The Homeland Security Department is relying more often and more broadly on geospatial information technology, including spy satellites, to collect and analyze intelligence for its counterterrorism and emergency response missions, raising domestic privacy concerns.

A new plan to allow emergency response, border control and, eventually, law enforcement agencies greater access to sophisticated satellites and other sensors that monitor American territory has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates who say the government is overstepping the use of military technology for domestic surveillance.

The Los Angeles Police Department is experimenting with facial-recognition software it says will help identify suspects, but civil liberties advocates say the technology raises privacy concerns and may not identity people accurately.

The author argues that placing privacy restrictions on government use of machines for intelligence gathering is neither practical or necessary.

Privacy advocate Jeffery Rosen finds that Americans are willing to freely give up their privacy if they feel it would make them safer.

Simson Garfinkel examines the privacy risks of Radio Frequency Identification tags.

In a world where sensor networking and location tracking technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated and prevalent, preserving privacy is an increasingly difficult challenge. Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder have addressed the problem with a way to set up networks of tiny sensors that allows users to gain useful traffic statistics but preserves privacy by cloaking location information for any given individual.

The authors warn that location-based surveillance technologies could be used by repressive regimes to enslave populations.

Jerome Dobson worries that 1984 may be just around the corner. Dobson, a University of Kansas research professor and president of the American Geographical Society, is concerned that technical advances carry the potential for bringing about George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a society that destroys privacy. This new threat, says Dobson -- a respected leader in the field of geographic information technologies -- is "geoslavery."

Given enough commercial and spy satellites, supplemented by aircraft and a ground system to marry it all together, the intelligence community might one day achieve the ultimate in coverage: constant, real-time surveillance of the planet.
But even without such coverage, imaging and other satellite technologies are already colliding with privacy concerns.