US Spy Satellites to be Turned on US Citizens

I guess today is "Your Worst Tinfoil Fears Come True Day" or something, because this story, also No Big Deal of course, is also true:

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 Homeland Security Department's chief intelligence officer, said Wednesday.

Uh-huh. All just to protect us, naturally. No worries, Shakers. It's in our best interests.

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

…A new agency within DHS, called the National Applications Office, will be the conduit for all domestic requests for spy satellite information. It will be up to the intelligence agencies to determine which requests they can honor.

Oh, great. No potential for abuse there at all. The Department of Homeland Security is in no way shaping up at all to be the sort of Orwellian nightmare that its opponents predicted. Nope. It's a perfect ray of sunlight in the dawn of America 2.0.

"There's the possibility of a recurrence of past abuses -- surveillance used against political opponents as in the Civil Rights era, the McCarthy era," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

"There's also an incidental erosion of personal privacy in which one now has to assume that anywhere you are, you are subject to overhead surveillance by the government. And that is a change in what it means to be an American," Aftergood said.

Hmm. The Federation of American Scientists criticizing the government. Conservative American clergy aligning itself with the government. Does anyone else feel the Ultimate Enlightenment Showdown of Ultimate Destiny breathing down their necks, or is that just me…?

[H/T Oddjob.]