Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/12/2008 12:03:08 PM PDT by FreeInWV
The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.
Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.
... "I think we've fully addressed anybody's concerns," Chertoff added in remarks last week to bloggers. "I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it."
... "I have had a firsthand experience with the trust-me theory of law from this administration," said Harman, citing the 2005 disclosure of the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, which included warrantless eavesdropping on calls and e-mails between people in the United States and overseas. "I won't make the same mistake. . . . I want to see the legal underpinnings for the whole program." ... DHS officials said the demands are unwarranted. "The legal framework that governs the National Applications Office . . . is reflected in the Constitution, the U.S. Code and all other U.S. laws," said DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner. She said its operations will be subject to "robust," structured legal scrutiny by multiple agencies.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Ignoring the inapt description "domestic spying program", something else bothered me about this excerpt. I may be misremembering, but wasn't Harman fully briefed about that program well before its existence was leaked to the public, and that she evidently approved of it at that time and for months or years until it became public, whereupon she did a complete reversal in her stance?
Is this just another example of a Demo/Commie saying one thing in private but another thing in public to appease and mollify the leftist extremists in the Democrats' base? Or have I confused Harman with some other Demo/Commie such as Rockefeller?
Just because you have the technology to do something doesn’t mean that it is a good idea.
Nobodies lives will be improved by having a dossier on every American, forcing almost everybody to carry ID cards, registering and licensing everything, monitoring all our communications, having surveillance cameras everywhere, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
Most importantly, when governments do such things, it shows that they feel impotent and inefficient about the big things government is supposed to do. So they focus on the petty and unimportant. They become a nanny state. And they spend all their time nattering at the people.
How much of the federal government is utterly superfluous? 20%, 30%, even 50%?
“Ask not what your government can do for you. Ask your government to stop doing most of what it is doing.”
Maybe as a nation we need to go bankrupt for government to learn that it is not God, nor should it try to be God.
Maybe then will they learn to live within their means, and that the government that governs least, governs best. It is an old lesson, but was never more true.
Carolyn
If you havn’t done anything wrong then you don’t have anything to worry about.
“We’re from the Government. We’re here to help.”
~~~~~~~~~
Let's all fly off into an anarchistic, irrelevant panic mode, shall we?
WTH does the application of improved overhead imagery (from space, no less) have to do with any of the above dumb@$$ rant?
I dislike and disapprove of most of our bloated, intrusive government's activities as much as anyone here. BUT, such over-the-top, knee-jerk, off-topic rhetoric reflects badly on all of us here at FR. It only gives the lefties opportunities to paint us as a bunch of "right-wing crazies".
I, for one, would welcome improved domestic georeferenced data - especially LIDAR data that stands to improve the present 30-meter DEM (Digital Elevation Model) by orders of magnitude.
Read the articles and post on topic.
Let me tell you the tale of FADAC. It began as a system to plot artillery targets for the army. Subsequent versions integrated more and more intelligence gathering systems, and eventually FADAC was able to provide a high speed summary of every building; every vehicle according to type and movement, direction and speed of travel; and every person walking outside over the entire installation of Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.
145 square miles, with 287 miles of roads. This was in the early 1980s.
There is no longer any system of intelligence gathering, from satellite on down, that is not integrated to an extraordinary degree with endless other intelligence gathering systems, both government and commercial. But satellite intelligence is the capstone.
Hopefully we will eventually get a government that objects to the idea of spying on its citizens, which you naively are convinced is a benign and helpful enterprise.
Good luck with that.
“Let’s all fly off into an anarchistic, irrelevant panic mode, shall we?”
Why not. He’s entitled. Surely you don’t believe that the NSA is going to provide their multi-billion dollar satellite network so that we can track climate changes?
Perhaps you should peruse this thread and consider the DOJ’s claim that warrantless surveillance does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1996263/posts
Before you wish for such things, you should ask yourself how President Hillary Clinton will wield such a power. And I really don’t care if we ever get improved LIDAR data. Not if it comes at the cost of even the tinyest constitutional liberty.
~~~~~
Available to the public at DTIC:
Accession Number : AD0664137
Title : COMPUTER, GUN DIRECTION M18 (FADAC) APPLICATIONS MANUAL.
Descriptive Note : Technical note,
Corporate Author : FRANKFORD ARSENAL PHILADELPHIA PA FIRE CONTROL DEVELOPMENT AND ENGINEERING LABS
Personal Author(s) : Price,Thomas J.
Report Date : MAY 1967
~~~~~~~~
HAARP must really put you into spasms!
If you guys ever wander down from the hills into civilization, you need to carry big signs saying, "The paranoids are after me!"
LOL!!!
I have zero tolerance when it comes to giving up constitutional liberties. Anyone who does is a fool.
BTW - I grew up in Fort Meade, home of the NSA. Hardly the uninformed, uncivilized hills.
That was the original FADAC. It predated the PC by quite a while, and looked it. Even in the early ‘80s, the FADAC, I was talking about, FADAC II or FADAC III, had followed a similar progression of technology.
I really have no idea what the current, or last, generation of FADAC was. Had it followed a track similar to PC technology, it would be to the original FADAC what the Itanium microprocessor is to the 8-bit MOS Technology 6510 microprocessor which ran the Commodore 64.
In Iraq, our combat forces are equipped with impressive field intelligence equipment on PDAs, giving them detailed and elaborate data over their entire front of operations.
Therefore your argument is petty. I will also add that your tone is both naive and rude. You neither understand the technology nor its capability for misuse.
yefragetuwrabrumuy: "I will also add that your tone is both naive and rude. You neither understand the technology nor its capability for misuse."
~~~~~
I, also, have zero tolerance toward infringements on my constitutional liberties. OTOH, I don't have irrational fear of technologies that I understand (like overhead or remote sensing imagery).
I do admit to prodding you guys a bit to see of you could credibly expose a threat of which I was unaware. That did involve a bit of rudeness -- for which I apologize.
I use overhead imagery/remote sensing data (for cartography and in detecting/analyzing archaeological sites) daily. Hence, I have a pretty good understanding of its capabilities and limitations. For example, if I thought (and I don't) it could be used to identify a [whatever the ATFE might not like] being fired at my range, I would simply erect -- and take care to stay under -- a shed over the firing points. (Of course, that's a "must-have" anyway, here in the hot Texas sun...) '-)
Vigilance? Yes. Knowledge? Yes. Intelligence? Yes. Irrational, paranoid fear? Not on your life...
Condition yellow, guys...
Were it just satellite observation, it would be one thing. However, as I tried to point out with FADAC (III, I believe), the consolidation of information is where the problem lies.
To begin with, you purchased your weapon at a store, and you possibly used your credit card to do so, along with a thousand other purchases, some of which may be relevant. So, to see you firing is moot, that information is already known.
You also use the Internet. If you Google, your keywords have been maintained for directed advertising purposes specific to you. Other web sites, such as Freep, are of great interest for the provocative and sometimes inflammatory rhetoric which appears on them, which are duly noted by those looking for such writings. The FBI, for one, maintains dossiers of such writers and tries to associate them as individuals with their writings.
Some cities, including my own, are now incorporating license plate readers in their emergency and even non-emergency vehicles, that automatically run hundreds of license plate checks every day, looking for license plates of interest.
Now that RFID chips are being incorporated in many commercial products across the US, individuals with several such chips in their clothing have an almost unique electronic signature that identifies them as individuals when they pass by a reading device.
Publicly discarded DNA is now not admissible as evidence in court, even though obtained without a warrant. A police officer may take a swab from dinnerware you used at a restaurant, associate it with your credit card receipt to identify you, then run it through a check to determine if you are wanted. But it then becomes part of the permanent database. The national DNA database already holds samples from more than 5% of the population.
Other efforts to establish national citizen databases include the REAL ID Act, the Employer Verification System, the National Directory of New Hires (new employee child support check), the Social Security/Medicare FICA database, the Internal Revenue Service, the HIPAA health insurance and information act, passports, etc.
According to James Bamford in his 1983 book, The Puzzle Palace, even then, if a US citizen made more than four international phone calls in a month, one of them was monitored by the National Security Agency. Since that time, monitoring of phone calls and Internet use is being conducted by any number of foreign governments and corporations.
In 1996, the US Congress learned that the National Reconnaissance Office had developed a black budget of over four billion dollars, of which it had spent $310 million to build a satellite tracking office without congressional oversight or approval.
Of the other US Intelligence agencies, oversight is spotty at best, and some of them are regularly investigated for violations of national policy:
http://www.fas.org/irp/official.html
Were you aware that as of today there are 1 million Americans on the terrorist watch list? That is 1 in every 350 people. Now consider that NSA’s satellites are effectively our nation’s most expensive weapons. That pretty much puts everything on the table.
The founders of our country warned us about domestic military use. The Posse Commitas act was put in place because of post civil war military abuses. Lots of people died before it came about. The Church Committee that I mentioned put in place provisions due to domestic abuses by the CIA, notably spying on and conducting domestic operations against civil rights leaders. And political abuses like Watergate. Years later the FBI HRT claimed a bogus drug nexus, allowing them to utilize military equipment & personnel in storming the Branch Davidian compound. Do you see how the domestic use of military resources gets abused and is a bad thing?
The Patriot Act has been horribly abused since its inception. For example, it has been used to go after the unclaimed tips of exotic dancers. Locally, it has been used to seize the assets (house trailer) of a reputed prostitute. The task force that arrested her claimed that there had to be federal involvement because of interstate commerce (a phone was used). Hardly worthy of federal involvement, and certainly not related to terrorism in any way. Many more aggregious examples exist, just look in any newspaper.
Knowing what Hillary Clinton did with FBI files at her disposal, would you want to give her domestic control of the NSA’s resources? Do you think she would use them against her adversaries? Against GOP congressmen?
You also neglect to note that by redirecting satellite resources to domestic uses, we are taking them away from much needed foreign surveillance. This could cost American lives.
Paranoid delusions? Hardly.
BTW- Sorry it took me so long to get back to this post. I’ve been busy. My employer sent me to Dallas for specialized database training. You assume too much my FRiend.
Paranoid delusions? Hardly.
~~~~~~~~~~~
OTOH, your above fear-mongering shows your ignorance of satellite orbital mechanics. They can only observe the U.S. when they are over the U.S.. How does leaving their sensors active and recording when they are over the U.S. deprive us of foreign intelligence?
FWIW, you make lots of claims about stuff like strippers' tips and prostitutes' pads being persecuted via the Patriot Act. Put your sources (URLs) where your claims are... Also back up your "1 million watch list" claim.
As one of you said a while back, that is an awful lot to keep tabs on...
I ran across plenty of militia wackos while I was working on the OKC bombing analysis; it will take a lot more than your panicky rhetoric to convince me to gather up my wherewithal and join them in the boonies...
Paranoid is as paranoid acts...
P.S. Trace my FR posts re OKC back to see what that experience taught me about the FBI, et al. Hint: it definitely was not positive...
“Time to revive the militias”
Your house just got satellite coverage.
No doubt that watching our borders will be in the last stage, if it happens at all.
I couldn’t find today’s article that estimates the watch list at 1M. You will have to settle for Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine’s testimony before congress last month that the list is at 900,000 and growing at a rate of 20,000 per month. Here are a few articles that reference it:
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/793104.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-watchlist18mar18,1,4071695.story
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/031808dnnatterror.3995b37.html
Here is an older but nice chart of its growth
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/860000-name-lon.html It includes a link to he full GAO report http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08110.pdf
Here is info about using the Patriot Act against strip clubs. http://reviewjournal.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&expire=&urlID=8164533&fb=Y&partnerID=565
and how other business in Vegas are upset at FBI abuse of the Patriot Act.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/nov2005/nf20051110_9709_db016.htm
And a wikipedia article on the controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act_controversy
Here is the local item that I referenced. Its all in there. All you have to do is read.
http://wvgazette.com/latest/200803190413
Google is your friend. Please use it before posting on topics that you do not understand. It is not my job to educate you and do your research. And don’t hurl insults about topics that you obviously do not understand.
Carolyn
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.