http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/story/676165.html
Air rights
In the latest government surveillance twist, spy satellites will
be used for domestic law enforcement. Is this still America?
Most Americans have accepted the Bush administration's view that after
9/11 it's a new and more restrictive world out there. Additional
security procedures at airports, less privacy for phone calls -- we go
along with all sorts of measures aimed at thwarting another terror attack.
Is the sky the limit?
A new program ordered up by Michael McConnell, director of National
Intelligence, will give police and others access to some information
from the spy satellites that pass above the U.S. along their paths over
the globe. The images and data will be employed initially for border
security and emergency preparedness; law enforcement uses ("covering
both criminal and civil law," according to The Wall Street Journal,
which broke the story) are to follow. These spy satellites are able to
"see" through cloud cover and even obtain data from inside buildings and
bunkers.
They can't, we're assured, tell whether that gent in the street needs a
haircut. Not yet, anyway.
Up to now, with a few exceptions for scientific purposes, spy satellites
have been used for spying on bad actors abroad. Now they'll focus on us too.
It's hard to swallow, if you think freedom means more than national
independence. But it fits a pattern that's not easy to break.
*Keeping close tabs*
Americans' expectations of personal privacy have been pushed and prodded
plenty in recent years, until we hardly know what rights we have. We're
videotaped on the streets, radar-timed on the roads, monitored in our
calls to companies, told to wear security badges and asked for a phone
number even when we pay cash. We're followed by "cookies" in our
wanderings around the Web, and when we e-mail or call someone abroad,
our words may be intercepted by the government and sorted through by a
supercomputer for a revealing word.
Not to mention the trade-offs we make oh-so voluntarily as we trade
privacy for convenience -- in the supermarket checkout lane (store cards
track personal purchases); in a turnpike's electronic transponder lane
(E-ZPass records are being used in divorce cases); and when we sign up
for car-tracking services such as OnStar that know if we made the right
turn back there.
Now the Feds and local law enforcement will also be looking in on
America from low-Earth orbit. As for civil libertarians' concerns,
Homeland Security says it will have its lawyers review law enforcement
agencies' requests for satellite data before granting them. Does that
include review by a court too? The stories are silent.
And even with a nod to civil liberties, the bottom line is that police
are winning access to satellites run by the defense and intelligence
establishments, satellites intended for quite different purposes than
domestic law enforcement ("criminal and civil").
*When the eyes have it*
At times in our past we've allowed the authorities to curtail liberty at
home. It's always been justified on the basis of national security, and
always will be. Looking back -- at the Alien and Sedition Acts of the
early 1800s and the internments of World War II, for example -- these
have not been proud moments. Americans, however, have always pulled back
from the brink, back toward liberty.
Now the matter of the spy satellites offers another chance. This program
blurs too many civilian-military lines, and sets precedents for ever
more acute technological intrusions. Implicitly, it gives officials
sweeping new powers (think of life under the satellite "eyes" of some
future president you don't think much of). It unbalances the equation
between security and liberty. It goes too far.
Are we still Americans that the men who drafted and ratified the Bill of
Rights would recognize? Pushed, prodded and spied on from space, we have
to wonder.
--------------030504060502020906020503
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<br>
<br>
<div id="headline"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/story/676165.html">
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/story/676165.html</a>
<h2>Air rights</h2>
<h3>In the latest government surveillance twist, spy satellites will be
used for domestic law enforcement. Is this still America?</h3>
</div>
<br>
<br>
Most Americans have accepted the Bush administration's view that after
9/11 it's a new and more restrictive world out there. Additional
security procedures at airports, less privacy for phone calls -- we go
along with all sorts of measures aimed at thwarting another terror
attack.
<p>Is the sky the limit?</p>
<p>A
new program ordered up by Michael McConnell, director of National
Intelligence, will give police and others access to some information
from the spy satellites that pass above the U.S. along their paths over
the globe. The images and data will be employed initially for border
security and emergency preparedness; law enforcement uses ("covering
both criminal and civil law," according to The Wall Street Journal,
which broke the story) are to follow. These spy satellites are able to
"see" through cloud cover and even obtain data from inside buildings
and bunkers.</p>
<p>They can't, we're assured, tell whether that gent in the street
needs a haircut. Not yet, anyway.</p>
<p>Up
to now, with a few exceptions for scientific purposes, spy satellites
have been used for spying on bad actors abroad. Now they'll focus on us
too.</p>
<p>It's hard to swallow, if you think freedom means more than
national independence. But it fits a pattern that's not easy to break.</p>
<p><b>Keeping close tabs</b></p>
<p>Americans'
expectations of personal privacy have been pushed and prodded plenty in
recent years, until we hardly know what rights we have. We're
videotaped on the streets, radar-timed on the roads, monitored in our
calls to companies, told to wear security badges and asked for a phone
number even when we pay cash. We're followed by "cookies" in our
wanderings around the Web, and when we e-mail or call someone abroad,
our words may be intercepted by the government and sorted through by a
supercomputer for a revealing word.</p>
<p>Not to mention the trade-offs
we make oh-so voluntarily as we trade privacy for convenience -- in the
supermarket checkout lane (store cards track personal purchases); in a
turnpike's electronic transponder lane (E-ZPass records are being used
in divorce cases); and when we sign up for car-tracking services such
as OnStar that know if we made the right turn back there.</p>
<p>Now the
Feds and local law enforcement will also be looking in on America from
low-Earth orbit. As for civil libertarians' concerns, Homeland Security
says it will have its lawyers review law enforcement agencies' requests
for satellite data before granting them. Does that include review by a
court too? The stories are silent.</p>
<p>And even with a nod to civil
liberties, the bottom line is that police are winning access to
satellites run by the defense and intelligence establishments,
satellites intended for quite different purposes than domestic law
enforcement ("criminal and civil").</p>
<p><b>When the eyes have it</b></p>
<p>At
times in our past we've allowed the authorities to curtail liberty at
home. It's always been justified on the basis of national security, and
always will be. Looking back -- at the Alien and Sedition Acts of the
early 1800s and the internments of World War II, for example -- these
have not been proud moments. Americans, however, have always pulled
back from the brink, back toward liberty.</p>
<p>Now the matter of the
spy satellites offers another chance. This program blurs too many
civilian-military lines, and sets precedents for ever more acute
technological intrusions. Implicitly, it gives officials sweeping new
powers (think of life under the satellite "eyes" of some future
president you don't think much of). It unbalances the equation between
security and liberty. It goes too far.</p>
<p>Are we still Americans
that the men who drafted and ratified the Bill of Rights would
recognize? Pushed, prodded and spied on from space, we have to wonder. </p>
</body>
</html>
--------------030504060502020906020503--
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:28 CST