US To Employ Overhead Spying Domestically

DigitAl56K writes "The Washington Post reports that 'The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon' and that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said that 'Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement.' Initially, it appears that the administration plans to leverage conventional satellites for domestic surveillance purposes. Congress last October delayed launch of the DHS office that would coordinate law-enforcement requests for satellite and other technical data, and demanded answers to legal questions about the program. The administration supplied answers that some Congress members characterized as inadequate and appears determined to go ahead anyway."

Comments

Blowback

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

We called the phenomenon of encountering weapons we handed out for anti-soviet use turned against us "blowback". This is the other flavor. All the defense contractors knocking together widgets for our wars aren't going to stop there, not when profits are on the line. The next logical market is domestic. The fact that the current administration loves abuses of power and defense contractors in equal measure doesn't much help. Nor does the revolving door between government posts and corporate positions. This time, "blowback" means having the weapons and techniques we use abroad come home to meet us.

New generation of privacy concerns

[DigitAl56K]

If we take the fourth amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. .. how does this apply to aerial or satellite surveillance where we are now talking about technologies that can monitor us everywhere we go and using different techniques than we are used to?

Examples:

• If I am reading e-mail on my phone outdoors (for the sake of argument lets assume it was transmitted securely) and I'm not openly displaying it to others, yet a UAV can see the text because it's above me, am I secure in my effects? What if it is a public place but there is nobody near me and it would be unreasonable to assume that anyone could see what I'm looking at? Even in the workplace, when I type my password into my desktop my coworkers, should they be near my desk, look away because their is an assumed need for privacy under some circumstances.
   
• Satelites and UAVs do not just see in the visible spectrum. What happens when they are capable of looking into our homes either actively or passively via different ranges of the spectrum? One one hand, if I am yelling inside my house and there are people outside who overhear, that's my own fault. If a UAV can discern objects and people through a roof, monitor radio emissions and so forth, is that the same thing? My intuition says no, but I doubt it's defined.
   
• Satelites, UAVs, and even cell networks have the ability to track our every move, and by monitoring us all build a social probability map (if you are regularly near other individuals and perhaps at some point have travelled to the same points at the same time or along the same route, you probably know them, can be expanded to group relationship probabilities). Although I don't have much of an expectation of privacy in public places, I do not have an expectation that I should be monitored in my every move and in every relationship I have with other individuals by any entity. However, increasingly that is a) possible, and b) likely.

Where are Americans, and the in fact the rest of the world, going to draw the line?

I am also gravely disappointed in Congress these days. The ask "is it legal?", or "can we manage privacy?" instead of noting that these kind of activities go against fundamental principles on which the United States was founded. "Is it legal?" is a gateway to allow anything, because as the Bush administration has demonstrated the law can be so easily changed, ignored, or interpreted, that it is a useless guard against any desire of the president.

Re:Is the USA still a democracy?

[illumnatLA]

"Could we be overthrown by an evil dictator soon?" I wonder about that also. Will those who are in control of the U.S. government allow elections this time in November? Or will there be some "threat" that those in power say requires them to continue in power? Not to get all "Conspiracy Theory," but I kind of wonder if this has been in the works since the time Prescott Bush, father of George H. W. Bush plotted with other business leaders to overthrow the government of FDR. "41," I believe, has been quoted as admiring the monarchy of Saudi Arabia. It wouldn't be all that surprising. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot