Trump tweeted highly classified satellite photo in 2019

Arutz Sheva ^ | 18/11/22 | Elad Benari

[Eleutheria5]

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on Friday formally declassified an image then-US President Donald Trump tweeted in 2019 of a highly classified satellite photograph depicting the site of a failed Iranian rocket launch.

NPR reported that the NGA declassified the image after a “grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public” in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the radio network.

Many details on the original image remain redacted – a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the US government's most prized intelligence on social media, said Steven Aftergood, specialist in secrecy and classification at the Federation of American Scientists.

"He was getting literally a bird's eye view of some of the most sensitive US intelligence on Iran," he told NPR. "And the first thing he seemed to want to do was to blurt it out over Twitter."

In August of 2019, Iran attempted to fire a rocket which exploded on its launch pad at a space center in northern Iran.

A day later, Trump wrote on Twitter that the United States was not involved with the failed rocket launch.

“The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran,” he wrote, adding, “I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.”

The tweet included a satellite image...

[Liz]

I’ve heard unsettling things about DARPA.

[philman_36]

I’ve heard unsettling things about DARPA.
They are into some weird stuff!

For consideration...Preventing an Aerial Panopticon Over American Cities
Imagine a world where a small plane flies miles above a city, effectively invisible to its inhabitants while looking down on them in close detail. Meanwhile, a series of drones, flown in a semi-automated pattern by a single operator, hover over the surrounding suburbs. A select group of monitors—no more than a dozen members of the local police force—pinpoint areas of interest in real time, including a large protest, several doctors’ and lawyers’ offices, and a mosque. These officers are able to zoom in from cameras on the high-flying aircraft to identify individuals by their faces and log their activities. Meanwhile, a small group of federal agents review footage from these planes recorded over the course of the last sixth months, creating a precise map of the movements of hundreds of “persons of interest” over that entire period, and cataloging the places they visited and people they interacted with.

Sounds like recent history, yet it's a mental creation from 2017 about possibilities.

Looking for any current domestic law enforcement use now...

[philman_36]

2019 reality...

Airborne Argus?: St. Louis, Persistent Surveillance Systems, and Stabilizing the Lofty Aims of Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence
McNutt’s three-plane, 36-camera system monitors thirty square miles from 10,000 feet, taking one photograph a second. When a crime occurs, the operator zooms in on the area, targets a suspect, and zooms out, backtracking the photo-log to follow the pixelized perp. The system can also be used as a live feed.
PSS was implemented in Baltimore without residents’ knowledge from 2016 to 2019. Even so, residents chose to reimplement beginning May, 2020. Residents of Dayton, Ohio, strongly opposed implementation.

[Liz]

Scary.

[XRdsRev]

Nobody in their right mind advised him to release a classified satellite photo in a tweet. Geez I like Trump too but what he did was not very smart.

[philman_36]

Democrats press DHS over use of drone during Minneapolis protests
“The drone that was flown on May 29, 2020, was reportedly also flown far outside the bounds of CBP’s (Customs and Border Protection) jurisdiction. Federal law authorizes CBP to conduct its missions within a ‘reasonable distance,’ not to exceed more than 100 air miles inland, from an external boundary of the United States,” the lawmakers wrote.
Spotlight on Surveillance - October 2014
CBP owns the federal government’s largest and most sophisticated drone fleet outside of the DoD, including nine[29] unarmed Predator B drones operated from bases in Arizona, Texas, Florida and North Dakota. [30] CBP’s drones operate in a 25-mile corridor along the Canadian and Mexican borders, “as well as over the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.” [31] CBP drones employ a system called VaDER, which can “cover a wide swath of land and follow [a person’s] movement as it happens.” [32]
Hmmmmm...now I know why they complained. Looking for drone upgrade to ARGUS.

Meanwhile, they're at the border...CBP’s Autonomous Surveillance Towers Declared a Program of Record along the Southwest Border 07/02/2020

CBP first piloted the towers in early 2018 with four towers in the San Diego Border Patrol Sector, and has since procured 56 additional towers. CBP is on a path to procure and deploy 140 additional towers in Fiscal Years 2021 and 2022, to reach a total of 200 towers.

[philman_36]

My apologies for cluttering up your thread.

[philman_36]

[Liz]

Yeah.....I remember that brouhaha.

[usnavy_cop_retired]

You’re missing the point here. This “report” being dredged back up is to counter the latest revelation that Trump did not have any sensitive documents and had no nefarious reason to keep them. They can’t let the folks think that the Mara Lago raid was not for national security reasons but really for political points and for the talking points it created.

[DesertRhino]

They were also mad when Reagan did it showing a Soviet aircraft carrier under construction. It let them know what the keyhole could actually see.
But as president, he decided the national policy goals and security interests outweighed their objections.
President Trump did the same thing.
That is why we do not put the Air Force, CIA, NRO etc in charge of setting national policy.

[Fedora]

“Many details on the original image remain redacted – a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the US government’s most prized intelligence on social media, said Steven Aftergood, specialist in secrecy and classification at the Federation of American Scientists.”

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is an old Soviet front group. Aftergood started his career exposing classified military research on nuclear thermal rockets during the Cold War.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

He probably got the image from Google Earth.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Many countries/entities have various types of satellites orbiting over/across Iran. Nothing new about that and the Iranians know it. Israel has hit targets there based on all sources of information and I would venture to say this included satellite observations.

The general theme to all of this is the titles of the rock songs “Eye in the Sky” and “I’ll Be Watching You”.

[21twelve]

“It is not what is shown here but how good/bad our technology is.”

Reminds me of that movie “Enemy of the State” with Gene Hackman. The government guys are trying to find him and are using real-time satellites that are able to stay above the subject for some period of time.

They see somebody dressed like him but they aren’t sure.

Old guy: “Come on - look up!”

Young Guy: “Why are you hoping he looks up?”

OG: “So we can see his face!”

YG: “Well that’s stupid - what good are they then?” [the satellies]

I guess that must be a fairly old movie. I imagine today they have enough cameras everywhere that they could have real-time camera views along with their satellite views.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Steve Aftergood a d the Federation of American Scientists F AS should never be trusted.

Remember, the FAS had been led by Jeremy Stone, the son of identified CPUSA member and paid KGB agent I. F. Stone.

See: Testimony of George Karlin, Parts 1-3, 1969-1970, 😐 Sen. Internal Security Subcommittee, Sen .Judiciary Committee.

DON’T believe a lot of what you read in the leftist or even liberal media. They were infiltrated by communists and sympathizers a long time ago and some are still there.

[piasa]

Thanks for that interesting history.