Won’t be able to post much today: my wife’s mother is in from out of town, so we’ll be doing a bit of entertaining—which amounts, roughly, to me tagging along wherever I’m told to go.
Usually I’m made to keep two paces behind the bread winner, but that’s only because my wife’s mom is fairly orthodox.
At any rate, before I head out shopping and to Wash Park, I’d like to point out (via AJ Strata) that Drudge is currently running the banner headline (in perhaps 60 pt font): “SPY AGENCY WATCHING AMERICANS FROM SPACE”—which, I suppose, is a stunning surprise to Matt, who must still be getting cable rather than Directv or Dish network.
Anyway, the key to understanding the HUGENESS of this story is clicking through to the My Way News story, where the following OUTRAGEOUS information is revealed:
A little-known spy agency that analyzes imagery taken from the skies has been spending significantly more time watching U.S. soil.
In an era when other intelligence agencies try to hide those operations, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, is proud of that domestic mission.
He said the work the agency did after hurricanes Rita and Katrina was the best he’d seen an intelligence agency do in his 42 years in the spy business.
“This was kind of a direct payback to the taxpayers for the investment made in this agency over the years, even though in its original design it was intended for foreign intelligence purposes,” Clapper said in a Thursday interview with The Associated Press.
Geospatial intelligence is the science of combining imagery, such as satellite pictures, to physically depict features or activities happening anywhere on the planet. A part of the Defense Department, the NGA usually operates unnoticed to provide information on nuclear sites, terror camps, troop movements or natural disasters.
After last year’s hurricanes, the agency had an unusually public face. It set up mobile command centers that sprung out of the backs of Humvees and provided imagery for rescuers and hurricane victims who wanted to know the condition of their homes. Victims would provide their street address and the NGA would provide a satellite photo of their property. In one way or another, some 900 agency officials were involved.
Spy agencies historically avoided domestic operations out of concern for Pentagon regulations and Reagan-era executive order, known as 12333, that restricted intelligence collection on American citizens and companies. Its budget, like all intelligence agencies, is classified.
On Clapper’s watch of the last five years, his agency has found ways to expand its mission to help prepare security at Super Bowls and political conventions or deal with natural disasters, such as hurricanes and forest fires.
With help, the agency can also zoom in. Its officials cooperate with private groups, such as hotel security, to get access to footage of a lobby or ballroom. That video can then be linked with mapping and graphical data to help secure events or take action, if a hostage situation or other catastrophe happens.
Privacy advocates wonder how much the agency picks up – and stores. Many are increasingly skeptical of intelligence agencies with recent revelations about the Bush administration’s surveillance on phone calls and e-mails.
Among the government’s most closely guarded secrets, the quality of pictures NGA receives from classified satellites is believed to far exceed the one-meter resolution available commercially. That means they can take a satellite “snapshot” from high above the atmosphere that is crisply detailed down to one meter level, which is 3.3 feet.
Clapper says his agency only does big pictures, so concerns about using the NGA’s foreign intelligence apparatus at home doesn’t apply.
Sure, that’s what he says. But why should we believe him?
Which means, of course, how can we even be sure there is such an agency? Or that these so-called “natural disasters” like forest fires and hurricanes even exist?
An enigma wrapped inside a riddle and tucked into Dick Cheney’s undisclosed location, is what this sounds like…
“We are not trying to examine an individual dwelling, for example, because what our mission is normally going to be is looking at large areas,” he said. “It doesn’t really affect or threaten anyone’s privacy or civil liberties when you are looking at a large collective area.”
When asked what additional powers he’d ask Congress for, he said, “I wouldn’t.”
Satellites taking pictures of the continental US that have the capabilities of close zooming.
Why, where’s the SIREN, Matt?
Or are you waiting to put that up when somebody clues you in about how the Doppler radar employed by, say, The Weather Channel, or your local news station, is “spying” on your neighborhood, taking in information about your the “private weather” systems.
AJ has a list of other nefarious “civil liberties” violators being foisted on us by this newfangled (and by newfangled, I mean “around since at least Val Kilmer did Real Genius”
technology, included in which is our own nefarious National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Covetous bastards.
Jeff,
I guess then when law enforcement helocopters fly above such ominous counties such as Humboldt here in California, looking for heat signatures which lead to the suspicion of indoor hydroponic marijuana farms, that is spying as well. Nice reach for the lefties….
This sort of thing probably seems like a bigger deal if you get your ideas from someone like Michael Moore, who actually shows up on satellite photos. How those guys will react once they get jobs and learn that the IRS keeps detailed financial records on everyone, I don’t even want to imagine.
OMG te4h topplesss grils sunbath 4TW!!1!!!!!11111
opne thred!
Google and Microsoft and Yahoo have this capability.
Anyone who uses those services to spy on their neighbors by bringing up an aerial photo or satellite photo of their neighborhood is just as guilty.
Guilty of peeking!!!!!!
TW:men Men like to peek.
Cripes.
All I can figure is there some sort of virus that turns people into morons.
Yeah, Google Earth – SPYING FOR TEH FASCISTS!
– So does this mean I’ll have to seek a refund and turn in all my copies of “keyhole”?
– And yet these pinheads think that people will be anxious to vote for them in National elections, watching them finally “discover” America is a nation of laws, and uses law enforcement to make sure all the mis-fits behave. Yes, that could happen…..
– Only children think knock knock jokes will work in the real world. This is why they’re out of power, and why they’ll stay that way until they stop all the dumb ass acts and get a party plan.
– Yesterdays news conferences with exact opposite messages from Schumer and Reid were priceless. The Dembulbs just keep getting kicked in the ass, over and over, by attacking Bush and the WOT, and they keep coming back for more. Brilliant strategy.
– The Dhimmcrabs know all too well that the security/WOT is “The” issue, followed very closely by the Border/immigration mess, which in some ways is very closely related to the WOT thing, and if they caan’t win that, they have no hope of regaing political power. But they took the wrong position from the begginning, and now they don’t know what the hell to do.
– Buah could ratchet up his job approval 30 points Monday night, just by doing what the majority of people want him too. Its that simple. The Donkeys are praying he doesn’t.
Back in the early 1970’s, shortly after the LANDSAT’s went up, government officials were all over my Grandpa for filling in some low spots that collected water on his lakefront property. Supposedly, this was “wetland destruction”.
But this sort of spying-on-Americans-by-the-Federal-Government has always been okay with the eco-left.
Only if they can be assured some taxpayers drown during flooding periods….
When Russell Tice, testifies before the Senate Armed Services Commettee, this week he may paint a better picture of what Lt.Gen. James Clapper, is training his satellites on in the USA. He may also know why shotgun Dick Cheney, was “demanding” that “domestic spying” be done on a large scale inside the USA. Or why Gen. Hayden, didn’t know that the 4th Ammendment to the Constitution, requires probable cause to obtain a warrant. The only “hero” in this mess seems to be Joseph P. Nacchio, of Qwest. Peace
Man, this high-tech spying is getting to be too much. The NSA sent me a notice when I was a week late putting my new registration stickers on my car.
And I’m getting sick of SWAT teams busting in on me when I’m in the shower and baking a Turkey Loaf in the oven because my house showed an “unusual heat bloom at odd hours.”
It’s getting so bad I just lay out some milk and cookies and a note in the front hall.
Me: “Hey, Jim, guys. Checking to see if I became a pot grower since last week?”
SWAT Captain: “Sorry, Dude, we just keep getting these work orders…”
ME: “I know. Want a soda? Watch Stargate reruns?”
SWAT Flunkie: “Sure. Hey, new couch!”
Another SWAT Flunkie: “Got any snacks?”
I mean, I like the company, but the damned doors are costing me a fortune.
Yeah…that’s what he said. I got a contact there and all I can say is, I think you should tell us about the day the ‘dillo, dressed in black spandex tights and a bright red wig, with loads of mascara was trying to hump the neighbor’s cat and you were trying to pull him away while holding onto your bottle of Guiness and bag of Doritos. I’m telling you, man, that was hilarious.
I couldn’t tell what you were more worried about – spilling your beer or ending up with a litter of ‘dillokittens.
I did like your rimless glasses though.
Oh…and if I were you…I wouldn’t go out the door without pants….I do hear that there is some kind of “enlargement” product on the market. Just saying.
Wow. I’m glad to hear Imhotep holds all Politicians to the standard that embarrassing mistakes and forgetting important things are grounds for dismissal.
I’m looking forward to the exodus.
Oh, wait, that only works for Republicans, silly me.
And for heavan’s sake, if we have high-resolution imaging that can be used for disaster recovery or search and rescue, for Heavan’s sake leave it lie fallow! At LEAST until a Democrat is in office!
And the zombies drone: “IMHOTEP! IMHOTEP! IMHOTEP!”
That one is easy, he was raised by bohemians who didn’t believe in television so he never got to see any cop shows growing up.
Now, your assignment for the weekend, imhotep, is to go to your room and ponder on the meaning of the word unreasonable.
According to Google Maps, I’m never at home. At least, my car’s never in its parking spot.
A little hint: break-away hinges. Saved me a fortune.
Just so you know, those maps aren’t updated with any frequency – they’re generally from a few years back.
The apartment building I just moved out of after two years is a dirt field on Google maps, and you can even see the car I sold last year parked at a workplace that is now vacant – and has been for nearly a year.
Just me being pedantic, as usual.
Is Imhotep, the guy who, snuck all those extra, commas into, the 2nd Amendment?
I’m not sure I’m following their explanation of the resolution issue, which seems to be telling me that the SPY AGENCY can take pictures with 1-meter resolution, unlike commercially available photos which only have 1-meter resolution. All I know is they’re going to have to do a lot better than that to read the titles on my library books. That’s what the privacy-invading bastards are after, right?
I’m waiting for someone at Hayden’s confirmation hearing to ask, “And how did you get THAT personal information from your SUPPOSEDLY telephone-number-only database?”, and have the General respond, “We Googled it.”…
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don’t need to see any more
To know that
I can read your mind, I can read your mind
tw: Under my dominion.
The last laugh will be mine: I’ve been rearranging the flowerpots so they spell out SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES when viewed from space. Soon Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper and his spooks will be slaves to my will!
Hmmm…I wonder how the NYT feels about their new office building being viewable from space on Google?
BUSH SPIES, DEMOCRACY DIES!!! (or something like that).
And while I’m at it…this satellite spying stuff isn’t anything new, folks. Judas Priest chronicled it in their brilliant socio-political opus, “Electric Eye” from their seminal 1982 metal masterpiece, “Screaming For Vengeance.”
If Rob Halford knew this stuff in ‘82, what did the President know and when did he know it?
Word.
Up here in space
I’m looking down on you
My lasers trace
Everything you do
You think you’ve private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
I’m watching all the time
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye
Always in focus
You can’t feel my stare
I zoom into you
You don’t know I’m there
I take a pride in probing all your secret moves
My tearless retina takes pictures that can prove
Electric eye, in the sky
Feel my stare, always there
There’s nothing you can do about it
Develop and expose
I feed upon your every thought
And so my power grows
Well, if lousy B-movie thrillers can teach us anything (and, let’s face it–what *can’t* they teach us?) the CIA mainly uses satellite imaging technology to spy on topless chicks sunbathing in their back yards and to pointlessly chase Will Smith all over Washington, D.C.
I have no problem with that.
spamword: maybe, as in–*maybe* I’ve been given the wrong impression.
You’ve got to remember that Drudge isn’t the brightest bulb on the circuit. Once, right before New Year’s Eve a few years back, he had a big screaming headline about Los Angeles cops using satellites to locate gunfire. I read the article, and it was clear the microphones picking up the sound were on the police cars; a little GPS on the cars, and a little computer-aided triangulation, and you can locate gunfire. The only satellites involved were for the GPS.
I e-mailed that to Drudge.
This was his entire reply, verbatim:
That’s it. No thought process, just a parrot who saw a word. I replied, pointing out that sound can’t travel into space and that “reporters make bad engineers” or something similarly complementary.
Drudge finds interesting leads and links, but he isn’t too sharp.
This is a trifle confusing; I use commercial aerial and satellite imagery on a somewhat regular basis, and I had to read this a couple times to understand it. I’ve dealt a bit with DoD imagery products as well.
For clarification: “Resolution” in satellite imagery is exactly same as in any camera, but follows digital cameras most closely. Each photo is made of pixels; the size of the pixel determines how much detail is captured in the photo. The more pixels, the more details. It helps to think of a pixel as a dot of a given diameter.
10 meter (33 feet) resolution, for example, means you can see large objects (terrain formations, urban areas, down to large buildings), but nothing smaller. You could see a semi-truck, but not a Honda Accord. This is good for small scale mapping
1 meter (3.3 feet) resolution means you can see individual cars, and maybe guess at the models, or (more likely) tell the difference between different categories (e.g., SUV versus small sedan). You won’t see people, unless they are massed together. (With the definite exception of Michael Moore.
)
So the commercial 1 meter imagery is good for scientific analysis, storm damage estimation, land use surveys, etc. But for intelligence? Of very limited use, unless you are looking for filled in wetlands (as noted above), illegal construction, or marijuana farms.
(As a side note, anything with a higher resolution comes from national technical means, which means those products are automatically classified. I’m not aware of commercial sources with that level of resolution available.)
But what people don’t realize about any imagery products is that analysing them is incredibly labor intensive. Maybe there are software applications that can screen out false readings, but as a rule, one person has to examine each photo. My own (admittedly limited) experience in this arena caused me to quickly learn that satimages must be focused as much as possible, or you can spend hours looking for small details amongst much chaff.
It’s possible, of course, to evaluate all of the homes in a given city from such imagery. But that’s expensive, and given the other pressing needs, I expect that satimages are requested only if deemed necessary, and then for a very specific location.
And even then, what are they looking for? Imagery doesn’t go inside buildings, or under trees. Take a picture of a license plate? I dunno if that’s possible, but if so, which one? On which day? I suppose one could keep a copy of all satellite imagery forever, and have a record (of sorts) of what happened at a given spot, and compare changes over a period of time. If you knew you needed photos of that location.
But a single high resolution color image takes megabytes of storage (depends on the format, area covered, and exact resolution). Very soon, you are into gigabyte size folders for one county. Multiply that by the size of the United States, and data storage on that scale (you’d have to store every single image ever taken by a satellite just to be sure you didn’t miss anything) would [I think] overwhelm current technology….or someone’s IT budget. Take your choice as to which would come first.
So, yeah, it’s theoretically possible. But I’ll bet it’s focused on specific targets, much like Clapper discusses. That simply makes more sense. And a very reasonable use of this resource.
You think you have problems? I bought a lawn chair from the Salvation Army once, and the NRO keeps sending jackbooted thugs over because the cushion on it doesn’t have one of those “Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law” tags. And worse, they never tell me where I can buy one of those tags.
I guess the moral is, “don’t buy from the Salvation Army.”
OMG KRal rove is teh binonic man!11!!!!!!!!
Real_JeffS, I’m sorry I didn’t know you were in a related field. I’d have invited you to Reno to the convention last week (dutch treat, unfortunately).
Bottom line: there are commercial satellites up there with half-meter resolution, and plans for quarter-meter.
The folks I sell to, and fix things for, routinely use two 500 megabyte color images simultaneously for stereo analysis. It is now relatively common to find terabyte storage servers, sometimes several of them. Storage is no longer a real problem in a world containing 200 gigabyte and larger disk drives, and computers are now fast enough to “pan” smoothly across that entire image set.
A 500 megabyte image represents about a ten micron pixel size on the image, which depending on aircraft height above ground may represent anything from three inches to a meter or so in the scene. (Yes, this is still mostly done from aircraft). Satellite images are still restricted to general and synoptic coverage. Electronic sensors still aren’t quite big enough. Your satellite can read a license plate. It probably has to zoom back out to tell what make of car it’s on, though. And unless you have access to DOD-level funding, forget picking your time. The satellite comes by when it comes by—the average is every 18 days, though some can be two or three times a year—and if it’s cloudy that day you get to wait for the next “pass”.
Those images on Google Earth came from somewhere, and my customers are the most probable source if the resolution is a foot or better, as it is over most of the US and Canada, Australia, and much of the area we think of as “the West”.
Coming soon: Microsoft Virtual Earth. Cross the images with a wireframe model of the ground and any buildings. Result: a shooter-game-level model of the entire planet, which can be called up on your computer screen (do get high speed access, do.) I confess I don’t see how they’re going to make any money off it, but they’re only spending a billion or so to set it up. Bill needs his hobbies.
For about $2500 I can buy an aircraft image of your house and environs (location thoughtfully provided by Google) sufficiently detailed to map the crabgrass in your lawn and determine your daughter’s cup size. No licensing, permitting, or other bureaucracy required, unless you live near enough to an airport to require special access control. The contractor has to notify Homeland Security, which is done by fax or email, but there isn’t any permission involved. Pre 9/11 the only consideration was altitude restrictions over cities.
If anybody’s going to make a civil liberties case out of surveillance from the skies, they’re either drinking the Kool-Aid or too ignorant to pound sand.
Regards,
Ric
Drudge is a useful reminder of how functionally illiterate about the world we live in so many people are.
THEY USE SATELLITES. THE FAIRIES MAKE THE SHOES.
I gotta try that at next week’s march. “Foolish MoveOnBots, why do you march against us in vain? WE USE SATELLITES.”
Bill is God. Allah is a punk. (No, not the funny one.)
Oh great Bill, bring us the planet and a description of her nooks and crannies. We beseech you! In your great wisdom, you’ll save me all kinds of gas money, for I will dial shit up and peep it out instead of sclhepping my ass across
yourHis creation to look at the same shit in person. And I will be grateful.tw: Boy in a man’s world.
Problem is that Osama is still making TV appearances and he’s in Pakistan or Afghanistan so maybe Clapper should re-direct his spy equipment so it’s looking for him and not Steven Colbert. Peace
>An enigma wrapped inside a riddle<
I guess I could go for one of those, as long as it has a chewy nougat center. Whatever the fuck nougat is.
Imhotep,
So all of your comments must have at least two false statements in them?
Normally my spam consists of pitches for a fairly wide range of products—dating services, ways to turn a $40 investment into million$, that sort of thing.
Yesterday I went outside without a hat. All day today my spam has consisted of nothing but pitvhes for Rogaine.
TW: Brother
Big.
Some spy agency called “the I.R.S.” keeps detailed financial records on every American? Does Congress know about this?
Jeff, it’s even worse than we feared. Today I was driving down the street and a policeman looked at me–WITHOUT A WARRANT! He looked at me–can you believe it?!!
And maybe it’s just me, but “General Hayden” looks a lot like Karl Rove–I smell body-double! What have you bastards done with the real Gen. Hayden?
Someone–anyone–make the black helicopters stop! Please!
Ric:
I’m not surprised, it was only a matter of time. There’s money in providing that service, although I think they’ll have to do some selling; I can imagine using satellites in lieu of aircraft under a number of different circumstances. But aerial photography will never go away, it’s too flexible.
I’m only a customer for these services, however. I buys them and uses them, I do. Still, I had to learn some stuff to know what I’m asking for, beyond college courses 20 years old. I wish I still had a decent desktop stereoscope; for reasons too long to discuss here, the rat bastards got rid of them long ago.
But I quite agree with you on the intrusiveness already present today. I use Google Earth at work routinely, to pull up imagery of unexpected parts of my agency’s region, and do a rough terrain analysis. I also impress the hell out of the senior staff, who tend to view such things as black magic. And that’s just from the public access portion; my agency is either too cheap or too iggerant to go for the subscription service. Go figure.
(I demonstrate Google Earth for the uninitiated by zooming in on their house, from the address they give me. The technogeeks are awed, everyone else is concerned. Again, go figure.)
My point on the data storage was not that it’s technically impossible. My home network is approaching 1 terrabyte in storage, spread over a network, and it’s going past that in the not too distant future. Data storage is cheap.
But I am looking at government agencies, who generally have limited IT budgets (see above paragraph regarding Google Earth), the non-intelligence types anyway. And at 500MB per image, that means roughly 2000 images per terrabyte. That’s not as much space as one would think, not when you are looking at a region covering 3 states.
If someone is going to do an trend analysis of a suspect, they need data. If we are discussing imagery for a lot of suspects, your data storage needs goes up sharply.
Again, not impossible, but not the common tool people think that it is within Federal agencies (can’t say about states). Too many people think satellites work like Hollywood portrays them.
As a commercial service, however, this becomes feasible. The costs are spread out, and the Feds need not worry about IT limitations. Contracts are the ultimate cure-all, you see. Plus there are business and research aspects of being able to access high resolution satellite imagery, even if it is a year old. Land use analysis comes to mind. Captures of baseline or pre-existing conditions for a given event (e.g., forest fire) might be another.
So Bill has a potential high pay-off here. But only potential—he needs to sell it to people who have relied on traditional data collection techniques (i.e., aerial photography, ground surveys).
I actually had a conference in Reno last week! I would have, I should say, but some unexpected problems cropped up, and I had to cancel. Funny how that works, eh?
Thanks for the info!
I have a terrabyte of storage at home. A couple of days ago at work we ordered 4 x 750GB drives for 2000$ and we will relocate the 6 300GB drives somewhere else – like my desktop!
Anyone who makes an issue of satellite photos being illegal is a certifiable moron.
Hmmm.
Joy. I wonder if there is any sort of ridiculous useless pointless issue that they won’t bring up?
Hmmm.
Pr0n collector extraordinaire!
Jeff_S,
I’ll bet we’re talking about the same convention. Coincidence can stretch only so far. If you want a “desktop stereoscope” send me email. We’re pack rats around my place. Pocket, magnifying, or mirror? Somewhere around there we have a folding mirror stereoscope, made in Australia of plastic, that I think is intact. If you can get the case open without destroying it you’re eligible to apply for Australian citizenship, according to the makers twenty years ago.
The business model for Microsoft Virtual Earth still isn’t clear to me. They’re throwing around all the usual buzzwords—“immersive experience” and the like—and I think what they’re suggesting is the ability to specify a street corner in, say, Beirut, and have the system produce the scene as it would appear if you were standing there. I haven’t calculated the required storage for that to work, but I reckon if you divided the land area of the Earth into 5 cm. cells, doubled that (for the sides of buildings etc.), and assigned four bytes to each pixel, you’d come close. That needs a large budget for storage, even if you’re Microsoft. They might be able to fake it once if they’re willing to spend the money, but there aren’t enough airplanes and cameras on the planet to keep it current, not within two orders of magnitude. It may be that what they’re planning is advertising; while you’re climbing the virtual Matterhorn you get virtual billboards.
The thing is, the project is ridiculously expensive, but it isn’t ridiculous per se. As recently as ten years ago the ability to do detailed stereo work on a computer screen wasn’t exactly eye-popping, but it was certainly a bit remarkable; twenty years ago it wasn’t even a credible dream for the far-out technologists.
Which leads back to the original subject of the post. It’s very, very hard to argue that what you look like, or what your house looks like, isn’t public data—anybody walking by either one can see it, and we don’t issue licenses for walking by. Anybody you call can get your phone number, and the phone company can get anybody’s phone number, as demonstrated by the fact that they can connect you to any phone on the planet.
Underneath all the hysteria there’s a genuine philosophical question: is there a point at which a quantitative difference becomes a qualitative one? That is, John Q. Public can walk by your house and see what it looks like. Ansel A. Public can carry a camera along and take a picture. Orville W. Public can fly over in a plane and take detailed pictures, at the same time applying GPS coordinates accurate to three centimeters (don’t laugh; the service costs $2K per month from any of three vendors I could refer you to) and collecting enough data to create a reconstruction, down to a close estimate of your electric bill. Is there a point where that becomes intrusive to the point of tort, worthy of regulation? Does it make a difference whether it’s the Government doing it, or Microsoft doing it, or Jeffrey D. Public doing it?
We don’t have answers to those questions. Hell, we’ve barely begun to ask those questions. You and I both go to work daily assuming that the data is unquestionably public, thus our jobs are no problem to anyone. That may not be a good assumption, but I don’t see any justification anywhere for saying it isn’t, or for deciding where to draw the line if it isn’t.
Which is what really, really pisses me off about the hysterical Left. It’s become more and more obvious to me that one of the things that qualifies people to become Leftist moonbats is an unerring sense for detecting evasion of, or failure to consider, hard questions, coupled with an infallible ability to zero in on the most spectacular and least germane aspects of the subject(s) and blow them so far out of proportion that serious debate leading to rational answers becomes totally impossible for everybody, including themselves. Reducing everything to snark and absolutism is not helpful.
Regards,
Ric
Ric:
E-mail on the way, but I doubt we were going to the same convention, merely the same town (Reno) which is a major convention center.
How true, how true! A point I hadn’t considered, making this a source of “privacy invasion” moot. It would have to selectively targeted, else you fall behind schedule in your photo shots. And it makes the business model a lot harder to be successful. But I suppose Bill has a lot of surplus capital. Too bad he can’t slide some my way.
Yeah, your storage numbers are better than mine. This would be a tough case, even for Microsoft. However, it’s possible that the business would target “high value” areas, and perhaps reduce the overall storage requirement, although I haven’t a clue how to define that for satellite imagery; this is not the same thing as focusing X-Box advertisements to teenagers.
Just so. And if one extends the logic of the privacy invasion hysterics, telemarketing should be a federal crime, perhaps on the same order as terrorism (well, one can wish so, anyway….we could make spam a capital crime!
).
But the philosophical question, as you say, remains. Just where do we draw the privacy line at? The bedroom door? Ethical standards?
Equally important, I think, is that people need to understand just what is private, and what can’t be. Walking down the street while talking on a cell phone is hardly a private conversation. Yet if you or I interjected a comment into the (to us) one-sided conversation, we would be considered rude. And rightfully so, even if the other guy was being rude as well (which might be the case).
Courtesy comes into play here. Plus a sense of reality that much of what we do is not private, however much we want it to be.
Well put!!!!