THE SHOCKING MENACE OF SATELLITE SURVEILLANCE
by John Fleming
2003-06-19
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1068 Unknown to most of the world, satellites can perform astonishing and
often menacing feats. This should come as no surprise when one
reflects on the massive effort poured into satellite technology since
the Soviet satellite Sputnik, launched in 1957, caused panic in the
U.S. A spy satellite can monitor a person's every movement, even when
the "target" is indoors or deep in the interior of a building or
traveling 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 the
earth.
It takes just three satellites to blanket the world with detection
capacity. Besides tracking a person's every action and relaying the
data to a computer screen on earth, amazing powers of satellites
include reading a person's mind, monitoring conversations,
manipulating electronic instruments and physically assaulting someone
with a laser beam. Remote reading of someone's mind through satellite
technology is quite bizarre, yet it is being done; it is a reality at
present, not a chimera from a futuristic dystopia! To those who might
disbelieve my description of satellite surveillance, I'd simply cite
a tried-and-true Roman proverb: Time reveals all things (tempus omnia
revelat)...
As extraordinary as clandestine satellite powers are, nevertheless
prosaic satellite technology is much evident in daily life. Satellite
businesses reportedly earned $26 billion in 1998. We can watch
transcontinental television broadcasts "via satellite," make long-
distance phone calls relayed by satellite, be informed of cloud cover
and weather conditions through satellite images shown on television,
and find our geographical bearings with the aid of satellites in the
GPS (Global Positioning System). But behind the facade of useful
satellite technology is a Pandora's box of surreptitious technology.
Spy satellites-- as opposed to satellites for broadcasting and
exploration of space--have little or no civilian use--except,
perhaps, to subject one's enemy or favorite malefactor to
surveillance. With reference to detecting things from space, Ford
Rowan, author of Techno Spies, wrote "some U.S. military satellites
are equipped with infra-red sensors that can pick up the heat
generated on earth by trucks, airplanes, missiles, and cars, so that
even on cloudy days the sensors can penetrate beneath the clouds and
reproduce the patterns of heat emission on a TV-type screen. During
the Vietnam War sky high infra-red sensors were tested which detect
individual enemy soldiers walking around on the ground." Using this
reference, we can establish 1970 as the approximate date of the
beginning of satellite surveillance- -and the end of the possibility
of privacy for several people.
The government agency most heavily involved in satellite surveillance
technology is the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an arm of
the Pentagon. NASA is concerned with civilian satellites, but there
is no hard and fast line between civilian and military satellites.
NASA launches all satellites, from either Cape Kennedy in Florida or
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, whether they are military-
operated, CIA-operated, corporate-operated or NASA's own. Blasting
satellites into orbit is a major expense. It is also difficult to
make 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 underwrite
the 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., CAE
Electronics, Trimble Navigation and TRW.
The World Satellite Directory, 14th edition (1992), lists about a
thousand companies concerned with satellites in one way or another.
Many are merely in the broadcasting business, but there are also
product headings like "remote sensing imagery," which includes Earth
Observation Satellite Co. of Lanham, Maryland, Downl Inc. of Denver,
and Spot Image Corp. of Reston, Virginia. There are five product
categories referring to transponders. Other product categories
include earth stations (14 types), "military products and
systems," "microwave equipment," "video processors," "spectrum
analyzers." The category "remote sensors" lists eight companies,
including ITM Systems Inc., in Grants Pass, Oregon, Yool Engineering
of Phoenix, and Satellite Technology Management of Costa Mesa,
California. Sixty-five satellite associations are listed from all
around the world, such as Aerospace Industries Association, American
Astronautical Society, Amsat and several others in the U.S.
Spy satellites were already functioning and violating people's right
to privacy when President Reagan proposed his "Strategic Defense
Initiative," or Star Wars, in the early 80s, long after the Cuban
Missile Crisis of 1962 had demonstrated the military usefulness of
satellites. Star Wars was supposed to shield the U.S. from nuclear
missiles, but shooting down missiles with satellite lasers proved
infeasible, and many scientists and politicians criticized the
massive program. Nevertheless, Star Wars gave an enormous boost to
surveillance 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 in
1984 that "facets of the project [in the Star Wars program] that are
being hurried along include the awarding of contracts to study...a
surveillance satellite network." It was bound to be abused, yet no
group is fighting to cut back or subject to democratic control this
terrifying 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 the
chances of being subjected to satellite surveillance are rather
remote. Why someone would want to subject someone else to satellite
surveillance might seem unclear at first, but to answer the question
you must realize that only the elite have access to such satellite
resources. Only the rich and powerful could even begin to contemplate
putting someone under satellite surveillance, whereas a middle- or
working-class person would not even know where to begin. Although
access to surveillance capability is thus largely a function of the
willfulness of the powerful, nevertheless we should not conclude that
only the powerless are subjected to it. Perhaps those under satellite
surveillance are mainly the powerless, but wealthy and famous people
make more interesting targets, as it were, so despite their power to
resist an outrageous violation of their privacy, a few of them may be
victims of satellite surveillance. Princess Diana may have been under
satellite reconnaissance. No claim of being subject to satellite
surveillance can be dismissed a priori.
It is difficult to estimate just how many Americans are being watched
by satellites, but if there are 200 working surveillance satellites
(a common number in the literature), and if each satellite can
monitor 20 human targets, then as many as 4000 Americans may be under
satellite surveillance. However, the capability of a satellite for
multiple-target monitoring is even harder to estimate than the number
of satellites; it may be connected to the number of transponders on
each satellite, the transponder being a key device for both receiving
and transmitting information. A society in the grips of the National
Security State is necessarily kept in the dark about such things.
Obviously, though, if one satellite can monitor simultaneously 40 or
80 human targets, then the number of possible victims of satellite
surveillance would be doubled or quadrupled.
A sampling of the literature provides insight into this fiendish
space-age technology. One satellite firm reports that "one of the
original concepts for the Brilliant Eyes surveillance satellite
system involved a long-wavelength infrared detector focal plane that
requires periodic operation near 10 Kelvin." A surveillance satellite
exploits the fact that the human body emits infra-red radiation, or
radiant heat; according to William E. Burrows, author of Deep
Black, "the infrared imagery would pass through the scanner and
register on the [charged-couple device] array to form a moving
infrared 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 to
whether infrared radiation can be detected in cloudy conditions.
According to one investigator, there is a way around this potential
obstacle: "Unlike sensors that passively observe visible-light and
infra-red radiation, which are blocked by cloud cover and largely
unavailable at night, radar sensors actively emit microwave pulses
that can penetrate clouds and work at any hour." This same person
reported in 1988 that "the practical limit on achievable resolution
for a satellite-based sensor is a matter of some dispute, but is
probably roughly ten to thirty centimeters. After that point,
atmospheric irregularities become a problem." But even at the time
she wrote that, satellite resolution, down to each subpixel, on the
contrary, was much more precise, a matter of millimeters- -a fact
which is more comprehensible when we consider the enormous
sophistication of satellites, as reflected in such tools as multi-
spectral scanners, interferometers, visible infrared spin scan
radiometers, cryocoolers and hydride sorption beds. Probably the most
sinister aspect of satellite surveillance, certainly its most
stunning, is mind-reading.
As early as 1981, G. Harry Stine (in his book Confrontation in
Space), could write that Computers have "read" human minds by means
of deciphering the outputs of electroencephalogra phs (EEGs). Early
work in this area was reported by the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1978. EEG's are now known to be crude
sensors of neural activity in the human brain, depending as they do
upon induced electrical currents in the skin. Magnetoencephalogra phs
(MEGs) have since been developed using highly sensitive
electromagnetic sensors that can directly map brain neural activity
even through even through the bones of the skull. The responses of
the visual areas of the brain have now been mapped by Kaufman and
others at Vanderbilt University. Work may already be under way in
mapping the neural activity of other portions of the human brain
using the new MEG techniques. It does not require a great deal of
prognostication to forecast that the neural electromagnetic activity
of the human brain will be totally mapped within a decade or so and
that crystalline computers can be programmed to decipher the
electromagnetic neural signals.
In 1992, Newsweek reported that "with powerful new devices that peer
through the skull and see the brain at work, neuroscientists seek the
wellsprings of thoughts and emotions, the genesis of intelligence and
language. They hope, in short, to read your mind." In 1994, a
scientist noted that "current imaging techniques can depict
physiological events in the brain which accompany sensory perception
and motor activity, as well as cognition and speech." In order to
give a satellite mind-reading capability, it only remains to put some
type of EEG-like-device on a satellite and link it with a computer
that has a data bank of brain-mapping research. I believe that
surveillance satellites began reading minds--or rather, began
allowing the minds of targets to be read--sometime in the early
1990s. 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 behavior
defies description. In Brave New World, Huxley anticipated the
Neurophone. In that novel, people hold onto a metal knob to
get "feely effects" in a simulated orgy where "the facial errogenous
zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled with
almost intolerable galvanic pleasure." Though not yet applied to sex,
the Neurophone-- or more precisely, a Neurophone-like- instrument- -has
been adapted for use by satellites and can alter behavior in the
manner of subliminal audio "broadcasting, " but works on a different
principle.
After converting sound into electrical impulses, the Neurophone
transmits radio waves into the skin, where they proceed to the brain,
bypassing the ears and the usual cranial auditory nerve and causing
the brain to recognize a neurological pattern as though it were an
audible communication, though often on a subconscious level. A person
stimulated with this device "hears" by a very different route. The
Neurophone can cause the deaf to "hear" again. Ominously, when its
inventor applied for a second patent on an improved Neurophone, the
National Security Agency tried unsuccessfully to appropriate the
device.
A surveillance satellite, in addition, can detect human speech.
Burrows observed that satellites can "even eavesdrop on conversations
taking place deep within the walls of the Kremlin." Walls, ceilings,
and floors are no barrier to the monitoring of conversation from
space. Even if you were in a highrise building with ten stories above
you and ten stories below, a satellite's audio surveillance of your
speech would still be unhampered. Inside or outside, in any weather,
anyplace on earth, at any time of day, a satellite "parked" in space
in a geosynchronous orbit (whereby the satellite, because it moves in
tandem with the rotation of the earth, seems to stand still) can
detect the speech of a human target. Apparently, as with
reconnaissance in general, only by taking cover deep within the
bowels of a lead-shielding fortified building could you escape audio
monitoring by a satellite.
There are various other satellite powers, such as manipulating
electronic instruments and appliances like alarms, electronic watches
and clocks, a television, radio, smoke detector and the electrical
system of an automobile. For example, the digital alarm on a watch,
tiny though it is, can be set off by a satellite from hundreds of
miles up in space. And the light bulb of a lamp can be burned out
with the burst of a laser from a satellite. In addition, street
lights and porch lights can be turned on and off at will by someone
at the controls of a satellite, the means being an electromagnetic
beam which reverses the light's polarity. Or a lamp can be made to
burn out in a burst of blue light when the switch is flicked. As with
other satellite powers, it makes no difference if the light is under
a roof or a ton of concrete--it can still be manipulated by a
satellite laser. Types of satellite lasers include the free-electron
laser, 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 satellite
is to physically assault someone. An electronic satellite beam--using
far less energy than needed to blast nuclear missiles in flight--
can "slap" or bludgeon someone on earth. A satellite beam can also be
locked onto a human target, with the victim being unable to evade the
menace by running around or driving around, and can cause harm
through application of pressure on, for example, one's head. How
severe a beating can be administered from space is a matter of
conjecture, but if the ability to actually murder someone this way
has not yet been worked out, there can be no doubt that it will soon
become a reality. There is no mention in satellite literature of a
murder having
|
