Guess Who's (gonna be) Watching You?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: January 29, 2007 8:37:20 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Guess Who's (gonna be) Watching You?
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com

[Note:  This item comes from reader Randall.  DLH]

From: Randall <rvh40 () insightbb com>
Date: January 23, 2007 11:03:55 PM PST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>, dewayne () warpspeed com
Cc: johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com
Subject: Guess Who's (gonna be) Watching You?

<http://htdaw.blogsource.com/post.mhtml?post_id=423757>

Big Brother's new toy: Another bloated gas bag watching you from the sky
2006-05-30
By James Renner
Cleveland Free Times


Last week, a fire ignited at the Akron Airdock that once housed a  
fleet of Goodyear blimps. Firemen rushed to the 211-foot-tall  
structure and quickly doused the flames. Reporters and photographers  
descended on the landmark. Many were surprised to learn the blimps  
were no longer being stored there.

Turns out Lockheed Martin -- the company that gave us the Trident  
intercontinental ballistic missile -- was renovating the site for an  
upcoming project when the fire started. It's being turned into a  
hangar for a prototype airship. If you're frightened of this  
administration's habit of spying on American citizens, you may want  
to stop reading.

The prototype is called the High Altitude Airship, or HAA. Lockheed  
Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors in Akron won the $40 million  
contract from the Missile Defense Agency to build HAA in 2003. It is  
essentially another blimp. A giant one. Seventeen times the size of  
the Goodyear dirigible. It's designed to float 12 miles above the  
earth, far above planes and weather systems. It will be powered by  
solar energy, and will stay in a geocentric orbit for up to a year,  
undetectable by ground-based radar. You can't see it from the ground.  
But it can see you.

"The possibilities are endless for homeland security," says Kate  
Dunlap, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson. "It could house cameras, and  
other surveillance equipment. It would be an eye in the sky."

According to a summary released by the U.S. Army Space and Missile  
Defense Command, the HAA can watch over a circle of countryside 600  
miles in diameter. That's everything between Toledo and New York  
City. And they want to build 11. With high-res cameras, that could  
mean constant surveillance of every square inch of American soil. "If  
you had a fleet of them, this could be used for border surveillance,"  
suggests Dunlap.

Launch date: 2009.

Of course, mimicking its defense of warrantless wiretapping and phone- 
log data mining, the government maintains it only wants to protect  
its citizens from external threats. But as any geek can tell you,  
blimps were ubiquitous in The Watchmen, the seminal '80s graphic  
novel in which heroes have been driven underground and Nixon is still  
president.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching you.

<http://athensnews.com/issue/article.php3?story_id=25082>




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