DHS Uses Wartime Mega-Camera to Watch Border

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Apr 022012
 

DHS Uses Wartime Mega-Camera to Watch Border

 

WIRED

By Spencer Ackerman

April 2, 2012

 

 

The Department of Homeland Security wants to mount a powerful camera on a Raven Aerostar blimp like this to spy on miles of border at once. Photo: Raven

 

 

One legacy of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has arrived on the southern border of the United States. The Department of Homeland Security recently completed tests of a powerful camera, one that cut its teeth in the war zones, that captures video of entire miles of border in a single frame. DHS thinks mega-cameras on blimps and aerostats might be the future of border security — if its analysts can only keep up with the glut of data they’ll gather.

The system itself, a wide-area surveillance camera suite known as Kestrel, earned its stripes during the wars. That got DHS interested. “You had this imager flying that was able to archive and save imagery and reconstruct [bomb] emplacement so troops could go after [insurgents] later,” John Applebee, who manages the border camera program for DHS, tells Danger Room. “It also was used for other things every day, like troop protection or perimeter protection, just as we imagine its uses along the continental borders of the United States.”

So for a week of tests, the department mounted Logos Technologies’ Kestrel imager on a 75-foot long Raven Aerostar aerostat tethered 2000 feet above the Arizona desert. DHS reports in a statement that Kestrel helped spot “more than 100 illegal attempted entries and alleged illicit activities in progress.”

“We can see miles from this with a single image frame,” Applebee enthuses. “Within every pixel, you have high-resolution, good, detailed resolution, like high-d-caliber imagery. In every frame, across the frame.”

This is hardly the first time that wartime surveillance technology has made its way home from the battlefield. DHS flies unarmed drones above the northern and southern U.S. borders, snapping pictures. (They carry an “excellent camera system,” Applebee allows, but unlike Kestrel, “you need to know where to point it.”) Police departments nationwide have started using smaller spy drones as well. Earlier this year, DHS expressed interest in camera systems that can spy on four square miles at once, well within the range of the military’s new mega-cameras. Kestrel’s 360-degree camera suite is a step in that direction.

But the migration of those military tools comes the migration of some of the military’s problems. Specifically: the “persistent” video taken by the powerful cameras creates a fire hose of data that analysts struggle to interpret.

And if the glut of video overwhelms the military, DHS — whose annual budget is under $60 billion, an order of magnitude less than the Pentagon’s — is in deep trouble. Applebee is up front about it. “They have the people,” he says. “We do not.”

The answer, he hopes, will come from software. “We’re looking closely at the developments in the military and intelligence communities for ways the software and analysis can be automated, so can we use software tools as a tripwire to signal us and call agent to attention once [the camera observes] a movement has occurred in a given region,” Applebee says. Darpa, the Pentagon’s blue-sky researchers, for instance, are interested in something akin to a “thinking camera” that pre-sorts imagery according to an algorithm based on what an analyst hopes to find.

And perhaps after those pre-selecting imagery tools come online for the military, it won’t take long before civilian law enforcement puts them to use. Applebee certainly hopes so. He sees the wide-eyed Kestrel as a huge help for “securing large areas from illegal intrusion.” Imagine what the next generation of cameras will let him see.

 

Direct Link:  http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/homeland-border-camera/#more-77264

After Struggle on Detainees, Obama Signs Defense Bill

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Jan 012012
 

After Struggle on Detainees, Obama Signs Defense Bill

The New York Times
By
 December 31, 2011

 

 

HONOLULU —

 

President Obama, after objecting to provisions of a military spending bill that would have forced him to try terrorism suspects in military courts and impose strict sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, signed the bill on Saturday.

He said that although he did not support all of it, changes made by Congress after negotiations with the White House had satisfied most of his concerns and had given him enough latitude to manage counterterrorism and foreign policy in keeping with administration principles.

“The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it,” Mr. Obama said in a statement issued in Hawaii, where he is on vacation. “I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”

The bill authorizes $662 billion in military spending through 2012. It is a smaller amount than the Pentagon had asked for, but it does not impose the radical cuts that the military faces in coming years.

The White House had said that the legislation could lead to an improper military role in overseeing detention and court proceedings and could infringe on the president’s authority in dealing with terrorism suspects. But it said that Mr. Obama could interpret the statute in a way that would preserve his authority.

The president, for example, said that he would never authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens, because “doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.” He also said he would reject a “rigid across-the-board requirement” that suspects be tried in military courts rather than civilian courts.

Congress dropped a provision in the House version of the bill that would have banned using civilian courts to prosecute those suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda. It also dropped a new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda and its allies.

Civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, still oppose the law, in part because of its authorization of military detention camps overseas. But Mr. Obama’s signature is likely to settle, at least for now, the battle between the White House and Congress over executive authority in the treatment of detainees.

The White House also wrestled with Congress over requirements that the United States punish foreign financial firms that purchase Iranian oil, including through Iran’s central bank. Such a step would greatly increase the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

But the administration feared that if the measures were imposed too hastily, they could disrupt the oil market, driving up prices and alienating countries, including close allies, that the United States is seeking to enlist in its pressure campaign against Iran.

Under the terms of the bill, Mr. Obama can delay sanctions by six months to assess their impact on oil prices. The president can also apply to Congress for a waiver exempting a country’s financial firms from sanctions, if he determines that the country significantly reduced its purchases of Iranian oil in the preceding 180 days. Or he can apply for a waiver exempting a country on national security grounds.

Senate Republicans, who pushed for the tougher sanctions, said it would be difficult for Mr. Obama to invoke a waiver, since it could make him look weak on Iran in an election year. But the administration said it was committed to imposing the sanctions.

“We have to do it in a timely way and phased way to avoid repercussions to the oil market, and make sure the revenues to Iran are reduced,” said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But we believe we can do that.”

 

Direct Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-signs-military-spending-bill.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha24

China: Google Earth spots huge, unidentified structures in Gobi desert

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Nov 272011
 

China: Google Earth spots huge, unidentified structures in Gobi desert
THE TELEGRAPH
By Malcolm Moore, Shanghai and Thomas Harding, Defence correspondent
14 Nov 2011

 

 


China: Google Earth spots huge, unidentified structures in Gobi desert

Vast, unidentified, structures have been spotted by satellites in the barren Gobi desert, raising questions about what China might be building in a region it uses for its military, space and nuclear programmes.

In two images, available on Google Earth, reflective rectangles up to a mile long can be seen, a tangle of bright white intersecting lines that are clearly visible from space.

Other pictures show enormous concentric circles radiating on the ground, with three jets parked at their centre.

In one picture from 2007, a mass of orange blocks have been carefully arranged in a circle. In a more recent image, however, the blocks, each one the size of a shipping container, appear to have been scattered as far as three miles from the original site.

Another image shows an array of metallic squares littered with what appears to be the debris of exploded vehicles while another shows an intricate grid that is some 18 miles long.

All of the sites are on the borders of Gansu province and Xinjiang, some less than 100 miles from Jiuquan, the headquarters of China’s space programme and the location of its launch pads.

The two reflective rectangles lie 70 miles from the nearest main road and there is no sign of any surrounding activity. However, Ding Xin military airbase, where China carries out its secret aircraft testing programme, is relatively nearby, at a distance of some 400 miles.

400 miles in the other direction is Lop Nur, the salt lakes where China tested 45 nuclear bombs between 1967 and 1995.

The purpose of the structures is unknown, but some experts suggested that they might be optical test ranges for Chinese missiles, to simulate the street grids of cities.

Tim Ripley, a defence expert from Jane’s Defence Weekly, compared the structures to similar grids in Area 51, the secret United States military test base in Nevada. “The picture of the circle looks very like a missile test range, with target and instrumentation set out to record weapon effects. The Americans have lots of these in Nevada – Area 51!” he said.

Conspiracy theorists believe that Area 51 is home to the remains of an alien spacecraft found at Roswell, and there was no shortage on Monday of similar hypotheses about the Chinese sites.

“It looks like our own Area 51,” said one commenter on Baidu, a Chinese website. “Can it be an alien base,” asked another. “It looks like solar energy facilities, with a walkway along the side,” said a third.

Direct Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8888909/China-Google-Earth-spots-huge-unidentified-structures-in-Gobi-desert.html