, somehow, the technology of a thermal imaging device breaks some line of technology which would allow for unauthorized observation into a person's home, and therefore requires a warrant, while a radio control helicopter with a wireless camera onboard, as it would constitute aerial surveillence, doesn't. Sometimes, I think that George, Tom and the rest of the gang must be spinning in their graves.
I can't seem to remember the exact details, but there was a story several months back here on slashdot about a behavioral study that involved installing cameras all throughout a section of park somewhere on the east coast and watching how people respond to the fact that they are being monitored (it even had some wacky "Big Brother"-sounding name). They found that even people who were doing nothing illegal tended to modify their behavior to fit perceived social norms when they knew they were being watched.
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.
How does a humorous comment which makes a political statement make me a troll? Even on /. the average IQ is dropping rapidly. Morons.
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.
If you try GlobeExplorer, you get an uncensored image until the last two zoom levels. Then the White House turns brown.
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"
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..