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.
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.
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."