BIG BROTHER SPIES ON WHOM?

For nearly a half century a primary influence upon all our lives
has been the fact that Russia exist as an implacable, unswervable
danger to our way of life.  Thus we justify confiscatory taxes,
mushrooming government spending, various "police actions" in
which a good many "policemen" died, and, for a long time, a
peacetime draft.  And, although they are much less in the public
eye, spy satellites.

I believe most Americans would be surprised to learn of the
enormity of this satellite network, not only in terms of the
hardware in space, but also the hardware on earth required to
service it, and the large number of people involved in the
systems.  Of course, all of this expenditure of valuable
resources is justified by that old bugaboo, Communism.  But now
that Communism is being discarded - at least in its most obvious
and inefficient form - won't this satellite network be allowed to
fade away?  I don't think so.  In fact, as the idea of one-world
government becomes ever closer to reality, the existing satellite
systems will fit into the picture so perfectly that one might
almost believe that surveillance of our Russian "enemies" was
merely a ruse to get the stuff into space in the first place.  I
am assuming that, gathered under one super-government by means of
one-world currency, there might be among us at least a few
individuals who feel sufficiently oppressed to attempt to refrain
their freedom.  A sort of underground, in other words.  But Big
Brother is watching, and far more efficiently than George Orwell
ever dreamed.

For almost twenty years now, a satellite names Rhyolite has been
able to monitor telephone calls from space.  In fact, it can
monitor 11,000 such calls simultaneously.  Additionally, it can
listen in on walkie-talkie communications, and intercept
telemetry signals.  Newer satellites of the same type, over
twenty-two thousand miles in space, can intercept microwave
transmissions and radio traffic.

Of course, there are the old plain-Jane photographic type spy
satellites, too.  Armed with image-enhancement devices, these can
give incredible data.  For instance, the KH-11 satellite,
equipped with something akin to a telescope with flexible mirrors
to adapt to the distortions of the atmosphere, can read the
license plates of the cars in your driveway!  If you happed to
leave a copy of this Bulletin in your back yard, the
reconnaissance expert who studies the images from this satellite
may be able to read the society's name from the top of this page.

The Lacrosse satellite doesn't use light waves to record images -
that would limit its use to clear skies and daylight.  Rather, it
beams microwaves down to earth, and measures their reflected
energy on a grid of thousands of detectors on panels twelve by
forty-eight feet!  From two hundred and seventy-five miles above
the earth, this technology can yield images of objects as small
as three feet across, day or night, cloud cover or not.
Incidentally, this satellite costs about half a billion - in the
same league as the B2 bomber.  There are critics aplenty of this
"Stealth" aircraft, but I've heard no criticism of the stealth
satellite.  Of course, the aircraft is only useful in bombing
enemy targets, whereas the satellite can assist in bringing
troublemakers under control without all that messy nuclear debris
and loss of property.

So we are free men and women, right?  Yes, sure we are.  Of
course, the government can keep track of our spending via the
paper trail we leave with checks and credit cards.  When the
magnetic stripes are put into our currency, it will even be able
to tell the amount of money we're carrying as we pass through
detectors, without our even being aware of it.  If we attend a
seminar on, let us say, "personal freedom," our license plates
may be detected from hundreds of miles away, via satellite.  Our
phone calls can be overheard without the clumsy and detectable
addition of a "bug" to our line; and should we become so paranoid
as to communicate by walkie-talkie, even that will be heard by
Big Brother.  Don't even think about ham radio!

It is especially galling that all of this is justified by the
need for "security".  Security for whom?  Does the rabbit feel
secure, knowing he is watched by the fox?

From:  The Bulletin of the Monetary Realist Society,
       July 1990, #120
       P.O. Box 31044,
       St. Louis, Mo. 63131