Rest easy. Your government has things well in hand.

i posted last thursday on the broadening of surveillance technology to include visual data gathered from the national geospatial-intelligence agency (nga)... here's some more from today's wsj... (an interesting sidenote... nowhere in the article is the nga mentioned...)

The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S.

The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials. The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.

and so, constant reader, let's take a look behind door number three and see what you've won...

According to defense experts, MASINT [Measurement and Signatures Intelligence] uses radar, lasers, infrared, electromagnetic data and other technologies to see through cloud cover, forest canopies and even concrete to create images or gather data.

The spy satellites are considered by military experts to be more penetrating than civilian ones: They not only take color, as well as black-and-white photos, but can also use different parts of the light spectrum to track human activities, including, for example, traces left by chemical weapons or heat generated by people in a building.

well, that's certainly exciting...! but, you might ask, what's the legal basis and what will be the oversight...?

Unlike electronic eavesdropping, which is subject to legislative and some judicial control, this use of spy satellites is largely uncharted territory. Although the courts have permitted warrantless aerial searches of private property by law-enforcement aircraft, there are no cases involving the use of satellite technology.

pay no attention to that complete lie about electronic eavesdropping being "subject to legislative and 'some' [quotes added] judicial control..." is there ANYTHING we can learn about it to find out if it IS legal...? can ANYBODY check it out...?

The full capabilities of these systems are unknown outside the intelligence community, because they are among the most closely held secrets in government.

oh, well then, evidently not... so, who will be in charge of making sure our civil liberties are protected...?

Access to the satellite surveillance will be controlled by a new Homeland Security branch -- the National Applications Office -- which will be up and running in October.

[...]

"This all has to be vetted through a legal process," [Charles Allen, the DHS's chief intelligence officer] says. "We have to get this right because we don't want civil-rights and civil-liberties advocates to have concerns that this is being misused in ways which were not intended."

oh, heavens no...! those pesky civil-liberties advocates and their damn constitution...! we should all be vastly relieved to know that an unimpeachable (pun intended) repository of citizen trust, the executive branch, will keep an eye out to make sure all is copacetic... and, really, a concern like the following is so trivial that it's hardly worth mentioning...

In recent years, some military experts have questioned whether domestic use of such satellites would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. The act bars the military from engaging in law-enforcement activity inside the U.S., and the satellites were predominantly built for and owned by the Defense Department.

there now... rest easy... your government has things well in hand...

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