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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.
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)
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.
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...
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
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.
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"
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.