Privacy Digest

Kansas.com | 08/15/2007 | U.S. expands access to spy imagery: Law enforcement, emergency response and border control agencies have won greater access to the nation's spy satellites and other sensors to monitor U.S. territory.

The sharing of imagery and data will be especially useful in policing land and sea borders and in disaster planning, Charles Allen, the Department of Homeland Security's chief intelligence officer, said in a phone interview Wednesday.

The effort may eventually support domestic law enforcement activities as well, he said, but the legal guidelines for that are still being worked out.

At least 11 domestic agencies have had access to limited amounts of spy satellite imagery for the last 30 years, mostly on a case-by-case basis.

Such imagery has been used to monitor national disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. It also could be used to map evacuation routes prior to anticipated disasters, or to identify patterns of illegal movement across borders.

The CIA and Pentagon are generally prohibited from spying on American citizens, and Allen stressed that the new data-sharing effort doesn't violate that ban. "This is not a system for tracking Americans," Allen said.

A new office within the Department of Homeland Security, called the National Applications Office, will now be the conduit for all domestic requests for spy satellite information.

It will be up to the intelligence agencies themselves - the Pentagon's National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, for example - to determine which requests they can honor.

(Read Original Article - Via Kansas.com - Witchita Eagle.)