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DHS To Share Spy Satellite Data Over the US
An anonymous reader sends us to the Wall Street Journal for the news that later this year the US Department of Homeland Security will begin sharing US spy satallite data with law enforcement and other customers. From the article: "...one of [DHS]'s first objectives will be to use the network to enhance border security, determine how best to secure critical infrastructure and help emergency responders after natural disasters. Sometime next year, officials will examine how the satellites can aid federal and local law-enforcement agencies, covering both criminal and civil law... DHS officials say the program has been granted a budget by Congress and has the approval of the relevant committees in both chambers... Unlike electronic eavesdropping, which is subject to legislative and some judicial control, this use of spy satellites is largely uncharted territory... [A CDT spokesman said] 'Not only is the surveillance they are contemplating intrusive and omnipresent, it's also invisible. And that's what makes this so dangerous.'"
Hmm...so, should this info be made freely available to the US citizens, so we can monitor how well our govt. is doing things like protecting our border...where they are gathering in reference to peaceful protests, how well they're responding to emergencies (would have been interesting for Katrina to see them all standing around).
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Let's be honest...Law enforcement isn't going to get much use out of this...there is too much data, and they have too few people and resources to sift through it all.
Geeks on the other hand, would have a field day. There would be AJAX pages tracking border crossers in real time, sites dedicated to assembling satellite photos of crimes in progress, the works.
Sure, you'd have to deal with lawsuits from every nude sunbather in america, but that's a small price to pay for freedom.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The data they have is can be found in Google earth for free. It is in a much more user friendly format than the government data as well.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
and look forward to their snappy brown uniforms and leather boots.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Unlike electronic eavesdropping, which is subject to legislative and some judicial control, this use of spy satellites is largely uncharted territory... [A CDT spokesman said] 'Not only is the surveillance they are contemplating intrusive and omnipresent, it's also invisible. And that's what makes this so dangerous.'""
Someone in a book suggested dispensing with privacy and have two-way transparency. The watchers get watched with the same degree of attention they watch us.
Google Earth already does this, scanning the international community for law breakers like the topless sunbather in Holland. e ss-sunbathing/>
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
Department, Commissariat (as in KGB) of Homeland Security -- what's the difference? The concept is the same, the purpose as well. There are still some details in implementation, but let's cut them some slack, they started just in 2002 so there's still much to be ironed out.
The real question is, does the population really believe any agency of this sort has a place in a democratic country?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Not if you're invisible too.
But really folks, is invisible surveillance really that much more dangerous than the visible kind? I don't think so. If the crazies are so worried, let them run around planting signs everywhere: Never Forget The Eye in the Sky!
Truth is, visible surveillance becomes invisible the moment it becomes ubiquitous.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The main point about obtrusive surveillance technologies is whether or not data from them is admissible in court. Like if the FBI tapped your phone without a very good reason and a court order, any information they gather couldn't be used against you. The thing with surveillance like this is that any data it collects probably would be admissible if the court viewed it like any other camera data. In any event, I think that we can mostly agree that satellite surveillance should be used for military purposes only and not to look for the kids who broke your window playing baseball.
Well that's great! The NSA is going to open the eye in the sky for others. Remember...... never look up and always wear a hat! This might be paranoia but they are finally admitting to what has been going on for years. All those "communication" satellites really are for communication. Communicating to the gov't exactly what YOU are doing.
"We're talking higher rez, multiple spectrums, and updated extremely often. Just a touch different from Google Maps."
Sounds like a game of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. Anyway I don't think they're going to give the locals too much info. Don't want foreign governments to know how good our capabilities are.
Does the US government have any discretion when it comes to privacy? Oh well. I suppose they have their reasons. Guess it's about time to dig the tinfoil hat out of mothballs.
The game.
And why are you so afraid of that? Are you planning to do something illegal while walking down the public streets?
Everyone should paint messages on their roof.
"He went that way ->"
"Are you looking at ME?"
"Bite me"
"Nothing to see here, move along"
"I have a telescope and I'm looking right back atcha"
"No WMDs here either"
"I'm hairy and nude - you still wanna look?"
"Area 52"
See? Mess with their heads.
I don't see any misspelling of satellite. Whether they changed it or not, it still makes you look like an idiot.
'Local' law enforcement are considered CUSTOMERS?
What kind of fucked up thing is that?
Just pass the word to the Administration and its Congressional allies that those satellites are good enough to show nekkid women sunbathing.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Did you not read this at all?
They say that they're going to track your every move, and your response is, "Well, at least I don't live in that other place where they track my every move..."?
Maybe in England they're saying, at least I don't have to check the undercarriage of my car for GPS devices planted by the police without a warrant. (Of course, that's old news, so we've probably all forgotten about it by now.)
Besides, even if things are much worse in England (they're not), is that supposed to be some kind of justification for the gross invasion of privacy taking place? If our government starts deciding to randomly kill a bunch of its citizens just to demonstrate its power, would that be okay because there are other governments out there that randomly kill more of its citizens? Would you still say, "At least I don't live in that other country..." instead of actually feeling a bit of outrage?
No wonder this country is going to hell. With rationalization like that, our government will be able to get away with pretty anything it wants to.
To trade the financial markets with out illegal N.S.A. intercepts of confidential corporate news announcements PRIOR to their announcement.
Criminally forever,
W
c'mon this is /. if editors edited and readers read...
well at this point I am supposed to have a handy saying. Guess I'm not the "Insightful" kind of guy.
Anywho, this sorta data reminds me of the Google StreetView criticism. Is it really your privacy if anybody can see it? Then again, not everybody has access to a high powered, multi-spectrum satellite at their disposal.
Wait, I'm the ambiguous metaphor guy!
import system.cool.Sig;
The argument that private citizens should have equal access to this is an interesting one. Historically, satellite imagery from the NRO has been closely guarded on grounds of national security, because releasing it reveals details that might be useful to unsavory people about our satellites capabilities, orbits, and operating practices. There is of course, the additional issue of privacy. After all, not just any private citizen can have access to a wire-tap. Then again, a wiretap requires (in theory anyways) a warrant.
This doesn't quite strike me as uncharted territory. A satellite image is not fundamentally much different from an aerial photo (most people don't seem to realize that the majority of high resolution imagery on Google Earth comes from USGS camera-equipped aircraft). In fact, aircraft usually have the advantage of better resolution, the ability to schedule observations much more conveniently, and longer loiter times (you can't look at the same target for very long moving at 17,500 mph). The main drawbacks are they don't scan as large of areas, and your target can more easily see them, although it's hard to be sure if a plane is watching you or just doing flight training. Oh, and not many airplanes can fligh high enough to avoid an SA-2.
Actually, the Wall Street Journal author seems to have done a good job covering each of these issues in the article.
Regarding two-way transparency, if someone is being underhanded in exploiting that, it once again becomes unbalanced unless you have the resources to identify and address that problem. Net result: someone is still screwing with you, but you have less privacy.
Besides, we theoretically have checks and balances built into the system, but that doesn't stop people from using the system for their own purposes. If the system isn't perfect as is, I highly doubt it will improve by removing all restrictions on either side.
So how's this tool in your scenario any different than the GPS phone, or the tattletale car?
"Everyone breaks the law"
Dead people don't.
1. Have 50 naked people spell out a "message"
a) very near the site of a probable use.
b) example: political conventions and protest site.
2. artwork on the ground, plastic warning tape (do-no-cross) is quick, cheap, easy to remove.
3. etc.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Go buy satellite blinding lasers from China?
Reminds me of a little song I heard when I was growing up. Once upon a time, today's world would have been looked upon as the demented fantasy of a heavy metal band.
Up here in space,
I'm looking down on you.
My lasers trace
Everything you do.
You think you've private lives, think nothing of the kind!
There is no true escape, I'm watching all the time!
(CHORUS):
I'm made of metal, my circuits gleam!
I am perpetual, I keep the country clean!
I'm elected, electric spy...
I'm protected, electric eye...
Always in focus,
You can't feel my stare,
I zoom into you,
You don't know I'm there
I take a pride in probing all your secret moves,
My tearless retina takes pictures that can prove...
(CHORUS)
Electric eye (in the sky)
Feel my stare (always there)
There's nothing you can do about it! Develop and expose!
I feed upon your every thought, and so my power grows!
(CHORUS)
I'm elected, electric spy
I'm protected, electric eye
I'm elected, electric spy
I'm elected
Protective,
Detective,
Electric
Eye!
- Judas Priest, Electric Eye, 1982.
Not bad. Pretty much got everything right. "Keeping the country clean" as the excuse for the power grab. "Elected. Protective. Detective." as the correct chronological order in which to implement it.
(I'm going to try and ignore the video for Turbo Lover and the suspicious resemblance to the cyborg-on-a-motorcycle sequence from Terminator 2. He wound up getting elected as Governor, and you'd think that if a hair metal band really had come from the future, they'd have at least hinted at the Governator in a backwards-masked portion of the track... There's such a thing as taking pop culture too seriously, after all.)
"Department, Commissariat (as in KGB) of Homeland Security -- what's the difference?"
Several years of University schooling would help you with that.
"The real question is, does the population really believe any agency of this sort has a place in a democratic country?"
Why don't you ask Usama bin Laden?
Great. Will they be reading what is on the screen of your ipod and send you a demand for proof of purchase of the song?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
not just there, they just put up another one on the main drag of Capitol Hill in Seattle.
That's not in England. It's here.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
One word: Resolution. When one pixel might or might not represent a huge boulder, that's one thing. When it represents darker pigment on the tip of your left nipple, that's something else entirely.
Ever hear of adaptive optics? Multiple aperture arrays? Interferometry? The amount of money and technology available to the US government moves the bar right out of your reach.
No, think of it this way: It's some person half a continent away looking into your yard despite your privacy fence, watching your significant other sunbathe, nude. Without a warrant, an invitation, or anything remotely resembling a good reason.
What this means is that in order to attempt to be secure from unreasonable search (again, see the 4th amendment) from individuals in the employ of an invasive and out of control government, fences are no longer going to be sufficient. Now we're going to have to roof our properties too.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's information sharing and possibly the only thing DHS has done right. The point is that if there is a problem somewhere and I know about it, then I have a responsibility to inform the people who *should* know about it rather than sit on it and worry about inter-agency regulations and red tape.
In regards to Domestic Spying, that is irrelevant to this, and should be addressed separately. I personally feel that no way in hell should they be able to spy on the US without a warrant. Executive order 12333 happens to agree (section 2.3 Paragraph B)
"Collection within the United States of foreign intelligence not otherwise obtainable shall be undertaken by the FBI or, when significant foreign intelligence is sought, by other authorized agencies of the Intelligence Community, provided that no foreign intelligence collection by such agencies may be undertaken for the purpose of acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons;"
In all honesty, this information sharing is actually *beneficial* to civil liberties because if there is warrantless and illegal spying going on the public will find out about it much more readily and actually be able to address it.
Yes and LE are customers of Glock and Taser International and GM. News flash! LE doesn't make all their own equipment! You wouldn't like it if they did. It would be the worst quality most expensive shit you have ever seen if they did.
Creative Demolition
MMmmmm..... eat up, slashtards... your being spoonfed dose after dose of liberal tinfoil. Your life is a paranoid delusion.
Law enforcement can't just make arbitrary searches; that's what the fourth amendment is about. If you hold a reasonable expectation of privacy, then fourth amendment rights apply, even in the face of advancing technology. The use of infrared cameras to look for marijuana grow lights is illegal without a warrant, for example. Similarly, even though it is feasible for there to be a microphone planted inside a phone booth, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy inside phone booth. So, LEOs need to get a warrant before they can bug a phone booth.
Also, there are some traditional privacy rights which can interact in interesting ways. For instance, you have the same privacy rights in the area immediately around a house (the curtailage) as you would inside. The curtailage includes any areas under a roofing overhang, and any areas generally bounded by fences, hedges, and other physical obstructions which would prevent a ground-level observer from peeking in. So, even though your back yard is open to the sky, both aerial photography or satellite imagery requires a warrant. Viewing from a nearby tall hill doesn't.
Law enforcement can already use commercial satellite imagery (within 4th amendment limits), or their own aerial overflights (again, within limits) to get images just as readily as they could from the US government. For the scary things people are worried about, they can already do them if they are willing to break the law themselves. Using military satellites would be just as illegal.
We know they're watching Muslims & registered Democrats. Will Blacks, college grads and Republicans be next?
Or are they already watching Republicans (just to keep them in line) and moving towards watching Muslims, Dems, Blacks & Grads?
As an aside, how come nobody in those Congressional oversight hearings ever asks "are you monitoring/wiretapping/e-tapping/watching me or my staff or my colleagues?"
Maybe they already know the answer.
Speaking of which anyone know the whereabouts of the Saint formerly known as Paris?
Hope is the currency of fools
Who is damn sick and tired of being spied on by their own government?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Welcome to the YAABSP (Yet Another Anti-Bush Slashdot Posting) automatic post submission system.
Please choose one of the following templates for your Premier Bush news posting:
a) President Bush eats babies and sleeps with everyone's wives simultaneously .
b) President Bush is blowing up New Orleans infrastructure, polluting the environment, melting the ice caps and catching dolphins in tuna nets.
c) President Bush is cheating on his wife with interns while chatting with Senators on the phone... er, wait, don't choose this one.
d) President Bush paid SCO to sue IBM regarding illegal Unix code in Linux.
Blah, blah, blah. Stop with the fucking political bullshit and stick to the pseudo-science articles.
whenever you go outside,
look up and smile!
Some of the ideas of what this technology would be doing are pretty off-the-wall. This isn't "24"... think more of "Patriot Games." These are satellites that have to be pointed at a single target, and have the ability to track that piece of land, and can then give real-time images in either visible light or different infra-red spectra for night time and for heat detection, along with laser and radar technology for penetrating structures. Depending on where the target is, they sometimes even have to adjust the orbit to get a decent shot. I don't know how many sats there are, but this is obviously not something for community use. There's got to be a queue of agencies with various priorities to decide what they get to point the suckers at. If you think they're going to be looking for you smoking pot in your back yard, just extend the tin foil down into a wide bell shape, and you'll be covered.
read that as Dead Hooker Storage? I thought damn, someone has an array!!! An array of Dead Hooker Storage, would that be a plethora?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Wait for a cloudy day before you do your Bad Stuff.
Of course, once you've run the tape back to find where the perp's live, you know which telephone recordings to scan.... But there's no domestic telephone recording going on, right?
Another type of satellite has super magnification, but a narrow field of view. These need to be targeted (which is expensive), but yes, they can tell if you need a haircut or not. These are the ones that cannot hover over an area. But if the goal is to snap a photo of you holding evidence (or being in the presence of the wrong people), and DHS has an idea of when to monitor you, it is possible. Not likely, but absolutely possible.
This shouldn't be all that worrisome, until DOD+DHS announces a plan to put up one satellite a week, forever. Go for that price-break on the large quantity discounts, you see.
Frankly, even if you don't like it, too bad for you. Consider the Hans Reiser case: take the wide field view tape, and follow his car. If it doesn't show him driving off to any remote areas the day of the murder, maybe the tape should be played back from his wife's house to see if someone else showed up there that day, then follow them.
In either case, having evidence of who dumped the body will convict murderers. Even if you don't like spying by DHS, DHS isn't going to give it up without a fight.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
The Democrats did this the last time they held power (and she-who-must-not-be-named is running for a third term) without the 'structure' in place to authorize such things as taking the FBI files on all leading Republicans and using them for blackmail, etc., spying on all pro-life Christians, including the Cardinal of New York, not to mention the Waco pogrom, etc., Imagine what they'll do with -this-.
You have been watching too many movies. I worked with this stuff and referencing "Patriot Games" makes anyone in the know laugh (or even better that dubmassed movie that has them tracking WIl Smith in realtime inside a firken building). I was even at a classified brief where they made a joke of it: "Can we do stuff like I saw on Patriot Games? Yes, if you can get my a camera and a crane". They shot that stuff from a crane and a helicopter, solarized the negative image to make it look like "infrared". No satellite we have can do imagery like that real-time. Even at 0.3 meter resolution you will not get details like that. To get that, you need surveilleance by air breathing assets - i.e. UAVs, guys with cameras, etc.
Also, the surveillance will primarily be aimed at border areas OUTSIDE the US.
They have been using Sat images domestically for years: how do you think the Forest Service gets where the edges of a fire are?
They cannot "track" individuals in real time with satellites - there simply are not enough assets to do this.
And finally, How many satellites do you think are up there doing elint and imagery collection? Go to FAS.org, and add up the suspected NSA/NRO launches. The count is probably less than 2 dozen. Given that most of them are in orbits to maximize their time over China, Afghanistan and Iraq, they probably are not at good angles to see much of the US - do the math. THen also figure its massively expesnive to operate those things - you have to have ground processing and all kinds of other stuff - ask anyone using the TV satellite systems, a bg chunk of cash is when the things are active, and you have to pay to ge the ground systems going. Also, I bet they use the "over the us" for a main window as well. A little bit of though, instead of hysterics, goes a long way if you are in the know.
Take the tinfoil hats off, and read up - and stop trusting Hollywood to give you an accurate accounting of ANYTHING.
shouldn't they be sharing with other government agencies? concerning...
Not only is the surveillance they are contemplating intrusive and omnipresent, it's also invisible. And that's what makes this so dangerous.
It's also a useful tool, especially in regard to securing the border. I like having a system in place to keep track of who goes in and out of the country -- it's only a problem when the system itself is misused; inherently it's a good idea, and serves it's function (I actually know of a guy who deserted the army overseas, after stealing sensitive info, and months later was then stupid enough to take a flight that had a brief layover in the U.S. -- his passport was flagged, and they arrested him right there).
In any case, if the border patrol isn't using this technology already, using it would make it next to impossible to sneak across.
Just remember, kids, all you need to avoid incriminating yourself to a spy satellite is a roof over your head!
So don't grow pot in your backyard or anything, they might check for that now.
Has nothing do to with doing something wrong, at all, in any way. Stop saying it.
Where was a white Ford Bronco parked the same night OJ cut himself? Do the Chinese have overflights of Los Angles on the night in question? Even if you have a photo double jepordy still applies, except in England. The queen can put anybody to death on a whim. Makes you appreciate our system even when there are some things wrong with it. Maybe he really can help find the REAL killer.
I take it that there are no security cameras in private establishments in the US then? Actually, I know that to be false because I counted as many, if not more, than I would expect in the UK on my last visits to Baltimore, Columbia, and DC. Pretty much every business in the UK that deals with cash has at least one CCTV camera up, and I imagine it must be similar in the USA.
Also, a huge number of the cameras in the UK are on our highways. These are immensely useful for reporting traffic incidents to local/national radio and the highways agency travel website which then provides data to companies such as TomTom so that SatNav devices can route around problems. I find it immensely useful. Yes, those cameras also get used during police pursuits or other crimes, such as the recent M40 shooting, but as a law abiding citizen, what difference does it make?
Just a quick reality check.
I think you've watched Enemy of the State maybe one too many times.
Surveillance satellites are not geo-synchronous, so they cannot observe in what most of us consider real-time. "Real-time" surveillance is not like watching a color movie of what's going on on the ground. It is more like analyzing black and white snapshots of what is on the ground as the satellite(s) pass over a given area.
Doing effective analysis requires a lot of resources, knowledge and experience that the typical person just doesn't have.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Don't worry this isn't like hollywood where they can track your every move. First of all these satellites are only a couple of hundred miles up, so they aren't stationary. They can barely make out anything at the person sized level, and the images are in black and white. If you specifically are a target, and they invest the energy in tracking you directly, they still can only get 4 minutes worth of sparse STILL (not video) images of you every 90 - 120 minutes. It's not like they're reading the radio dial or anything, or nosing in the books you're reading. Honestly with today's satellite technology, the only real thing they can do is compare what something looks like this week with what it looked like last week. It also doesn't capture images unless they specifically target the images. They can specifically target general areas and see for example, if a large contingent of troops are moving in a warzone, or if there is a blockage to an escape route after an earthquake. They cannot watch you in realtime and video tape your sexual exploits with that hooker you've been trying to hide in your car. Haha.
Although that is how it is now, but I suppose it's possible that a next generation of satellites could possibly do those things, at least in small bursts, so it's important to make sure the law keeps up with the technology, but right now, there isn't much in the 'offensive' that satellites can give the government, just mostly information that can be used for post-facto defensive strategy or in near-term decision making, like choosing evacuation routes after say.. a terrorist drops a nuke on someone.
Speak for yourself.
My first programming job was with a company that made software to process satellite and aerial photography. This person knows what he's talking about. The kind of satellites that DHS is likely to allow civilian law enforcement to look at do not have that kind of resolution at all.
Now, I never worked with classified data, but I have serious doubts over what military satellites are capable of based on conversations with coworkers. Our parent company also made top of the line aerial sensors, and our best sensor got 5 cm resolution at an altitude of 3 km. I think the lowest satellite orbits are 160 km, and so figuring out what one of the best commercial sensors could do at an altitude over 50X as high is an exercise left to the reader ('cause I'm lazy).
(PS: Our parent company was not American and had no reason to hold back technology for military use only, so put that conspiracy angle aside right now.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
We're talking higher rez, multiple spectrums, and updated extremely often. Just a touch different from Google Maps.
Meh. There's a direct tradeoff between the number of bands of color that you can sense and the resolution you can resolve. Panchromatic satellites have significantly better resolution than multispectral satellites which have better resolution than hyperspectral satellites. This is why nearly every color satellite has different resolutions for black & white and color images that it can take.
And trust me when I say that the best hyperspectral satellites (the kinds that resolve enough different wavelengths of light per pixel to do the kind of spectral analysis needed to detect "traces left by chemical weapons") have absolutely terrible resolution. For example, AVIRIS, a 224 band sensor, gets a resolution of about 20 meters per pixel. The Orbview-4 (aka Warfighter-1) probe that was launched for the Air Force in 2001 was going to be one of the best with a 1m panchromatic resolution and an 8m hyperspectral resolution, but it was destroyed in a launch failure. If you want high-quality hyperspectral data, you take it from a plane.
So anyway, much of what they talk about in this article is fantastic scare-mongering.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"Your son happens to surpass the speed limit & the officer promptly issues a speeding ticket ... and another ... and another."
So, you're trying to claim that enforcing the law your son broke is an abuse?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
When you start using data from spy satellites, it's unlikely that a defendant will be able to see the evidence against them. The capabilities and resolution of spy satellite photos is classified, so all most people will see is down-graded view. Even military commanders in the field get an interpretation -- they ask about particular features of a potential target, and then a photo analyst draws them a picture describing the photo. That way, the picture (and the satellite's capability) can't fall in to enemy hands.
This is good and bad -- good as in that police will need additional evidence to use this in individual prosecutions, and bad in that the secrecy surrounding spy photos could be used to manipulate the legal system ("trust us, Judge").
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
What difference you ask. You say you are a law abiding citizen, yet if you drive the highways I'm sure you've broken the law on occasion. There is a vast difference between a private enterprise having cctv and a government surveillance network spanning the country's highways. Think about the children, seriously, and how every movement they make in their life is likely to be recorded, then go reread 1984 and tell me you have no problem with this.
What world do you live in? Satellite pictures have been able to read the documents in your hands for YEARS!
Usually I'm a huge privacy & security zealot, but the sharing of remote sensing data doesn't bother me. Here's why: Public photography is legal.
Remote sensing data (i.e. visual imagery, radar, infrared, SIGINT, gravity measurements, spectroscopy, whever else you can think of...) are the types of data that anyone can freely collect on their own however they please. How, you might ask? Walk outside. Snap a picture with the camera in your cell phone. Turn on a radio. Measure the surface temperature of a house with a thermal imaging camera. Now take all that data and share it with people. Or sell it. No problem. It's all legal, because public photography is protected.
Should it be wrong to take the same kind of measurements from a vehicle in low earth orbit? Hell no. You can jump in an airplane and take pictures of your home town, complete with interesting aerial views of your neighbor's backyard. It's legal. You can share, sell or license those pics however you like. Public photography is protected.
With improved satellite imagery, hopefully we'll be able to check for the "DEAD N----- STORAGE" sign before coming to your house ;)
Do the Chinese have overflights of Los Angles
Ask them yourself at http//www.airchina.com.cn/en/index.jsp.
They'll take a mile. Specifically, if limited access (say, to border areas) is given, it will be hacked and some determined someones will get full access.
And can you say FOIA?