Domestic Spying 2.0 August 20, 2007

One Ohio resident calls it the beginnings of a police state.

Civil libertarians are disturbed, and privacy advocates are asking questions.

The Washington Post reported this past Thursday about the expanding use of spy satellites. The domestic use of spy satellites and surveillance materials is set to expand, says the Post, and includes some of the most advanced military technology:

The Bush administration has approved a plan to expand domestic access to some of the most powerful tools of 21st-century spycraft, giving law enforcement officials and others the ability to view data obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors that can see through cloud cover and even penetrate buildings and underground bunkers.

A program approved by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security will allow broader domestic use of secret overhead imagery beginning as early as this fall, with the expectation that state and local law enforcement officials will eventually be able to tap into technology once largely restricted to foreign surveillance…

But the program, described yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, quickly provoked opposition from civil liberties advocates, who said the government is crossing a well-established line against the use of military assets in domestic law enforcement.

Although the federal government has long permitted the use of spy-satellite imagery for certain scientific functions — such as creating topographic maps or monitoring volcanic activity — the administration’s decision would provide domestic authorities with unprecedented access to high-resolution, real-time satellite photos.

Among other things deemed necessary by state and local law enforcement, spy satellites will be called in — granted, not until 2008 — to help with border security and disaster recovery.

The Washington Post ran a story on August 1st entitled “NSA Spying Part of Broader Effort”, drawing attention to the fact that “the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005″ was actually only the publicly revealed part of a larger program:

In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), [Intelligence Chief Mike] McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included “a number of . . . intelligence activities” and that a name routinely used by the administration — the Terrorist Surveillance Program — applied only to “one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more.”

“This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly, because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged,” McConnell said.

The Seattle Times gives a practical example of what new domestic spying legislation could mean for an average American:

New surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond eavesdropping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches of U.S. citizens and the collection of their business records, Democratic congressional officials and other experts said…

The updated legislation, signed by President Bush on Aug. 5, gives the government leeway to intercept, without warrants or court oversight, communications between foreigners that are routed through equipment in the U.S., provided that “foreign-intelligence information” is at stake…

Several legal experts said that by redefining “electronic surveillance,” the new law…indirectly giv[es] the government the power to use intelligence-collection methods far beyond eavesdropping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States. These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and “trap-and-trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.

For instance, the legislation would allow the government, under certain circumstances, to search the business records of an American in Chicago without a warrant if it asserts that the search concerns its surveillance of a person who is in Paris, Democratic congressional aides and experts said.

National Intelligence Director McConnell insisted that “all foreign intelligence targets in touch with Americans…should be subjected to surveillance without warrants” and that even makes the ever-videotaped British fear US surveillance.

Americans are accepting and embracing more and more surveillance, more and more of those ever-so-slight infractions in privacy and civil liberties, in exchange for roughly the same amount of security. We don’t even know the full extent of the domestic surveillance program currently in effect. What was it that was said about the people who give up freedom for temporary security?

Oh yeah….