". . . like an ubiquitous spook"

By Carol Gee

Today's word, boys and girls, is:

"Ubiquitous" -- According to Answers.com it means:

adj. Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent: “plodded through the shadows fruitlessly like an ubiquitous spook” (Joseph Heller).

"U.S. to Expand Domestic Use Of Spy Satellites" -- This story was first broken in the Wall Street Journal in the middle of August. I missed Robert Block's story. And I am sorry because it now feels like a blockbuster to me, given how much I have followed the domestic surveillance issue, and given how ubiquitous these hidden eyes in the sky would be. NPR soon had the story on 8/15/07 on All Things Considered. Here's a quote:

Officials say the change is intended primarily to help them monitor the borders and coastal areas. But it is also raising some serious privacy concerns.

For more than 30 years, domestic agencies have had access to images gathered by U.S. spy satellites. But for the most part, the information has been used for scientific research or to monitor things such as hurricanes and volcanic activity.

"We have it; why not use it?" Just because the technology exists does not mean it should be used in this manner. In 2006 a so-called Blue Ribbon Commission recommended that the use of spy satellites be formalized, expanded to include the United States, and put under the Homeland Security Department. In the past the Defense Department's spy satellite imagery had been used domestically by the Department of the Interior, or on an ad hoc basis only (NYC on 9/11/01, widespread forest fires or Hurricane Katrina, as examples). In the spring of 2007 Director of National Intelligence, General Michael McConnell gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff authority over the program. Civil liberties officers at Homeland Security Security were brought in very late and Congress was only very minimally involved.

Congress and the Fourth Amendment: blindsided and minimized -- It must have felt this way to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson and California Member Jane Harman and others when they also learned of the program via the newspaper. And their objections are not really connected to turf or to politics. This Committee is the authorizing committee for Homeland Security activities with very large constitutional Fourth Amendment implications. The program had been briefed to certain Intelligence and Appropriations committee members only. This came out in their first committee hearing on the proposed domestic spying program on 9/7/07, broadcast on C-SPAN:

House Homeland Security Cmte. Hearing on Domestic Spy Satellite Use. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MD) chairs a Homeland Security Cmte. hearing titled "Turning Spy Satellites on the Homeland: the Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications of the National Applications Office." Beginning in October 2007 the Department of Homeland Security will open a new office called the National Applications Office (NAO) charged with civil/domestic intelligence gathering. 9/6/2007: WASHINGTON, DC: 2 hr. 25 min.

Representative Thompson and other members of the Committee were furious that they were never notified of the proposed program. Rep. Jane Harman spoke with great passion about the risks to American civil liberties posed by this change. As a member of the Group of Eight briefed on all Intelligence matters, she knows how powerful the satellites' capacities are, as well as the potential conflicts with the Posse Comitatus Act. (One civil liberties advocate witness, Lisa Graves of the Center for National Securities Studies, testified to the visual power of the images, "on a resolution scale of inches)." To quote Harman:

"You let this thing go, it may be another blank check to the executive. It may morph into things that will terrify you if you really understand the capabilities of satellites," said Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), former ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

A benign fait accompli? Government witnesses had characterized the views as comparable to that from a hovering helicopter. Another issue is the lack of supporting documentation provided to the committee, particularly the legal structure within which the program will stand. The DHS administrator who will be in charge of the program gave a perfunctory apology and then insisted that the program will be rolled out on October 1 anyway. None of the government's witnesses gave satisfactory answers to Members' Posse Comitatus concerns about sharing imagery with state and local law enforcement, given that these satellites belong to the Defense Department. To quote Wikipedia:

It generally prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act substantially limit the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement.

MSM blogger writes -- ABC News Brian Ross at The Blotter (9/6/07) details the expected criticism of House Members during the hearing. To quote:

DHS Chief Intelligence Officer Charles E. Allen has insisted that all of the "relevant committees" in Congress were briefed on the plan to create a permanent office for sharing satellite data with federal, state and local officials operating within the United States.

. . . Thompson and the committee will hear from a skeptic as well. Lisa Graves, a former Justice Department official, will testify to her serious concerns about the proposed office.

The special commission whose 2005 study recommended the office had some provocative ideas that deserve closer scrutiny, according to Graves, now an expert with the nonpartisan Center for National Security Studies.

Because I have yet to get all of this off my chest, and because the momentum in favor of this questionable program is so intense, it will be continued in "'Like an ubiquotous spook' -- Part II."

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)