Isikoff: Bush Wants Satellites for Domestic Spying

[tekisui]

MSNBC’s Alex Witt talked to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff about a new proposal by the Bush administration to use satellites for domestic surveillance.

Isikoff told MSNBC, “The Homeland Security Department is talking about expanding the program to use military satellites really, for domestic purposes. They say the primary driver is natural disasters — like the recent flooding in the midwest — to pinpoint areas that are most hard hit and to help with responses, first responses. But they also leave open the possibility that this could be used for other purposes, law enforce many purposes. Tracking potential terrorists but also tracking potential drug operations.”

“And that is where the concerns about civil liberty abuses come in. First of all, there are strict laws about the act that limits the use of the U.S. military for law enforcement purposes. But the precision of these satellites, they can literally capture crystal clear images of your car as you leave the studio this afternoon. And capture them in computer databases — in the governmentcomputer databases. And it raises all sorts of concerns. To some degree, the administration is paying the price of what is for — what many in congress see as way over stepping — in the electronic surveillance era.”

link w/video : http://rawstory.com/rawreplay/?p=1378

[niyad]

1. do most of us think they already have them?

[Octafish]

2. What Frank Church said...

"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

-- Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, 1975.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3510598

[Marr]

3. Isn't it amazing how quickly a frightened populace

loses it's rights, and how eagerly government takes them?

These people have finally done what Frank Zappa talked about back in the 80's. They just pulled the curtains back and stopped bothering with the whole 'representational government' kabuki theater. They've calculated that the charade is a net loss, and that the public won't do anything about it.