SurveillanceNew surveillance program will use military satellites to cover U.S.

An appropriations bill signed by President George Bush last week allows the controversial National Applications Office (NAO) to begin operating a stringently limited version of a program which would turn military spy satellites on the United States, sharing imagery with other federal, state, and local government agencies. Ars Technica’s Julian Sanchez writes that the government’s own watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), has warned in an unpublished report that the more expansive program in the offing lacks adequate safeguards to protect privacy and civil liberties.

For now, the law restricts the NAO to “activities substantially similar” to those carried out by the Civil Applications Committee, an interagency coordinating body formed in 1976 to give civilian agencies access to military satellites for scientific and disaster preparedness purposes, such as “monitoring volcanic activity, environmental and geological changes, hurricanes, and floods.” As a draft charter for the Office makes clear, however, officials at DHS hope to branch out from these traditional applications, providing assistance and information to domestic law enforcement agencies. 

That does not sit well with some members of Congress, who in a sharply worded letter earlier this year expressed concerns that the NAO “raises major issues under the Posse Comitatus Act” barring the military from performing law enforcement duties, and worried the program could be used to “gather domestic intelligence outside the rigorous protections of the law-and, ultimately, to share this intelligence with local law enforcement outside of constitutional parameters.”

As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, the GAO appears to share those concerns. In an unpublished analysis — a public version of which may be released in coming weeks — the GAO found that there did not seem to be adequate “assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards,” nor sufficient checks and oversight procedures to  prevent the misuse of satellite imagery.

The existence of the NAO was first publicly disclosed in press reports last summer, several months after its creation at the behest of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Following hearings held by the House Committee on Homeland Security, Congress blocked funding for the NAO, pressing DHS for more information about the legal basis for the program-as well as the privacy safeguard to be put in place. The current appropriations bill permits the NAO to be funded only for the purpose of carrying out the old Civil Applications