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"The
President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States,
shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction
of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
—Constitution of the United States of America,
Article 2, Section 4
Homeland Security’s Space-Based
Spying Goes Live
" the NAO launch represents a qualitative leap
towards the surveillance society dreamed up by Iran-Contra
felon and former DARPA administrator John Poindexter"
By Tom Burghardt
Dissident Voice, October 9, 2008
go to original
See Article III.4 Unreasonable
Searches and Seizures
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Retired Navy Admiral, John Poindexter
lost his job as National Security Adviser
under Reagan, was convicted in the Iran Contra
scandal. When his Total Information Awareness
(TIA) program was exposed, he fell out of
favor. But plans for satellite surveillance
of US citizens under the National Applications
Office (NAO) are moving forward anyway.
Source: hereinreality.com
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While America’s attention has shifted to the
economic meltdown and the presidential race between
corporate favorites John McCain and Barack Obama,
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday
that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS)
National Applications Office (NAO) “will proceed
with the first phase of a controversial satellite-surveillance
program, even though an independent review found the
department hasn’t yet ensured the program will
comply with privacy laws.”
As I wrote in June, NAO will coordinate how domestic
law enforcement and “disaster relief”
agencies such as FEMA use satellite imagery intelligence
(IMINT) generated by U.S. spy satellites. Based on
available evidence, hard to come by since these programs
are classified “above top secret,” the
technological power of these military assets are truly
terrifying.
Unlike commercial satellites
that beam TV programs, forecast the weather
or provide global positioning services,
their military cousins are far more flexible,
have greater resolution and therefore, more
power to monitor human activity. By utilizing
different parts of the light- and infrared
spectrum, spy satellites, in addition to
taking ultra high-resolution photographs
to within a meter of their “target,”
can also track the heat signatures generated
by people inside a building. (”Homeland
Security’s Space-Based Spies,”
Antifascist Calling, June 4, 2008)
In other words, when combined with illegal NSA and
FBI domestic surveillance programs–from data-mining
to the massive interception of telephone and internet
communications–NAO will furnish DHS and outsourced
corporate grifters who actually run the program, with
the blanket coverage of American citizens long sought
by securocrats. Aside from The Wall Street Journal
and The Raw Story, not a single media outlet
has disclosed this vital information to the public.
Despite the absence of rigorous oversight that would
determine whether or not NAO complies with what’s
left of privacy laws, DHS is proceeding full speed
ahead. The Journal reports,
A new 60-page Government Accountability Office
report said the department “lacks assurance
that NAO operations will comply with applicable
laws and privacy and civil liberties standards,”
according to a person familiar with the document.
The report, which is unclassified but considered
sensitive, hasn’t been publicly released,
but was described and quoted by several people who
have read it.
The report cites gaps in privacy
safeguards. The department, it found, lacks controls
to prevent improper use of domestic-intelligence
data by other agencies and provided insufficient
assurance that requests for classified information
will be fully reviewed to ensure it can be legally
provided. ( Siobhan Gorman, “Satellite-Surveillance
Program to Begin Despite Privacy Concerns,”
The Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2008)
[emphasis added]
Reporting on the shocking absence of oversight features
built into the program, Nick Juliano writes,
Essentially, the bill only requires
the Homeland Security Secretary to assure lawmakers
that NAO programs comply with exisiting laws. Congress
also has required the DHS Inspector General to provide
quarterly classified reports on how much information
has been collected by the domestic satellite surveillance,
although the bill required those reports be made to
the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, not
the Homeland Security Committees that are traditionally
in charge of DHS oversight. (”DHS satellite
spy program going forward despite objections,”
The Raw Story, October 2, 2008)
The GAO’s suppressed report is not the first
to criticize the breathtaking scope of this repressive
program. The Congressional Research Service (CRS)
issued a study in June raising critical questions
about NAO’s legality.
Members of Congress and outside groups
have raised concerns that using satellites for law
enforcement purposes may infringe on the privacy and
Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. persons. Other commentators
have questioned whether the proposed surveillance
will violate the Posse Comitatus Act or other restrictions
on military involvement in civilian law enforcement,
or would otherwise exceed the statutory mandates of
the agencies involved. Such concerns led Congress
to preclude any funds in the Consolidated Appropriations
Act, 2008 (H.R. 2764, P.L. 110-161), from being used
to “commence operations of the National Applications
Office … until the Secretary [of the Department
of Homeland Security] certifies that these programs
comply with all existing laws, including all applicable
privacy and civil liberties standards, and that certification
is reviewed by the Government Accountability Office.”
(Section 525.) Similar language has been included
in FY2009 homeland security appropriations bills.
(Richard A. Best Jr. and Jennifer K. Elsea, “Satellite
Surveillance: Domestic Issues,” Congressional
Research Service, June 27, 2008)
But as the Journal reported, Congress’ “partial
funding” for the program in “a little-debated
$634 billion spending measure,” means that an
operational NAO will now provide federal, state and
local officials “with extensive access to spy-satellite
imagery–but no eavesdropping–to assist
with emergency response and other domestic-security
needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas
are vulnerable to terrorism.”
Such hollow “no eavesdropping” assurances
to Congress from quarterly classified reports from
the DHS Inspector General fly in the face of the steady
erosion of constitutional protections by the Bush
administration.
What “other agencies” might the GAO have
in mind when citing concerns over potential abuse
of intelligence data supplied by the National Applications
Office? Well, take your pick since the U.S. “intelligence
community” is comprised of 16 different agencies
under the operational control of the Office of National
Intelligence (ODI) and the powerful Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
Led by Michael McConnell, a ten-year veteran of the
spooky Booz Allen Hamilton corporation, purchased
this year by the sinister Carlyle Group, ODNI can
truly be described as a “public-private partnership”
in political repression. As CorpWatch reported in
March,
McConnell … spent more than
10 years as a Booz Allen senior vice president in
charge of the company’s extensive contracts
in military intelligence and information operations
for the Pentagon. In that job, his official biography
states, McConnell provided intelligence support to
“the U.S. Unified Combatant Commanders, the
Director of National Intelligence Agencies, and the
Military Service Intelligence Directors.” That
made him a close colleague of not only Donald Rumsfeld,
who ran the Pentagon from 2001 to 2007, but of Vice
President Cheney, who has served President Bush as
a kind of intelligence godfather since the earliest
days of the administration. (Tim Shorrock, “Carlyle
Group May Buy Major CIA Contractor: Booz Allen Hamilton,”
CorpWatch, March 8, 2008)
Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed last
year, that the intelligence-sharing system to be managed
by NAO,
…will rely heavily on private
contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications
and Science Applications International Corporation
(SAIC). These companies already provide technology
and personnel to U.S. agencies involved in foreign
intelligence, and the NAO greatly expands their markets.
Indeed, at an intelligence conference in San Antonio,
Texas, last month, the titans of the industry were
actively lobbying intelligence officials to buy products
specifically designed for domestic surveillance. (”Domestic
Spying, Inc.” CorpWatch, November 27,
2007)
NAO will utilize the military imagery and mapping
tools of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
(NGA). NGA maintains a symbiotic relationship with
both the NSA and the ultra-secret National Reconnaissance
Office (NRO), that builds and maintains America’s
fleet of spy satellites. Additionally, NRO operates
the planetary wide network of ground stations where
NSA’s signals intelligence (SIGINT) and NGA’s
imagery intelligence (IMINT) are processed and analyzed.
Shorrock revealed that the program was kick-started
in 2005 and the impetus came from veteran spooks with
extensive ties to the military-industrial-security
apparatus and corporate outfits such as Booz Allen
Hamilton. The company was “tasked” with
studying how “intelligence from spy satellites
and photoreconnaissance planes could be better used
domestically to track potential threats to security
within the U.S.” Completed in 2005, the Booz
Allen plan became the basis for NAO.
Veteran spook Charles Allen told The Wall Street
Journal in August 2007 that NAO is “an
idea whose time has arrived.” As DHS chief intelligence
officer, Allen will head the new program.
Additionally, an “independent study group”
appointed in 2005 by the Director of National Intelligence,
tasked with reviewing the deployment of military reconnaissance
assets in the “homeland” reached the desired
conclusions. According to a press release by the Department
of Homeland Security,
The study group unanimously recommended
in its September 2005 report that the scope of the
Civil Applications Committee be expanded beyond civil
applications to include homeland security and law
enforcement applications, and concluded that there
is an urgent need for action. The study group concluded
a new approach is needed to effectively employ Intelligence
Community capabilities for civil applications, homeland
security and law enforcement uses. (”Fact Sheet:
National Applications Office,” Department of
Homeland Security, August 15, 2007)
How “independent”? You make the call!
Shorrock reported that the group,
… was chaired by Keith Hall, a Booz Allen
vice president who manages his firm’s extensive
contracts with the NGA and previously served as
the director of the NRO.
Other members of the group included
seven other former intelligence officers working for
Booz Allen, as well as retired Army Lieutenant General
Patrick M. Hughes, the former director of the DIA
and vice president of homeland security for L-3 Communications,
a key NSA contractor; and Thomas W. Conroy, the vice
president of national security programs for Northrop
Grumman, which has extensive contracts with the NSA
and the NGA and throughout the intelligence community.
(Shorrock, 2008, op. cit.)
From the start, the group’s findings were “heavily
weighted” toward corporations “with a
stake” in both foreign and domestic intelligence.
No surprise then, when the group’s “contractor-advisers”
called for “a major expansion in the domestic
use of the spy satellites that they sell to the government.”
A power-grab by the ODNI and DHS should raise serious
alarms of further encroachments by a lawless “unitary
executive” and serve as a warning that domestic
law enforcement is rapidly coming under the purview
of opaque Pentagon spy agencies.
While the creeping militarization of civilian policing
is not a new phenomenon, the NAO launch represents
a qualitative leap towards the surveillance society
dreamed up by Iran-Contra felon and former DARPA administrator
John Poindexter, before he was kicked to the curb
when plans for the Total Information Awareness (TIA)
program first gained notoriety in 2003.
And like the newly-launched NAO, TIA was managed
by none other than Booz Allen Hamilton and their sidekicks
at the San Diego-based Science Applications International
Corporation! Small world (of open-ended contracts
for giant Bush regime-connected multinationals).
The NAO will be overseen by the National Applications
Executive Council (NAEC). In turn, NAEC will be “tri-chaired”
by the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, the
Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior
(DOI), and the Principal Deputy of the Director of
National Intelligence, a position held by Donald M.
Kerr.
As with the vast majority of top securocrats, Kerr
has served in a multitude of capacities inside and
outside government. When he ended his tenure as Director
of the National Reconnaissance Office in 2007, Kerr
joined ONI. The one-time CIA and FBI employee was
also a SAIC executive vice president during the 1990s.
Tim Shorrock reported in his essential book, Spies
for Hire, that Kerr described how “ninety-five
percent of the resources over which we have stewardship
in fact go out on a contract to our industrial base.
It’s an important thing to recognize that we
cannot function without this highly integrated industrial
government team.” Brutal honesty for brutal
times.
Despite rigorous objections by members of Congress
and civil liberties’ groups to a program with
the breathtaking potential to invade our privacy in
newer and more lethal ways, NAO is now reality. America’s
headlong flight towards constructing a post-Constitutional
“new order” just added another brick in
the wall.
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