1/2 THE SHOCKING MENACE OF SATELLITE SURVEILLANCE

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THE SHOCKING MENACE OF SATELLITE SURVEILLANCEby John Fleming2003-06-19http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News & file=article & sid=1068Unknown to most of the world, satellites can perform astonishing andoften menacing feats. This should come as no surprise when onereflects on the massive effort poured into satellite technology sincethe Soviet satellite Sputnik, launched in 1957, caused panic in theU.S. A spy satellite can monitor a person's every movement, even whenthe "target" is indoors or deep in the interior of a building ortraveling rapidly down the highway in a car, in any kind of weather(cloudy, rainy, stormy). There is no place to hide on the face of theearth.It takes just three satellites to blanket the world with detectioncapacity. Besides tracking a person's every action and relaying thedata to a computer screen on earth, amazing powers of satellitesinclude reading a person's mind, monitoring conversations,manipulating electronic instruments and physically assaulting someonewith a laser beam. Remote reading of someone's mind through satellitetechnology is quite bizarre, yet it is being done; it is a reality atpresent, not a chimera from a futuristic dystopia! To those who mightdisbelieve my description of satellite surveillance, I'd simply citea tried-and-true Roman proverb: Time reveals all things (tempus omniarevelat)...As extraordinary as clandestine satellite powers are, neverthelessprosaic satellite technology is much evident in daily life. Satellitebusinesses reportedly earned $26 billion in 1998. We can watchtranscontinental television broadcasts "via satellite," make long-distance phone calls relayed by satellite, be informed of cloud coverand weather conditions through satellite images shown on television,and find our geographical bearings with the aid of satellites in theGPS (Global Positioning System). But behind the facade of usefulsatellite technology is a Pandora's box of surreptitious technology.Spy satellites-- as opposed to satellites for broadcasting andexploration of space--have little or no civilian use--except,perhaps, to subject one's enemy or favorite malefactor tosurveillance. With reference to detecting things from space, FordRowan, author of Techno Spies, wrote "some U.S. military satellitesare equipped with infra-red sensors that can pick up the heatgenerated on earth by trucks, airplanes, missiles, and cars, so thateven on cloudy days the sensors can penetrate beneath the clouds andreproduce the patterns of heat emission on a TV-type screen. Duringthe Vietnam War sky high infra-red sensors were tested which detectindividual enemy soldiers walking around on the ground." Using thisreference, we can establish 1970 as the approximate date of thebeginning of satellite surveillance- -and the end of the possibilityof privacy for several people.The government agency most heavily involved in satellite surveillancetechnology is the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an arm ofthe Pentagon. NASA is concerned with civilian satellites, but thereis no hard and fast line between civilian and military satellites.NASA launches all satellites, from either Cape Kennedy in Florida orVandenberg Air Force Base in California, whether they are military-operated, CIA-operated, corporate-operated or NASA's own. Blastingsatellites into orbit is a major expense. It is also difficult tomake a quick distinction between government and private satellites;research by NASA is often applicable to all types of satellites.Neither the ARPA nor NASA makes satellites; instead, they underwritethe technology while various corporations produce the hardware.Corporations involved in the satellite business include Lockheed,General Dynamics, RCA, General Electric, Westinghouse, Comsat,Boeing, Hughes Aircraft, Rockwell International, Grumman Corp., CAEElectronics, Trimble Navigation and TRW.The World Satellite Directory, 14th edition (1992), lists about athousand companies concerned with satellites in one way or another.Many are merely in the broadcasting business, but there are alsoproduct headings like "remote sensing imagery," which includes EarthObservation Satellite Co. of Lanham, Maryland, Downl Inc. of Denver,and Spot Image Corp. of Reston, Virginia. There are five productcategories referring to transponders. Other product categoriesinclude earth stations (14 types), "military products andsystems,microwave equipment,video processors,spectrumanalyzers." The category "remote sensors" lists eight companies,including ITM Systems Inc., in Grants Pass, Oregon, Yool Engineeringof Phoenix, and Satellite Technology Management of Costa Mesa,California. Sixty-five satellite associations are listed from allaround the world, such as Aerospace Industries Association, AmericanAstronautical Society, Amsat and several others in the U.S.Spy satellites were already functioning and violating people's rightto privacy when President Reagan proposed his "Strategic DefenseInitiative," or Star Wars, in the early 80s, long after the CubanMissile Crisis of 1962 had demonstrated the military usefulness ofsatellites. Star Wars was supposed to shield the U.S. from nuclearmissiles, but shooting down missiles with satellite lasers provedinfeasible, and many scientists and politicians criticized themassive program. Nevertheless, Star Wars gave an enormous boost tosurveillance technology and to what may be called "black bag"technology, such as mind reading and lasers that can assault someone,even someone indoors. Aviation Week & Space Technology mentioned in1984 that "facets of the project [in the Star Wars program] that arebeing hurried along include the awarding of contracts to study...asurveillance satellite network." It was bound to be abused, yet nogroup is fighting to cut back or subject to democratic control thisterrifying new technology. As one diplomat to the U.N.remarked, "`Star Wars' was not a means of creating heaven on earth,but it could result in hell on earth."The typical American actually may have little to fear, since thechances of being subjected to satellite surveillance are ratherremote. Why someone would want to subject someone else to satellitesurveillance might seem unclear at first, but to answer the questionyou must realize that only the elite have access to such satelliteresources. Only the rich and powerful could even begin to contemplateputting someone under satellite surveillance, whereas a middle- orworking-class person would not even know where to begin. Althoughaccess to surveillance capability is thus largely a function of thewillfulness of the powerful, nevertheless we should not conclude thatonly the powerless are subjected to it. Perhaps those under satellitesurveillance are mainly the powerless, but wealthy and famous peoplemake more interesting targets, as it were, so despite their power toresist an outrageous violation of their privacy, a few of them may bevictims of satellite surveillance. Princess Diana may have been undersatellite reconnaissance. No claim of being subject to satellitesurveillance can be dismissed a priori.It is difficult to estimate just how many Americans are being watchedby satellites, but if there are 200 working surveillance satellites(a common number in the literature), and if each satellite canmonitor 20 human targets, then as many as 4000 Americans may be undersatellite surveillance. However, the capability of a satellite formultiple-target monitoring is even harder to estimate than the numberof satellites; it may be connected to the number of transponders oneach satellite, the transponder being a key device for both receivingand transmitting information. A society in the grips of the NationalSecurity State is necessarily kept in the dark about such things.Obviously, though, if one satellite can monitor simultaneously 40 or80 human targets, then the number of possible victims of satellitesurveillance would be doubled or quadrupled.A sampling of the literature provides insight into this fiendishspace-age technology. One satellite firm reports that "one of theoriginal concepts for the Brilliant Eyes surveillance satellitesystem involved a long-wavelength infrared detector focal plane thatrequires periodic operation near 10 Kelvin." A surveillance satelliteexploits the fact that the human body emits infra-red radiation, orradiant heat; according to William E. Burrows, author of DeepBlack, "the infrared imagery would pass through the scanner andregister on the [charged-couple device] array to form a movinginfrared picture, which would then be amplified, digitalized,encrypted and transmitted up to one of the [satellite data system]spacecraft.. .for downlink [to earth]." But opinion differs as towhether infrared radiation can be detected in cloudy conditions.According to one investigator, there is a way around this potentialobstacle: "Unlike sensors that passively observe visible-light andinfra-red radiation, which are blocked by cloud cover and largelyunavailable at night, radar sensors actively emit microwave pulsesthat can penetrate clouds and work at any hour." This same personreported in 1988 that "the practical limit on achievable resolutionfor a satellite-based sensor is a matter of some dispute, but isprobably roughly ten to thirty centimeters. After that point,atmospheric irregularities become a problem." But even at the timeshe wrote that, satellite resolution, down to each subpixel, on thecontrary, was much more precise, a matter of millimeters- -a factwhich is more comprehensible when we consider the enormoussophistication of satellites, as reflected in such tools as multi-spectral scanners, interferometers, visible infrared spin scanradiometers, cryocoolers and hydride sorption beds. Probably the mostsinister aspect of satellite surveillance, certainly its moststunning, is mind-reading.As early as 1981, G. Harry Stine (in his book Confrontation inSpace), could write that Computers have "read" human minds by meansof deciphering the outputs of electroencephalogra phs (EEGs). Earlywork in this area was reported by the Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency (DARPA) in 1978. EEG's are now known to be crudesensors of neural activity in the human brain, depending as they doupon induced electrical currents in the skin. Magnetoencephalogra phs(MEGs) have since been developed using highly sensitiveelectromagnetic sensors that can directly map brain neural activityeven through even through the bones of the skull. The responses ofthe visual areas of the brain have now been mapped by Kaufman andothers at Vanderbilt University. Work may already be under way inmapping the neural activity of other portions of the human brainusing the new MEG techniques. It does not require a great deal ofprognostication to forecast that the neural electromagnetic activityof the human brain will be totally mapped within a decade or so andthat crystalline computers can be programmed to decipher theelectromagnetic neural signals.In 1992, Newsweek reported that "with powerful new devices that peerthrough the skull and see the brain at work, neuroscientists seek thewellsprings of thoughts and emotions, the genesis of intelligence andlanguage. They hope, in short, to read your mind." In 1994, ascientist noted that "current imaging techniques can depictphysiological events in the brain which accompany sensory perceptionand motor activity, as well as cognition and speech." In order togive a satellite mind-reading capability, it only remains to put sometype of EEG-like-device on a satellite and link it with a computerthat has a data bank of brain-mapping research. I believe thatsurveillance satellites began reading minds--or rather, beganallowing the minds of targets to be read--sometime in the early1990s. Some satellites in fact can read a person's mind from space.Also part of satellite technology is the notorious,patented "Neurophone, " the ability of which to manipulate behaviordefies description. In Brave New World, Huxley anticipated theNeurophone. In that novel, people hold onto a metal knob toget "feely effects" in a simulated orgy where "the facial errogenouszones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled withalmost intolerable galvanic pleasure." Though not yet applied to sex,the Neurophone-- or more precisely, a Neurophone-like- instrument- -hasbeen adapted for use by satellites and can alter behavior in themanner of subliminal audio "broadcasting, " but works on a differentprinciple.After converting sound into electrical impulses, the Neurophonetransmits radio waves into the skin, where they proceed to the brain,bypassing the ears and the usual cranial auditory nerve and causingthe brain to recognize a neurological pattern as though it were anaudible communication, though often on a subconscious level. A personstimulated with this device "hears" by a very different route. TheNeurophone can cause the deaf to "hear" again. Ominously, when itsinventor applied for a second patent on an improved Neurophone, theNational Security Agency tried unsuccessfully to appropriate thedevice.A surveillance satellite, in addition, can detect human speech.Burrows observed that satellites can "even eavesdrop on conversationstaking place deep within the walls of the Kremlin." Walls, ceilings,and floors are no barrier to the monitoring of conversation fromspace. Even if you were in a highrise building with ten stories aboveyou and ten stories below, a satellite's audio surveillance of yourspeech would still be unhampered. Inside or outside, in any weather,anyplace on earth, at any time of day, a satellite "parked" in spacein a geosynchronous orbit (whereby the satellite, because it moves intandem with the rotation of the earth, seems to stand still) candetect the speech of a human target. Apparently, as withreconnaissance in general, only by taking cover deep within thebowels of a lead-shielding fortified building could you escape audiomonitoring by a satellite.There are various other satellite powers, such as manipulatingelectronic instruments and appliances like alarms, electronic watchesand clocks, a television, radio, smoke detector and the electricalsystem of an automobile. For example, the digital alarm on a watch,tiny though it is, can be set off by a satellite from hundreds ofmiles up in space. And the light bulb of a lamp can be burned outwith the burst of a laser from a satellite. In addition, streetlights and porch lights can be turned on and off at will by someoneat the controls of a satellite, the means being an electromagneticbeam which reverses the light's polarity. Or a lamp can be made toburn out in a burst of blue light when the switch is flicked. As withother satellite powers, it makes no difference if the light is undera roof or a ton of concrete--it can still be manipulated by asatellite laser. Types of satellite lasers include the free-electronlaser, the x-ray laser, the neutral-particle- beam laser, the chemical-oxygen-iodine laser and the mid-infra-red advanced chemical laser.Along with mind-reading, one of the most bizarre uses of a satelliteis to physically assault someone. An electronic satellite beam--usingfar less energy than needed to blast nuclear missiles in flight--can "slap" or bludgeon someone on earth. A satellite beam can also belocked onto a human target, with the victim being unable to evade themenace by running around or driving around, and can cause harmthrough application of pressure on, for example, one's head. Howsevere a beating can be administered from space is a matter ofconjecture, but if the ability to actually murder someone this wayhas not yet been worked out, there can be no doubt that it will soonbecome a reality. There is no mention in satellite literature of amurder having