Department of Homeland Insecurity further Undermines US Safety

In another effort to undermine the security of the US, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano terminated a “controversial” spy satellite program designed to aid local law enforcement with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, including identifying areas that might be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The program has been criticized for its potential to lead to domestic spying, despite the fact that the satellites are not equipped with any eavesdropping capabilities. From the source:

The Obama administration plans to kill a controversial Bush administration spy satellite program at the Department of Homeland Security, according to officials familiar with the decision.

The program came under fire from its inception two years ago. Democratic lawmakers said it would lead to domestic spying.

The program would have provided federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery — but no eavesdropping capabilities— to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism.

The progam, known as the National Applications Office, was first launched during the Bush Administration, and hadn’t progressed much further than establishing office space and hiring a few employees. DHS employees spun the story as follows:

The plans to shutter the office signal Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s decision to refocus the department’s intelligence on ensuring that state and local officials get the threat information they need, the official said. She also wants to make the department the central point in the government for receiving and analyzing terrorism tips from around the country, the official added.

Huh? How does elimination of this spy satellite program – a federal program – impinge on the ability of local law enforcement to obtain “the threat information they need”? How – exactly – does elimination of one variety of unique information accomplish this? Furthermore, how – specifically – does elimination of this spy-satellite program ensure that the department is the central point for “receiving and analyzing terrorism tips from around the country”? It doesn’t… really. What it does is eliminate local law enforcement’s role in identifying local terrorism threats. This – apparently – centralizes the analysis of terrorist information and centralizes the source of terrorist tips.

In other words, Napolitano doesn’t want local law enforcement – the people who understand local dynamics and threats – to actually analyze local data for terrorist threats. This will in fact limit the amount of tips, etc coming into DHS. Under the spy satellite program what would likely happen is that local law enforcement would identify terrorist threats, and then notify DHS or perhaps the FBI. Perhaps this is the problem; perhaps Janet Napolitano doesn’t want any competition from the FBI.

In either case, it’s clear that the Obama administration doesn’t have the nation’s security in the forefront of their thoughts.

Perhaps the most absurd statement follows:

Lawmakers alerted Ms. Napolitano of their concerns about the program-that the program would violate the Fourth amendment right to be protected from unreasonable searches-before her confirmation hearing.

There are a few noteworthy things about this statement. Firstly I’ll preface this by stating that I’m have more than a passing familiarity with Napolitano’s career; I lived in Phoenix during a good portion of the time she was mucking things up in AZ, and her career is worth discussing in terms of the above quote.

Napolitano graduated as valedictorian from Santa Clara University, where she was also a recipient of a Truman Scholarship; she obtained her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Virginia School of Law. Following graduation from law school, Napolitano served as a law clerk for a Judge on the notoriously liberal US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Napolitano then joined the Phoenix law firm Lewis and Roca.

Napolitano would go on to become a partner in Lewis and Roca; while serving as a partner Napolitano acted as an attorney for Anita Hill when Hill testified in the U.S. Senate regarding allegations that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed Hill ten years earlier.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Napolitano as the United States Attorney for the District of Arizona. Napolitano won the position of Arizona Attorney General in 1998, and while serving in this position, she spoke at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. She went on to win the Arizona gubernatorial election in 2002.

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that a person with Napolitano’s background in law doesn’t need someone to elaborate on what might violate someone’s fourth amendment rights. Furthermore, if satellite images subject a person to unreasonable search and seizure, then surely Google Earth and other such satellite images constitute violations of privacy rights.

The fact of the matter is that photographs taken outside can’t even be construed as a search. If you can fly over something and clearly view it, that’s public not private domain. If it were private, law enforcement wouldn’t be permitted to search for things like marijuana farms via aircraft.

It doesn’t take a degree in law to recognize that.

Classifying this closure as an effort to prevent violations of the fourth amendment is extremely intellectually dishonest.

Once she assumed her post, Ms. Napolitano ordered a review of the program and concluded the program wasn’t worth pursuing, the homeland official said. Department spokeswoman Amy Kudwa declined to speak about the results of the review but said they would be announced shortly.

The lawmakers were most concerned about plans to provide satellite imagery to state and local law enforcement, so department officials asked state and local officials how useful that information would be to them. The answer: not very useful.

The interesting thing here is that Napolitano ordered a review of the program, and determined it wasn’t worth pursuing. This is of course prior to the program actually being implemented. Recall that only preliminary steps had been taken to begin the program; the program was not active. Napolitano was able to determine that this program was not worth pursuing before the program generated even a single data point.

Thank God for the omniscience of the Democrats.

The other noteworthy portion of this quote is concerned with local law enforcements opinion of the program. In this quote the program is alleged to have been described as “not very useful.” To support this assertion the following is offered:

“In our view, the NAO is not an issue of urgency,” Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, wrote to Ms. Napolitano on June 21.

This quote, a single quote from among those obtained from “state and local officials”, says the program is not an issue of urgency. It doesn’t say the program wouldn’t be useful. That the program isn’t an issue of urgency to police cheif of LA. With more than 500 murders, 1200 rapes, 16,000 robberies, 30,000 assaults, 25,000 burglaries, and 33,000 car thefts, which translates into violent crime rates that are about twice the national average (source), it’s not unreasonable that the police cheif wouldn’t consider satellite images “an issue of urgency.”

I’m sure that the Bush administration didn’t envision beat cops and police chiefs reviewing satellite images for terrorist threats. But none of this makes the information “not very useful”.

One point that could be a legitimate concern is detailed in the following quote:

… Chief Bratton said that were the program to go forward, the police chiefs would be concerned about privacy protections and whether using military satellites for domestic purposes would violate the Posse Comitatus law, which bars the use of the military for law enforcement in the U.S.

The reason I say “could” is because a cursory examination of the laws details suggests that it doesn’t apply to satellite images. Indeed a law passed in 1878 can’t consider or comment on satellite imagery. The spirit of this particular law is prohibition of federal military personnel, units of the National Guard, or military under federal authority, from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, with the exception of instances that are expressly authorized by the US Constitution.

Providing satellite images – in my mind – doesn’t constitute “acting in a law enforcement capacity” it’s simply providing data to local law enforcement.

Janet Napolitano is incompetent with respect to keeping this nation secure; the Obama administration has systematically undermined the policies and procedures that managed to keep us safe for nearly 8 years. No one – liberal, conservative, or otherwise – would have predicted that the US would not have been attacked again following 9/11. That we were kept safe was in a large part, if not entirely, due to the security measures implemented by the Bush administration following 9/11. Witnessing the rapidity with which the Obama administration is undermining not only the economy and the healthcare system, but also our national security is startling; it’s disturbing and makes me think and say something I thought I never would:

I miss George W. Bush.

~ by The Reactionary Researcher on June 24, 2009.