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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?
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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
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
"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!
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..
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
You should care because the definition of what you should and shouldn't be doing can always be changed.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
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 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.
National Map (National Map Viewer)
(and the somewhat related National Atlas)
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
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.
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.
Checks and balances at the case-by-case, individual level. Of course the system still works overall, but that misses the point. Last I checked, everybody wasn't either deserving of data collection or not, it was much more complicated than that.
/. -- I'm sure there are ways to make sure the need for security is balanced with the need to maintain individual sovreignty.
That's why the database itself may be perfectly fine if it is completely maintained by some independent organization not capable of criminal prosecution. Police can get warrants for specific information and have a judge review them. That's all I'm saying.
Making this into some kind of simplistic discussion doesn't do much for either side. There are some fairly smart people on
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!
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.
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.
Its a sad commentary on the ignorance of Americans that you have to explain why Stalinist surveillence is dangerous...
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.
DPRK? Iran? Saudi Arabia?
MM--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
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.
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.
If looking into a private residence with thermal imaging devices were legal, every pervert in the world would be spending their evenings legally looking in to all the 13 year old girls' bedrooms.
On the other hand, aerial surveillance can't really be illegal, because (civilian) pilots can't help but see down on to private property, so they can't simply make it illegal.
In this case, the courts worked along the line of thought that government agencies have no more right to violate privacy than the common citizens unless they can provide probable cause, and as long as they support that precept I support them.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
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.
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.
Guess I'd better not take this up...
Although if Elizabeth Hurley wants to, that's OK by me.
Chip H.
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.
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.
I'd rather the US government stop creating terrorists. Then we wouldn't have to go looking for them.
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..