DHS To Share Spy Satellite Data Over the US 161
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.'"
free to citizens too? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...and keeping an eye on that super hot, nubile young terrorist type that likes to sunbathe in the nude on the roof of our building...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They should share it with everyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:They should share it with everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can run through a horror scenario and I'll even welcome the tinfoil hat comments.
Your son gets a speeding ticket & tells a cop to "go fuck himself." There's nothing exactly illegal with that. Annoyed and upset, the policeman writes down the vehicle's make, model & license plate. The officer returns to his precinct and proceeds to monitor your sons vehicle. Your son happens to surpass the speed limit & the officer promptly issues a speeding ticket
See the problem with this 'tool' is that any law enforcement with an ax to grind or whatever motive can wait for you to slip up. Everyone breaks the law, it's just a question of when. That's what worries me. This is like entrapment or some crazy idea of your government viewing you as guilty until everything is monitored and you're proven innocent. Everyone is human and therefore makes mistakes and this spells bad news for anyone who crosses the police or is the target of racial prejudice.
Long story short, it's not useful to 'discover' criminal activity & is just begging to be abused. We have warrants for a reason, get them in place on this!
Re: (Score:2)
1. My son would have to apologize to the police officer. It is rude, uncalled for, and stupid.
2. How it any different than the officer just watching out for him.
This would be a case of stupidity being it's own reward.
Now for a little more reality How the heck is a spy satellite going to read a license
Re: (Score:2)
The police officer calls you a criminal. You're offended, you tell the police officer that you're going to report HIS misbehavior. So he starts tracking you and so on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
That is a myth. Even with active optics that kind of resolution is impossible. Even if was possible looking straight down it is impossible at the slant angle you would need to see a license plate.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow you really don't have more than say a 5th grade understanding of physics. Spy sate
Re: (Score:2)
Even for a military officer booking time on one of them is difficult. Your local cop will not get the opportunity to task one of these to track a specific car just because a teenager used foul language. That is even if it could track track a specific car.
But it just isn't worth the effort to use fact when faced with mindless fear.
Re: (Score:2)
If it has no use in "discovering criminal activity", then how exactly will it be abused?
Police currently do not need warrants to overfly your property and take all the pictures they want. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy from overflight. By simple analogy, you also have no reasonable expectation of privacy from satellite photography. Er
Re: (Score:2)
In discovering non-criminal activity that should be none of their business anyway. If the police gets the data, data-mining companies will get the data; they'll discover you parked 5 times last month in front of the liquor store - the trucking company where you applied for work won't hire you, because you may have a drinking problem, no matter that you were going to the computer store across the street. They'll discov
Re: (Score:2)
This is by far one of the most ludicrous paranoid screeds I've read in a long time.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course the really cool things is it is digital, so what was in it can be altered as well as when it actually occurred.
When they can continuously monitor and control your family, they control you, good luck.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that i parked a car overnight in front of a beer store does not mean i drank 256 cases of beer all night.
If my application for employment is rejected on that basis, the trucking company will stare down a $1.2 million lawsuit for discrimination based on personal prejudices.
In fact the trucking company will have a hard time in court with my lawyer who will proceed to question the president of the trucking company that since his car
Re: (Score:2)
People do have an expectation of privacy in public -- certainly not complete privacy, but I guarantee you that if you take a random sample, at least 90% will not expect that they're being constantly watched and recorded everywhere they go
This is what happens when people too ignorant to educate themselves are left to blather on all over the Internet about what they feel is illegal. Willful ignorance, it's an ugly thing. You have company here, though. The moniker on Slashdot should be "Anonymous Ignorant D
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a vastly overinflated idea of a) how much detail can be seen from satellites, and b) of how thorough the coverage is. (Much of Google's 'satellite' coverage actually comes from aerial photography.) And even so, the top of one car looks pretty much like another.
If it's not useful for detecting criminal activity - then it's also not us
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Might also be handy to watch the same area over time, looking for changes that you might not notice if you were there in person. It might not be economically feasible to
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Just because it's not good enough for instantaneous and individual tracking doesn't mean it's not good for other purposes or that datamining might not yield information.
Two types of satellites - wide view and narrow (Score:2)
Of course, once you've run the tap
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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 - an
Mod Parent Up -- He knows what he's talking about. (Score:2)
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 se
Re: (Score:2)
In TFA they mentioned that in the past, the DOD would sometimes provide info to the Feds. I recall that after the Oklahoma City Bombing, it was mentioned on the radio that one of the perps was caught because he traveled 200 miles away f
Re: (Score:2)
I don't recall that statement about catching one of the Oklahoma City bombers by watching him run away, but I could see the radio station being misinformed (either deliberately or accidentally). Not to tar them all with the same brush, but Slashdot remembers a radio station continuing actions that were ultimately lethal
Re: (Score:2)
He might not be a liar - but he is (at a minimum) exaggerating somewhat, or misunderstood what he saw.
Re: (Score:2)
They didn't bust him with satellites. And your buddy was goofing on you.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like you are proposing that law enforcement should need a warrant merely to take pictu
Re: (Score:2)
Dead people don't.
They do if you don't bury them properly, or bury them in your back yard.
Get real (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Law enforcement, particularly DHS, is supposed to be protecting us from terrorists. Not pot growing operations or Mexicans crossing the border, looking for work. Satellite data isn't going to be of much use to detect the former activities. It will be useful to detect the latter, and that's the problem. If we are to believe that we are under c
They need to reread the 4th amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:They need to reread the 4th amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
How is it different from some guy with a telephoto on a hill? Well, does this guy have petabytes of storage available to keep track of everything he ever sees? Does he stay on the hill 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365.25 days a year? Does his field of vision from the top of the hill extend across the whole country, at ultra-high resolution? Does he have massive computational and personnel resources available in order to actually analyse all (or all the parts he chooses) of what he sees? Does he have the power to access information that you would normally consider safe from those you choose not to divulge it to (e.g. criminal records, passport/immigration/travel records, financial details, etc)?
Depending on the answers to those questions, there may be no difference at all. But there may also be an enormous and life-altering difference, depending on who this guy is, and with whom he shares what he sees. Every time you give something, you lose something; the question is whether it is a justifiable and acceptable loss. Any time you give anyone power over information about you, you lose a little privacy, a little anonymity, and a little liberty. It's hard to get it back.
Google earth already publishes all of this (Score:1)
Re:Google earth already publishes all of this (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
"Mr. Allen, the DHS intelligence chief, says the department is cognizant of the civil-rights and privacy concerns, which is why he plans to take time before providing law-enforcement agencies with access to the data. He says DHS will have a team of lawyers to review requests for access or use of the systems.
"This all has to be vetted through a legal process," he says. "We have to get this right because we don't want civil-rights and civil-liberties advocates to have
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
I find it pretty darn impossible to believe spy satellites can penetrate concrete, or even dense forest cover in the way that's implied as it simply makes no scientific sense. Nothing except neutrinos and a few gamma rays are going to penetrate a standard building (especially if it is multiple stories), but both of these would be impossible for surveillance.
Also, how exactly can something penetrate concrete, then reflect of ski
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, they cant id the people in teh living room sucking on that hooka, or see what anti American propaganda you are reading, but they can tell that people were at the crime scene, ( and then track you in daylight once you leave the building ) or that you have a hidden grow room in the northwest closet..
So its not totally useless.
Re: (Score:2)
There is simply no way Infra Red can be picked up after traveling through air, then through even few inches of concrete/bricks/wood/tiles then through air again, especially as a typical building has several insulating layers (e.g. ceiling, thermal insulation, cavity space, roof tiles). The signal is going to be simply non-existent.
Large static sources of heat like "grow rooms" may show up if on the top floor of a "thin"-roofed building, although they would appear pretty identical
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hyperspectral satellites aren't THAT good. (Score:2)
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 ta
I for one welcome our new Homeland Overlords (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's UPS, not DHL.
Oh, wait...
Re: (Score:2)
Transparency (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Uncharted territory? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Lame (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
DGB (Score:4, Insightful)
The real question is, does the population really believe any agency of this sort has a place in a democratic country?
Re: (Score:2)
Not Necessarily (Score:2)
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.
Judas Priest was 25 years ahead of its time. (Score:3, Interesting)
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,
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck with that. My tinfoil hat will reflect your laser back to you, and your satellite will explode... Mwahaha!
Re: (Score:2)
Michel Foucault said it much better than I ever could:
Admissibility (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
In countries where satellites are used in such a fashion, growers have taken to mixing their 'crop' with other crops to avoid presenting a big obvious target.
Re: (Score:2)
In countries where satellites are used in such a fashion, growers have taken to mixing their 'crop' with other crops to avoid presenting a big obvious target.
Anecdote: I once met a farmer from Iowa whose primary income came from interplanting cannabis with corn, in order to mask the infrared and colour signature.
The point is, this was 20 years ago. The satellites weren't the issue then, flyovers were. The local technique (I live in a rural area famous for its alternative crop) is infrared-spotter helicopters supplied by the foreign-invaders 'DEA' and co-staffed by RCMP (that's 'mounties' to you 'murricans).
Re: (Score:2)
It will be used/abused for any purpose they can. You can count on it.
Have fun with it. (Score:2, Funny)
"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.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
CUSTOMERS?! WHAT?! (Score:2)
What kind of fucked up thing is that?
Duh (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's the terminology used in the intelligence community. The organizations that act on intelligence, and make requests for it, typically DoD units, are called "customers".
Easy to stop (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking you could tell them they can use the sats to scope out gay marriages, but they'd probably go for it soon as they can figure a way to make gay sex a crime again...
Re: (Score:2)
If the DOH satellite happens to capture pictures of kids running naked in the backyard, shouldn't they go to jail for producing kiddie porn?
Civil Cases too? (Score:3, Funny)
Not really anything new. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Not really anything new. (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that the links may require registration (findlaw seems to be a little random about that). You can also just google the case names.
SILVERMAN v. UNITED STATES, 365 U.S. 505 (1961)
----------
Ruling that using a "spike mike" to push against adjoining wall to listen in was illegal. The ruling makes a big deal that nobody expects a spike mike to be used, and that the people who were being listened to had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?
KATZ v. UNITED STATES, 389 U.S. 347 (1967)
----------
Ruling that bugging a public phone booth without a warrant was illegal. The ruling makes a big deal that although the phone booth was transparent, it still blocks sound, and it was for the purpose of not being overhead that one enters a phone booth. Hence, there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?
DOW CHEMICAL CO. v. UNITED STATES, 476 U.S. 227 (1986)
----------
Ruling that a 2000 acre industrial site is not like the curtilage of a house, but is more like an open field, so using commercially available aerial photography is not illegal. The ruling considers that since anybody could overfly it isn't a big deal, and that the area is particularly large and open so one really can't expect privacy. The ruling briefly mentions that if advanced satellites were used, the search could have been illegal.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?
CALIFORNIA v. CIRAOLO, 476 U.S. 207 (1986)
----------
Ruling that naked eye observation from 1000 ft in an airplane in public airspace is not illegal. The ruling considers that anybody could fly over at 1000 ft, and that overflights aren't unusual, hence there shouldn't be an expectation of privacy.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?
FLORIDA v. RILEY, 488 U.S. 445 (1989)
----------
Ruling that naked eye observation from 400 ft in a helicopter in public airspace is not illegal. The ruling seems to make a big deal that nobody mentioned that 400ft helicopter overflights are unusual, and leaves open the question that if somebody did bring evidence that they were unusual, that the search may have been deemed illegal. However, given that anybody could have flown a helicopter at 400ft, it is legal.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Arguing legality only works when:
a: the current laws are upheld by those who are in power.
b: illegal actions taken by those in power are made public
The problem with this is that we are increasingly seeing the erosion of our civil liberties over time. Using the fourth amendment argument doesn't work when we live with a government who can legally declare any American citizen an 'enemy combatant' and incarcerate them indefinitely without declaratio
Am I the only one? (Score:2)
Who is damn sick and tired of being spied on by their own government?
The message here to criminals, terrorists etc. is: (Score:2)
Wait for a cloudy day before you do your Bad Stuff.
Resolution and Evidence (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Even military commanders in the field get an interpretation
Indeed. Replace "military commanders" with "law enforcement agents". Any permissible evidence would have to be downgraded to the point that it was unclassified, or FOUO at the very least. Considering where the *good* IMINT comes from, it would take a very cold day in a hot place before that happened.
It's not a big deal (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
What difference does it make? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [com.com] 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.
Re:What difference does it make? (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazingly, the Congressmorons even now will tell you that that isn't what the law says. But then how would they know? They never read the bill before they voted for it. They never read any bills any more before they vote for them.
But, if you have a strong stomach you can go read the law yourself and see. At first glance it does indeed appear to be harmless, but if you wade into the fine print way back at the end you'll find little gotchas that work around the harmless part to make the law, in effect, the complete usurpation of Constitutional government.
So the stuff about spy satellites is just, at this point, same-ol-same-ol. If there's any hope at all to return to the country to what we once had before "the terrorists" manipulated Congress to transform it into what they wanted, it's to hammer at Congress to repeal this bad law. I do this regularly, using the handy-dandy tool they have at http://action.downsizedc.org/wyc.php?cid=58/ [downsizedc.org].
Re: (Score:2)
a witness to a bank robbery or a car bomb has more immediate things to worry about. like maybe whether he'll still be among the living tomorrow morning.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not in England. It's here.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, a huge number of the cameras in the UK are on our highways. These are immensely useful for reporting traffic incidents to local
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Let me guess where that brief was - a certain 3 letter agency at Ft Meade MD? Heh.
They used that same anecdote when my