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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.
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.
Um, no.
The spy satellites are considered by military experts to be more penetrating than civilian ones: They not only take color, as well as black-and-white photos, but can also use different parts of the light spectrum to track human activities, including, for example, traces left by chemical weapons or heat generated by people in a building....According to defense experts, (spy sats) use radar, lasers, infrared, electromagnetic data and other technologies to see through cloud cover, forest canopies and even concrete to create images or gather data.
We're talking higher rez, multiple spectrums, and updated extremely often. Just a touch different from Google Maps.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
and look forward to their snappy brown uniforms and leather boots.
That's UPS, not DHL.
Oh, wait...
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.
Heh. Yea, he's "cognizant" of them all right.
I can't see how this won't be misused. "Where were you on the night of the 1st?" "I think I was at home..." "Well you weren't! Here are the thermal satellite images to prove it!"
Seriously. This is a wet dream for the cops.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
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.
I'd be fine with it being used to find the kids that broke my window. Or the person that stole my car or broke into my house or any other real crime. What I'm afraid something like this could be used for is catching the person who buys a bag of weed, or smokes a cigarette in a nonsmoking area with nobody around or any of the other "made up" crimes.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Invisible, my ass. http://www.satobs.org/
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.)
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 ----
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.
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.
There's all manner of things in Tom Clancy novels - some of them are even true. This particular one isn't, because satellites aren't over one area long enough to do so. (Only geosync birds are - and they have a resolution measured in meters. Not nearly good enough for tracking individual vehicles.)
No satellite has that kind of resolution - period. To do that, you need a resolution on the millimeter scale - which is at least two orders of magnitude greater than is physically possible. (I.E. in the realm of 'science fiction' rather than in the realm of 'well, maybe they can do it'.) No satellite can hover over an area except for geosync birds - see above.
Suuure it's possible - if your name is Jack Ryan and you are a character in a Tom Clancy novel. Otherwise, not.
Like the OP, you appear to have gotten your impression of what spy birds can do from Hollywood and tinfoil hat websites.