Satellite Surveillance

Gary Farber emailed last night "Just a quick note to say that I'm really surprised how
few major left/liberal bloggers have blogged this Wall
Street Journal page one story today. I'm surprised, too! I missed it somehow until this morning I saw it as a day two story in the Post. This seems important. Check out Gary's post here.

The bottom-line is that all kinds of restrictions on satellite surveillance are being lifted. This has potentially enormous consequences when you consider that as good as satellite imagery and so forth is today, it's likely to be much better in a few years.

Comments

Well, do you have an opinion about whether the consequences will be good or bad? My vote: good.

Posted by Jim W | August 16, 2007 9:38 AM

Some of us really minor liberal bloggers picked up on the significance of the story pretty quickly.

You know, if you don't mind my saying. :-)

Posted by UncommonSense | August 16, 2007 10:02 AM

1) In my 12:30pm post yesterday, I had noted the direction of our spy satellites against targets within the continental US --
see http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/war_on_specificity.php#comment-425147

Actually, This has been done on infrequent periods in the past, usually for purposes of calibration. It required the approval of the Attorney General on a case by case basis. Janet Reno approved a few such cases. But not, to my knowledge, for law enforcement. Although she opened the door somewhat when the sats were used to look for John Kennedy's lost airplane -- a ridiculous use of public resources.

2) My comment yesterday also noted a news item from ABC promoting the claim of the NYPD that the major terrorist threat to the USA lies from "the enemy within " == "unremarkable persons" here in the US who become radicalized.

3) We have seen how George Bush and his bitch Attorney General Gonzales have scrapped the Bill of Rights with bland sophistry.

But the Second BIGGEST threat to our freedom lies in their making fascism into a huge corporate profit area.

Because then you get the many million dollars of lobbying money directed at maintaining existing rice bowls and making them bigger.

4) The Founding Fathers had great concerns about ensuring a standing army remained the servant of the people --not the master.

Most of Our citizens today are too fucking stupid to even realize there's an issue.

Posted by Don Williams | August 16, 2007 10:20 AM

Of course, if Harvard actually taught the liberal arts, then Matthew would have read Johannes Kepler (b. 1571) in the original German and would have realized certain constraints apply.

And yet another Great Idea slips under the radar of the modern news media. Although the boys in Annapolis know what I'm talking about.

Posted by Don Williams | August 16, 2007 10:32 AM

A couple of technical points:

1) Just how good it is now is highly classified.
We don't know, and they're not going to tell us.

2) It's possible that it may be about as good as it
can get. Physics puts fundamental limits on the
resolution, and Hubble-class telescopes get
really close to those limits, given the
constraints of building a mirror that's light
enough to get into orbit and strong enough to
survive the G-forces of launch. Looking through
the atmosphere, with its fluctuations of
temperature and pressure and thus refractive
index, also makes it harder.

Still, it's a bad idea, if only because the
government will happily spend tens of billions
of our dollars on it even if it can't do anything
useful (see missile defense).

Posted by Richard Cownie | August 16, 2007 10:52 AM

The big benefit of satellites is that they can look where we can't put people. There is no easier place to put people than here in the USA. Now that there are essentially no restrictions on the government spying on us, the idea of spying in the US with satellites is just silly. It is almost impossible to come up with a situation in which the government would be able to more effectively violate your rights with a satellite than it could with other resources. Since we are now letting the government use those other resources, objecting to the satellites is pointless.

Posted by Njorl | August 16, 2007 11:02 AM

The real constraints aren't in the optics, they are in the sheer uselessness of trying to monitor everything that happens on the planet. Satellites are never going to be like movie cameras, perpetually watching all places at all times. It's simply too huge a task; advances in technology are never going to get us to that "Enemy of the State" level of surveillance from the eyes in the sky. At best, the pictures will get to be less grainy, but even localized satellite photography will never have that real-time turn around you need for them to be menacing. I would be more afraid of cameras on the streets than satellites. And even that's really nothing to be worried about.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 16, 2007 11:06 AM

I think the 'eye in the sky' stuff is rather overblown-- there are only a small number of satellites and they are used happenstantially where they are most needed (like over Iraq). I agree that cameras on the streets are a vastly bigger threat to privacy

Posted by MattF | August 16, 2007 11:12 AM

Umm, I'm not worried. Pretty much anytime I do anything subversive or heck even border line naughty I do it inside with the door locked and the blinds closed. And it will take a hell of an technological enhancement before I start worrying about the Hubble. Now the government tapping into the switch at the phone company? The Patriot Act giving the FBI the power to search my condo with no warrent and no notice? Well that is scary. But knowing that everything you do in public is, well, public? Not so much.

Posted by Bruce Webb | August 16, 2007 11:28 AM

As Njorl is probably suggesting, data harvesting systems run by the FBI monitoring large amounts of domestic phone communications are probably worth more concern. But even here, the problem is not infinitely scalable. Computers can do all the surveillance and recording they want, but you still need human beings to sort through the data. The more comprehensive and invasive the program in question is, the larger the pile of data they have to wade through (mostly ineffectively) and the safer people in general are (paradoxical sounding? Well, trust me, it's true. A smattering of fat assed contractors working in windowless buildings with dubiously engineered systems and no meaningful accountability do not the beating heart of a young and ardent police state make). Aggressive recruitment remains the best indicator of a major shift towards an oppressive Executive, and I have yet to see any evidence for that (not that I've been looking for it).

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 16, 2007 11:33 AM

Re Njorl's comment "Now that there are essentially no restrictions on the government spying on us, the idea of spying in the US with satellites is just silly. It is almost impossible to come up with a situation in which the government would be able to more effectively violate your rights with a satellite than it could with other resources. Since we are now letting the government use those other resources, objecting to the satellites is pointless"
------------

I strongly disagree.

Law enforcement wiretaps, searches, etc are fairly transparent --because they require judicial warrents in most cases. And because defense attorneys can insist upon viewing "sources and methods" for legality.

By contrast, the Executive Branch's intelligence programs are --by law-- TOTALLY opaque. NO ONE knows what goes on at Westfields, Fort Meade,etc other than the people who work there and their customers in the Executive Branch.

The Congressional intelligence committees are supposed to oversee those programs but they are largely a joke. Even more so today. The only way COngress can find out what's going on --given their very small staff -- is by depending on walk-ins to blow the whistle.

But Bill Clinton, Porter Goss and past Republican Congresses totally crippled that check and balance by passing a law requiring the whistleblowers to first inform the Executive Branch! --30 days in advance of talking to Congress -- that they are going to snitch. Lots of time for intimidation and "career counseling". This law had the Orwellian name of "Intelligence Community WHistleblower Protection Act of 1998".

Yes, if you can monitor a cell phone tower from a low orbit satellite you can also monitor it by placing a tap on the tower itself.

But the danger is not just satellites -- the danger lies in allowing OPAQUE DEFENSE intelligence programs to be used in DOMESTIC law enforcement. We passed the Posse Comitatus Act to prevent the standing army from being used in domestic law enforcement-- because of the dangers.

We have already seen how the Executive stonewalls any inquiry into intelligence activities with
the magic phrase "National Security".

Posted by Don Williams | August 16, 2007 11:35 AM

Good thing I still have a full head of hair. I want the satellite to catch my good side.

Posted by Steve | August 16, 2007 11:39 AM

Well, let's say that military surveillance methods are used inappropriately and wholesale on american citizens, right? NSA dudes chilling in their basements, listening in to all the conversations everyone has over the phone, and we don't know about it, because it's classified Mega Mega Ultra XTREME Top Secret Delta-L Cannabinol. Presumably we haven't gotten to the point where they could use anything they heard to convict an American of a crime, right? Maybe it's creepy just thinking about it, but outside of a few suckers who get classified as terrorists because their stupid and the FBI entraps them, we're not seeing phenomena of this kind.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 16, 2007 11:49 AM

PS Once you establish a legal basis allowing a DOD intelligence activity to monitor US communications from orbit, then the move to "more efficiently collect" the data by secretly tapping US landlines is a " minor upgrade " approved behind closed doors in a room requiring several SCI clearances.

Yes, the FBI has the capability to wiretap -- largely controlled by the judicial oversight. The judiciary doesn't see shit within the Intelligence Community.

The FBI budget is around $5 Billion -- the DOD's budget is around $450 Billion and is even higher if you add in certain activities in other Departments.

FBI agents enforce the law --hence have a strong culture of respecting the law. DOD soldiers follow orders. A FBI agent can be fired -- a soldier can be sent to Fort Levenworth or even executed. A FBI agent can find a job in local law enforcement -- a soldier with more than 6 years in is screwed badly if he doesn't make his 20 years and get retirement pay.

Posted by Don Williams | August 16, 2007 11:57 AM

England is stitched tight with CCTV cameras. Everywhere. Everybody tapes and, when needed, the gov't looks at the tapes. There is nothing that can be seen from orbit that can't be seen better from the corner of a doorway. Trust George Bush to come up with an absolutely offensive, absolutely irrelevant tactic. (Republicans laugh at Jimmy Carter for incompetence?)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 16, 2007 12:03 PM

"Pretty much anytime I do anything subversive or heck even border line naughty I do it inside with the door locked and the blinds closed."

In fact, seeing inside via infrared and radar has been a standard capability for decades, as I explained at great length.

As well as explaining about the limits (including of orbits) of present capability being to still black&white pictures -- which, however, can be combined with multiple imagery into after the fact 3-D moving imagery, etc., etc., etc. It's a rather long post, which did include the point that there are only a certain number of satellites, and obviously there's no immediate danger of large numbers of people being spied upon at once. That's so utterly not the point, though, as to be breath-taking.

"Some of us really minor liberal bloggers picked up on the significance of the story pretty quickly."

Good catch!

"As Njorl is probably suggesting, data harvesting systems run by the FBI"

NSA. This is also a subject I've blogged over a hundred posts about over the past six years.

Don Williams seems to grasp the threshold problem here.

Thanks for the link, Matt! (You might want to close your quote, and fix your broken wrap.)

Posted by Gary Farber | August 16, 2007 12:04 PM

I personlly think America's elites are aware that the shit is going to hit the fan in the near future -- that there's going to be massive social unrest as the consequences of their past selfish actions come home to roost. The US comptroller tried to warn us the other day: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/80fa0a2c-49ef-11dc-9ffe-0000779fd2ac.html

The rich remember what happened during the Great Depression and they don't want to have to tolerate another Franklin Roosevelt as the price for law and order.

The purpose of the Department of Homeland Security is not to protect the common citizen from a few raggedy ass Third World terrorists -- its to protect the wealthy few from the rest of us.

One way to do that is to embue US citizens with the same mindset installed into Gitmo detainees -- a mindset of "learned helpfulness" so we will despair of ever rebelling no matter how badly we are screwed.

Step One is to establish Michael Foucault's "Panopticon" -- the strong belief in every citizen that his every act is being secretly observed by the omniscient State. Whether that surveillance is ,in fact, total is largely irrelevant. Obedience is ensured if the subject is simply uncertain about whether it might be. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault#Discipline_and_Punish

This is already installed in the workplace , of course. The Supreme Court allows employers to secretly monitor their employees. Extending it to the public and political arena will be trival.

That's the implicit threat when security personnel use videocams to record your face at protests or strikes.

It's one thing to lose your job. But to lose your very right to exist is far more scary.

We are all citizens?? But in a few months, try going into Canada and then return back to YOUR country if you do not have a government-issued passport. A Passport which can be DENIED for any one of several reasons.

In 20 years, try seeing if you can buy groceries, drive a car, travel or work at a job without your government-issued ID. Computerized of course, so that it can be disabled with a flick of a switch. Ever tried using your credit card in a new area and having to call VISA because the card suddenly wouldn't work?

Posted by Don Williams | August 16, 2007 12:28 PM

"In fact, seeing inside via infrared and radar has been a standard capability for decades, as I explained at great length."

Not with satellites. The best a satellite can do is make a stab at the thermal load of a building. That can be useful for determining the number of men in a barracks at night if it is not heated or coolled. For a typical American home, with a myriad of appliances, it is worthless. Even sensitive ground-based systems usually can't do more than identify that a heat source is moving inside of a building unless the walls are very transmissive.

Posted by Njorl | August 16, 2007 1:12 PM

I also think the significance is overblown. Law enforcement and other government agencies already use open-source (in the unclassified, public sense, not GNU/Linux or whatever) imagery from satellites to do work, and in many cases it's probably better than whatever satellite imagery is referred to in that linked article.

Do a google search for "jin class submarine google earth" for an interesting story of commercial satellites uncovering useful military intelligence.

In terms of scary stuff the feds are doing, this satellite story doesn't even break the top 10.

Posted by Shane | August 16, 2007 1:36 PM

"Umm, I'm not worried. Pretty much anytime I do anything subversive or heck even border line naughty I do it inside with the door locked and the blinds closed. And it will take a hell of an technological enhancement before I start worrying about the Hubble."

Well, some of us don't always have common sense when we drink in public.

Posted by Reality Man | August 16, 2007 1:42 PM

Actually, the satellites could be used to monitor those massive divisions of heavily-armed NRA militia which would march on Washington if the President ever tried to subvert the Constitution.

No, wait...

Posted by Don Williams | August 16, 2007 2:15 PM

Good one Don Williams!

While bad, I agree that in practical terms there's not much there.

A friend who served in Iraq pointed out that camera-equipped drones flying around out of eyesight have a small field of view -- unless you know where to look you're not going to see much. This is very similar.

If using a law enforcement airplane to peek around is legally okay, this seems similar.

The problem is that it's much more expensive to use a satellite to spy on people vs a Cessna, so get ready for more gazillion dollar no-bid contracts.

Posted by American Citizen | August 16, 2007 4:24 PM