JOHN FLEMING: THE SHOCKING MENACE OF SATELLITE SURVEILLANCE

2001-07-14


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 electroencephalographs (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. Magnetoencephalographs (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 Nuerophone 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 been committed through the agency of a satellite, but
the very possibility should make the world take note.

there is yet another macabre power possessed by some satellites:
manipulating a person's mind with an audio subliminal "message" (a
sound too low for the ear to consciously detect but which affects the
unconscious). In trying thereby to get a person to do what you want
him to do, it does not matter if the target is asleep or awake. A
message could be used to compel a person to say something you would
like him to say, in a manner so spontaneous that noone would be able
to realize the words were contrived by someone else; there is no
limit to the range of ideas an unsuspecting person can be made to
voice. The human target might be compelled to use an obscenity, or
persons around the target might be compelled to say things that
insult the target. A sleeping person, on the other hand, is more
vulnerable and can be made to do something, rather than merely say
something. An action compelled by an audio subliminal message could
be to roll off the bed and fall onto the floor, or to get up and walk
around in a trance. However, the sleeping person can only be made to
engage in such an action for only a minute or so, it seems, since he
usually wakes up by then and the "spell" wears. It should be noted
here that although the "hypnotism" of a psychoanalyst is bogus,
unconscious or subconscious manipulation of behavior is genuine. But
the brevity of a subliminal spell effected by a satellite might be
overcome by more research. "The psychiatric community," reported
Newsweek in 1994, "generally agrees that subliminal perception
exists; a smaller fringe group believes it can be used to change the
psyche." A Russian doctor, Igor Smirnov, whom the magazine labeled
a "subliminal Dr. Strangelove," is one scientist studying the
possibilities: "Using electroencephalographs, he measures brain
waves, then uses computers to create a map of the subconscious and
various human impulses, such as anger or the sex drive. Then. through
taped subliminal messages, he claims to physically alter that
landscape with the power of suggestion." Combining this research with
satellite technology--which has already been done in part--could give
its masters the possibility for the perfect crime, since satellites
operate with perfect discretion, perfect concealment. All these
satellite powers can be abused with impunity. A satellite makes
a "clean getaway," as it were. Even if a given victim became aware of
how a crime was effected, noone would believe him, and he would be
powerless to defend himself or fight back.

And this indeed is the overriding evil of satellite technology. It is
not just that the technology is unrestrained by public agencies; it
is not just that it is entirely undemocratic. The menace of
surveillance satellites is irresistible; it overwhelms its powerless
victims. As writer Sandra Hochman foresaw near the beginning of the
satellite age, though seriously underestimating the sophistication of
the technology involved: Omniscient and discrete, satellites peer
down at us from their lofty orbit and keep watch every moment of our
lives... From more than five-hundred miles above earth, a satellite
can sight a tennis ball, photograph it, and send back to earth an
image as clear as if it had been taken on the court at ground zero.
Satellites photograph and record many things...and beam this
information, this data, back to quiet places where it is used in ways
we don't know. Privacy has died." This terror is in the here and now.
It is not located in the mind of an eccentric scientist or
futurologist. Satellite surveillance is currently being abused.
Thousands of Americans are under satellite surveillance and have been
stripped of their privacy. And presently they would have little or no
recourse in their struggle against the iniquity, since technology
advances well ahead of social institutions.

The powers of satellites, as here described, especially lend
themselves to harassment of someone. The victim could be a business
or political rival, an ex-spouse, a political dissident, a disliked
competitor, or anyone who for whatever reason provokes hatred or
contempt. Once the target is a "signature," he can almost never
escape a satellite's probing eyes. (As an article in Science
explained, "tiny computers...check the incoming signals with
computerized images, or `signatures,' of what the target should
like.") As long as his tormentor or tormentors--those with the
resources to hire a satellite--desire, the victim will be subject to
continuous scrutiny. His movements will be known, his conversations
heard, his thoughts picked clean, and his whole life subjected to
bogus moralizing, should his tormentor diabolically use the
information gained. A sadist could harass his target with sound
bites, or audio messages, directly broadcast into his room; with
physical assault with a laser; with subliminal audio messages that
disturb his sleep or manipulate persons around him into saying
something that emotionally distresses him; with lasers that turn off
street lights as he approaches them; with tampering with lamps so
that they burn out when he hits the switch; and in general with the
knowledge gained acquired through the omniscient eyes and ears of
satellites. In short, a person with access to satellite technology
could make his victim's life a living nightmare, a living hell.

How you could arrange to have someone subjected to satellite
surveillance is secretive; it might even be a conspiracy. However,
there seem to be two basic possibilities: surveillance by a
government satellite or surveillance by a commercial satellite.
According to an article in Time magazine from 1997, "commercial
satellites are coming online that are eagle-eyed enough to spot you--
and maybe a companion--in a hot tub." The Journal of Defense &
Diplomacy stated in 1985 that "the cost of remote sensors is within
the reach of [any country] with an interest, and high-performance
remote sensors (or the sensor products) are readily available.
Advances in fourth-generation (and soon fifth-generation) computer
capabilities. especially in terms of VHSIC (very-high-speed
integrated circuits) and parallel processing, hold the key to rapid
exploitation of space-derived data. Wideband, low-power data relay
satellites are, at the same time, providing support for communication
needs and for relay of remote sensor data, thus providing world-wide
sensor coverage." In addition, The New York Times reported in 1997
that "commercial spy satellites are about to let anyone with a credit
card peer down from the heavens into the compounds of dictators or
the back yards of neighbors with high fences." "To date [the
newspaper further noted] the Commerce Department has issued licenses
to nine American companies, some with foreign partners, for 11
different classes of satellites, which have a range of reconnaissance
powers." But this last article discussed photographic reconnaissance,
in which satellites took pictures of various sites on earth and
ejected a capsule containing film to be recovered and processed,
whereas the state of the art in satellite technology is imaging,
detection of targets on earth in real time. Currently, industry is
hard at work miniaturizing surveillance satellites in order to save
money and be in a position to fill the heavens with more satellites.

Yet no source of information on satellites indicate whether the abuse
of satellite surveillance is mediated by the government or
corporations or both. More telling is the following disclosure by the
author of Satellite Surveillance (1991): "Release of information
about spy satellites would reveal that they have been used against
U.S. citizens. While most of the public supports their use against
the enemies of the U.S., most voters would probably change their
attitudes towards reconnaissance satellites if they knew how
extensive the spying has been. It's better...that this explosive
issue never surfaces." Few people are aware of the destruction of the
rights of some Americans through satellite surveillance, and fewer
still have any inclination to oppose it, but unless we do, 1984 looms
ever closer. "With the development of television and the technical
device to receive and transmit on the same instrument, private life
came to an end."

John Flemming
USA
Especially for PRAVDA.Ru

http://www.naicr.org/aps/pravda.html