by Bamford Big Brother Is Tracking You. Without a Warrant.

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Big Brother Is Tracking You. Without a Warrant.

May 18, 2003
By JAMES BAMFORD 




The sky was nearly cloudless on Aug. 19, 1960, when Capt.
Harold E. Mitchell took off from Hawaii in his stubby C-119
Flying Boxcar. A short time later, in the blackness of
space, an orbiting satellite ejected a small film capsule
that tumbled earthward protected by a heat shield. When it
reached the lower atmosphere, a parachute deployed, and it
began a slow descent over the South Pacific. Then, like an
outfielder catching a pop fly, Captain Mitchell snagged the
falling object - on his third try - in a trapeze-like
contraption on the nose of his plane.

In that instant, satellite espionage was born. Inside the
capsule were thousands of images of Soviet territory never
before seen by American intelligence.

Forty-three years later, satellite imagery similar to that
collected by the Central Intelligence Agency is available
to anyone with a credit card. From detailed shots of
India's nuclear sites, to high-resolution pictures of a
neighbor's backyard, reconnaissance satellite images have
become as easy to obtain as a novel from Amazon.com. In
fact, much of them are free for the taking from the
Internet. 

Last week, in an effort to increase satellite intelligence
coverage of high-priority targets, President Bush ordered
spy agencies to begin buying as much imagery as possible
from private companies. The reason was quality and
quantity. The close-up resolution of today's commercial
imaging satellites is comparable to that of the spy world,
and their numbers are constantly growing.

But the high quality and wide availability of such imagery
is also raising questions. For more than four decades,
American intelligence has aimed its cameras almost
exclusively on foreign targets. But now the lenses are also
being trained on American citizens.

Minutes after someone began shooting passengers at Los
Angeles International Airport last July Fourth, for
example, law enforcement agencies began receiving close-up
images of the airport and the exact coordinates where the
attack took place. The pictures came from the federal
National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which is responsible
for analyzing spy satellite images. Its imagery was also
used at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City to assist the
Secret Service and F.B.I. in security.

But as cameras take ever-closer aim at domestic targets,
the legal, political and ethical issues remain unresolved.
"Our whole posture as to how we respond to this is still a
work in progress," said James Clapper, director of the
mapping agency, in an interview last year with Signal
Magazine. 

In the meantime, satellite imagery abilities are growing
exponentially. In addition to the expanded use of
commercial satellites, which can be used for both foreign
and domestic surveillance, plans are under way to increase
the number of spy satellites. Under a program known as
Future Imagery Architecture, the intelligence agencies plan
to launch nearly a dozen imagery satellites to replace the
four or five currently in orbit. Although smaller than
their predecessors, these models, because of their
increased numbers, will allow more continuous coverage of
targets. 

Given enough commercial and spy satellites, supplemented by
aircraft and a ground system to marry it all together, the
intelligence community might one day achieve the ultimate
in coverage: constant, real-time surveillance of the
planet. 

But even without such coverage, imaging and other satellite
technologies are already colliding with privacy concerns.
Consider the constellation of global-positioning satellites
that provide precise tracking information to hand-held
receivers. Many people use them to pinpoint their locations
while driving, boating or hiking. The president of
Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, keeps one on him at all times in
case he is kidnapped or is the target of an assassination
attempt. 

But the sheriff of Spokane County, Washington, found
another use for a G.P.S. receiver. Hoping to discover where
a suspected murderer hid his victim, one of his deputies
planted a satellite tracking device on the suspect's car.
The suspect unwittingly led the sheriff directly to the
victim's grave. 

Allowing the police to plant such devices on suspects
without a warrant troubles many. "Do we really want the
ability to track everybody all the time, without any
suspicion, or without probable cause?" asked a lawyer, Doug
Klunder, in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week. "How
close are we to Big Brother?" On Tuesday, the Washington
Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether a warrant
should be required to secretly track a person's movements
using a G.P.S. device.

Legal testing of this kind will almost certainly continue.
As surely and steadily as satellite technology has migrated
from the military to the marketplace, so too will its uses
be challenged in court.

Two years ago, the police use of thermal imaging - a
similarly intrusive technology - came before the United
States Supreme Court. The technology detects patterns of
heat coming from inside buildings. Under the right
conditions, a highly sophisticated device may "see" the
heat signatures of the people in a house and track their
movements. 

The police occasionally use the technology to locate
marijuana inside by spotting the heat from the
high-intensity lamps used to grow it. The Supreme Court
decided that a warrant was required.

To take any other position, Justice Antonin Scalia said,
"would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing
technology - including imaging technology that could
discern all human activity in the home."

In the home, Justice Scalia added, "all details are
intimate details, because the entire area is held safe from
prying government eyes."

James Bamford is the author of "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of
the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" (Anchor, 2002).

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/weekinreview/18BAMF.html?ex=1054257694&ei=
1&en=eec47d12337ad55e

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