The Bush administration will start using the country’s most advanced spy technologies for domestic surveillance despite questions from congressional critics over the system’s legality. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the new domestic satellite surveillance office—the National Applications Office (NAO)—will be activated in stages according to Spencer S. Hsu’s account in the Washington Post.
In response to queries from Representatives Jane Harman (D-California) and Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi), Chertoff wrote that “there is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.”
According to Hsu’s report, the Bush administration “in May 2007 gave [the Department of Homeland Security] authority to coordinate requests for satellite imagery, radar, electronic-signal information, chemical detection and other monitoring capabilities that have been used for decades within U.S. borders for mapping and disaster response.” Congress delayed the office’s opening by forbidding Homeland Security from funding it last October, citing its potential to use military assets in domestic law enforcement, lack of adequate public debate, and diversion of research work on satellites to security uses.
Congressional critics insist the administration has failed to disclose what federal laws govern the NAO and point out that the office’s size and budget are classified.
Meanwhile, the US Senate is pursuing the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which, if passed, would also fall under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security. This measure passed the US House of Representatives last year with virtually no media attention or debate. The legislation would create a permanent federal commission to investigate dissenting individuals and subversives domestically. The Senate bill is sponsored by Susan Collins (R-Maine) and co-sponsored by Minnesota’s own Norm Coleman. The House bill was sponsored, ironically—or not—by Jane Harman (D-California).
Peter Erlinder, former National Lawyers Guild president and William Mitchell law professor told Steve Perry at Minnesota Monitor:
“If politically motivated violence is what this war [the ‘war on terror’] is about, we can put virtually any definition to it that we choose to. Even, for example, something like a demonstration against the World Trade Organization where there might be some broken windows. Even the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul this fall would carry with it the possibility that there might be some acts that are not completely passive. Under this definition, anyone associated with those acts, even if they didn’t intend the result, could conceivably find themselves being investigated by a commission like this.”
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