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...to contract with Google to do it for them.

Why build when you can outsource?

From the article:
"Napolitano recently reached her decision after the program was discussed with law enforcement officials, and she was told it was not an urgent issue, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it."*

Later on:
"Bratton, in his role as head of the Major City Chiefs Association, wrote on June 21 that the program, as envisioned by the Bush administration, is not an urgent need for local law enforcement."*

*(Emphasis mine)

Anonymity. Yes, we've heard of it.

      -dZ.

A problem with camera surveillance, is much more innocent than criminal behavior is in view, so a fairly high proportion of suspicious behavior is actually innocent behavior that looks improbably suspicious. Statistically, its the same problem as with false positives in drug tests. Compounding this problem is that when law enforcement is impersonal and from a distance, the accused often is not given a fair, face-to-face chance to defend themselves before having their lives temporarily wrecked. By the time it goes to trial, it has already cost large legal fees and possibly employment.

In my own arrest a few years ago, for innocent behavior that looked suspicious from afar, I was never once interviewed by a law enforcement officer or prosecutor and given a chance to tell my story, right up to the morning of the trial.

There was to me surprisingly little public comment when the domestic satellite surveillance program was announced a couple of years ago. Its nice that the Obama administration seems to be doing the right thing with this anyway.

The title would be less exciting if it read "Bush and Obama has never used satellites to spy on Americans".

Bush didn't use spy satellites our of privacy and civil liberty concerns. Got it.

Now that we are straight on this particular issue, let the Bush bashing begin.

"... overhead and mapping imagery from existing satellites for homeland security and law enforcement purposes.."

From what I have heard from certain people, they already have been doing this since Regan. The largest use for this was domestically was tracking the drug trade including but not limited to:

Large distribution rings by tracking differential images for trafficing patterns (e.g. large number of cars at 2 am at a pier that only stick around for a hour or two)

Using the IR module for finding growers in remote areas with camoed green houses.

Using the information to track abnormal warehouse activity.

Spying seems a slanted term since the cops don't SPY on people, they investigate. Same with the FBI and ATF.

So what we really have is DHS decides for what appear to be largely buget issues, not taking the information, THAT IS ALREADY BEING COLLECTED, and using it for DHS purposes. Since the DHS is a new agency they probably didn't have access to that data. This sounds largely like a formality to get them access to the data. Now the DHS will have to step through the FBI and local law enforcement channels which was the whole reason we created the DHS in the first place.

Seriously, this amounts to "The cops can use it, the FBI can use it, but the 'new' intelligence community can't." Here contract a plane to get your imagining instead.

If there was a privacy issue why not raise it when ATF raids a pot grower? Why now and not under Regan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2? And why no outcry over the fact it has been used for years already? Surely the use of images from those darn helicopters and airplanes must be a privacy conern also? Right? You know those images you can get from the county and local city... Hello? Sensible Dissent where are you? (in my best Shaggy impersonation).

The program was included in the Obama administration's 2010 budget request

It seems the opening paragraph should have said, "The Obama administration had plans in place to use spy satellites to spy on American citizens." On the other hand, why let the facts get in the way of a good line?