Page 152 - Elana Freeland - Under an Ionized Sky

viewers to buy equipment to descramble the signals. 50
The U.S. Navy launched Seasat in 1978 and Geosat in 1985 purportedly to bounce satellite
radar off ocean surfaces to measure the topography and gravity of sea surface and floor. But
Navy survey ships had already mapped the oceans with sonar and probed the deep chasms
cutting across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean basins, so it is probable that Seasat and
Geosat were measuring and recording much more than topography and gravity.
By the close of 2010, satellite surveillance had moved further toward the Space Fence
imminence. Three satellites were launched that cast a 3.2G LTE wireless broadband “net” over
the Earth. First, the American corporation LightSquared launched SkyTerra 1, a seventy-two-
foot L-band (1–2GHz) reflector-based antenna with five hundred spot beams able to focus
11,900 watts of power anywhere in North America—the largest, most powerful commercial
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antenna reflector ever put in orbit. Ten days later, the UK’s Avanti Communications, in concert
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with the European Space Agency, launched Hylas 1 with a 2.6-ton antenna to provide two-way
coverage across Europe, and the French corporation Eutelsat Communications launched KA-
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SAT with eighty-two spot beams. (In August 2012, Hylas 2 extended coverage to the Middle
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East and Africa. )
In 2014, Google bought SkyBox Imaging, SkyBox being a refrigerator-sized spy satellite on
the cheap, rather like a roving CCTV that captures high resolution:

Just one week after Google announced they’d purchased SkyBox, the US Department of Commerce lifted restrictions
on high resolution, allowing commercial satellites to trade in what’s been called “manholes and mailboxes” imagery. .
.Clive Evans, lead imagery investigator with LGC Forensics: “When you reach this sort of frequency you can begin to
add in what we call ‘pattern of life’ analysis. This means looking at activity in terms of movement—not just
identification.” 55

Google’s 2016 DigitalGlobe WorldView-4 now trumps WorldView-3’s thirty-one-centimeter
resolution images and offers “short-wave infrared resolution that sees through dust, smog and
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smoke [and chemical trails] as well as things on Earth invisible to the naked eye.” In sync with
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NASA Goddard’s Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, WorldView-4 will take Al Gore’s
dream of “a clearer view of our world” up to four hundred miles and 17,000 miles per hour,
orbiting every ninety minutes—thanks to Lockheed Martin and DigitalGlobe, whose largest
customer is the spooky U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) providing
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GEOINT. (It was the NGA that tracked Osama bin Ladin to Abbottabad, Pakistan. ) The U.S.
Congress has kindly given DigitalGlobe its blessing to sell its high-res (and tomographic) images
to mining, oil, gas, etc.
As the aerial eyes and ears platforms for the C4 Smart Grid below, satellites serve the
specially engineered and recalibrated antennas on airplanes and jets, helicopters and drones—
like the advanced flying psyop warfare station EC-130 Command Solo that targets minds and
bodies, and the MC-12W twin turboprop capturing full-motion video and SIGINT. Next-
generation KH-12s (Keyholes) vacuum up real-time enhanced infrared imaging with three-inch
resolution so NetTrack software can “stitch together information from a variety of sensors
(synthetic aperture radar, optical, video, acoustic, moving target indicators, etc.), and hand off to
the right platform when appropriate.” 59
State-of-the-art satellite technology is imaging targets on Earth in real time, and not just as
the sky’s eyes and ears. Besides ending privacy, satellites mean a whole new dimension to the
Vietnam-era euphemism “winning hearts and minds,” including everything from propaganda to
“no-touch” torture and mind control. Deep-space tracking antennas can capture Voyager signals,