Tech | October 02, 2008 | 24 comments

DHS satellite spy program going forward despite objections

source: http://www.dbtechno.com/images/Israel_spy_satellite_TESCAR.jpg

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The Department of Homeland Security has been given the money it needs to begin turning international spy satellites within the country's borders, despite lingering fears about the program's lack of focus and the potential for it to infringe upon Americans' civil liberties.

After more than a year of delay, Congress quietly authorized DHS to begin sharing data gathered by military satellites with civilian and law enforcement agencies. A $634 billion spending bill signed into law earlier this week provides funds for DHS to establish the satellite surveillance program, known as the National Applications Office, without addressing the myriad concerns about NAO privacy and civil liberties protections that had been delaying its implementation.

Supporters of the program claim, according to the Wall Street Journal, that its scope will be limited to "emergency response and scientific needs," but civil liberties advocates and some members of Congress fear the door has been open for the highly classified satellite surveillance program to shift into high gear.

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24 comments // DHS satellite spy program going forward despite objections

  • warhawk187
  • huntre
  • frank_runyeon
    • 0
      frank_runyeon  

    • It is astonishing that a spending bill of this size could be passed right now, on such a controversial issue, and barely be mentioned in the major news outlets.

      Let's put this on TV!

    • 3 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
  • Ichi
    • 0
      Ichi  

    • Oh man, this doesn't look good... emergency and scientific purposes? Give me a damn break, we weren't born yesterday!

    • 3 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • Off the Rails: Big Oil, Big Brother Win Big in the State of the Union

      In case you missed that one, the President is talking about creating a federal citizen profile database.

      There's a problem with that idea. It's against the law. The law in question is the United States Constitution. The Founding Fathers thought the government had no right to keep track on a citizen unless there is evidence they have committed, or planned to commit, a crime.

      But the Founding Fathers didn't imagine there were millions and billions of dollars to be made by private contractors ready to perform this KGB operation for the Department of Homeland Security, tracking each and every one of us to keep tabs on our "status."

      These work databases will tie into "voter verification" databases required by the Help America Vote Act. And these will tie to the databases on citizenship and so on.

      Will Big Brother abuse these snoop lists? The biggest purveyor of such hit lists is Choice Point, Inc. – those characters who, before the 2000 election, helped Jeb Bush purge innocent voters as "felons" from Florida voter rolls. Will they abuse the new super-lists? Does Dick Cheney shoot in the woods?

      http://www.gregpalast.com/off-the-rails-big-oil-big-brother-win-big-in-the-state...

    • 3 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • Political spying: Since the close of World War II, the US intelligence agencies have developed a consistent record of trampling the rights and liberties of the American people. Even after the investigations into the domestic and political surveillance activities of the agencies that followed in the wake of the Watergate fiasco, the NSA continues to target the political activity of “unpopular” political groups and our duly elected representatives. One whistleblower charged in a 1988 Cleveland Plain Dealer interview that, while she was stationed at the Menwith Hill facility in the 1980s, she heard real-time intercepts of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. A former Maryland Congressman, Michael Barnes, claimed in a 1995 Baltimore Sun article that under the Reagan Administration his phone calls were regularly intercepted, which he discovered only after reporters had been passed transcripts of his conversations by the White House. One of the most shocking revelations came to light after several GCHQ officials became concerned about the targeting of peaceful political groups and told the London Observer in 1992 that the ECHELON dictionaries targeted Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and even Christian ministries.

      Commercial espionage: Since the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe, the intelligence agencies have searched for a new justification for their surveillance capability in order to protect their prominence and their bloated budgets. Their solution was to redefine the notion of national security to include economic, commercial and corporate concerns. An office was created within the Department of Commerce, the Office of Intelligence Liaison, to forward intercepted materials to major US corporations. In many cases, the beneficiaries of this commercial espionage effort are the very companies that helped the NSA develop the systems that power the ECHELON network. This incestuous relationship is so strong that sometimes this intelligence information is used to push other American manufacturers out of deals in favor of these mammoth US defense and intelligence contractors, who frequently are the source of major cash contributions to both political parties.

      While signals intelligence technology was helpful in containing and eventually defeating the Soviet Empire during the Cold War, what was once designed to target a select list of communist countries and terrorist states is now indiscriminately directed against virtually every citizen in the world. The European Parliament is now asking whether the ECHELON communications interceptions violate the sovereignty and privacy of citizens in other countries. In some cases, such as the NSA’s Menwith Hill station in England, surveillance is conducted against citizens on their own soil and with the full knowledge and cooperation of their government.

      This report suggests that Congress pick up its long-neglected role as watchdog of the Constitutional rights and liberties of the American people, instead of its current role as lap dog to the US intelligence agencies. Congressional hearings ought to be held, similar to the Church and Rockefeller Committee hearings held in the mid-1970s, to find out to what extent the ECHELON system targets the personal, political, religious, and commercial communications of American citizens. The late Senator Frank Church warned that the technology and capability embodied in the ECHELON system represented a direct threat to the liberties of the American people. Left unchecked, ECHELON could be used by either the political elite or the intelligence agencies themselves as a tool to subvert the civil protections of Constitution and to destroy representative government in the United States.

      Report to the US Congress about ECHELON, by Patrick S. Poole
      http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html

    • 3 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  
    • Image

    • ECHELON: America's Secret Global Surveillance Network

      Executive Summary

      In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy system, codename ECHELON, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world. ECHELON is controlled by the NSA and is operated in conjunction with the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) of England, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada, the Australian Defense Security Directorate (DSD), and the General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand. These organizations are bound together under a secret 1948 agreement, UKUSA, whose terms and text remain under wraps even today.

      The ECHELON system is fairly simple in design: position intercept stations all over the world to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic, and then process this information through the massive computer capabilities of the NSA, including advanced voice recognition and optical character recognition (OCR) programs, and look for code words or phrases (known as the ECHELON “Dictionary”) that will prompt the computers to flag the message for recording and transcribing for future analysis. Intelligence analysts at each of the respective “listening stations” maintain separate keyword lists for them to analyze any conversation or document flagged by the system, which is then forwarded to the respective intelligence agency headquarters that requested the intercept.

      But apart from directing their ears towards terrorists and rogue states, ECHELON is also being used for purposes well outside its original mission. The regular discovery of domestic surveillance targeted at American civilians for reasons of “unpopular” political affiliation or for no probable cause at all in violation of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution – are consistently impeded by very elaborate and complex legal arguments and privilege claims by the intelligence agencies and the US government. The guardians and caretakers of our liberties, our duly elected political representatives, give scarce attention to these activities, let alone the abuses that occur under their watch. Among the activities that the ECHELON targets are:

    • 3 years ago
  • Danielmklopp
  • mDiGug
    • 0
      mDiGug  

    • ARE YOU GETTING MAD YET!? i sure hope so. i love how we're all struggling while the rich get richer and we just sit here and take it with our mouths shut. yeah, we'll complain, but whos really gona get off their asses an do something about it? yeah, probably not you right. well, i hope you still don't "trust in the government to fix everything". i mean, COMON! WAKE UP! things are only gona get worse unless the masses take a stand, and you don't wanna be wrong when it's too late cause you thought it was all just a conspiracy. PLEASE, watch this video, I'm not wasting your time. hopefully it'll change you're perspective on the way this country is really being run. are u at least curious?

      http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1070329053600562261

      OH! and after you watch that, and you're still not convinced, then ask yourself this, "Why would FEMA buy 500,000 coffins?" you don't just stock up on coffins "just in case" if you'd like more proof just leme know, i've found plenty. just do some research, you'll find all the tell tale signs as well.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeqjykY5wPk

    • 3 years ago
  • r12ski
  • ChristmasAsen
    • 0
      ChristmasAsen  

    • Why would the government need to spy on it's own citizen. If we wanna rebel, no amount of satellite tracking and concentration camps will stop us.

    • 3 years ago
  • curiously_strong
    • 0
      curiously_strong  

    • The spying satillite is a scary though no doubt it will be used incorrectly but i'm worried on how other countires will react to it.

      But this is what caught my interest --"A $634 billion spending bill signed into law earlier this week"
      Yeah aren't we in a economic crisis? and we spend this much?

    • 3 years ago
  • BIOHAZARD
  • thenuge
  • 1percent
  • MiguelSanchez
  • ChristmasAsen
  • ninepounds6
  • starr111
  • ChristmasAsen
    • 0
      ChristmasAsen  

    • Another big budget bill passed while the bail out remains in the spot light. Seriously, where do I have to go to learn about these things in advance?

    • 3 years ago
  • huntre
  • HiddenAgenda
  • onechance
    • 0
      onechance  

    • Beam that shit down on me, you'll get a middle finger then a picture of my butt.

      Big brother, you're so pathetic and scared of everyday people. Wimpy little Chihuahua.

    • 3 years ago
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