An interesting piece on surveillance at the global level...



Monitoring human rights? Get a satellite.

Above the most off-limits nations, satellites give a bird's-eye view of 
suspected human rights violations.

Peter N. Spotts
The Christian Science Monitor
June 22, 2006

Satellites can monitor volcanoes, map deforestation, and help sell real 
estate. But can they document human-rights violations?

Yes, activists say.

Already, high-altitude images of Zimbabwe's destruction of a settlement has 
increased pressure on the government to curb its abuses. Now, human-rights 
groups are focusing on Darfur, Chad, and Burma. In eastern Burma, for 
example, the government is accused of aggressively attacking an ethnic 
minority.

Burma "is a black hole," says Jeremy Woodrum of the US Campaign for Burma. 
"Media and aid agencies can go into Darfur in Sudan, but they can't get 
into eastern Burma; it's totally off limits."

Even in such closed countries, satellites can detect military destruction, 
the movement of refugees, even their living conditions. They may be able to 
show the scale of government rebuilding and whether some groups are 
benefiting more than others.

The idea of using satellites has intrigued activists for several years, 
notes Ariela Blätter, director of conflict prevention and response for 
Amnesty International USA. Some organizations have used commercial 
satellite images on rare occasions, she adds. "But this new, unimpeachable 
technology has such a huge price tag" that the community has been slow to 
adopt it.

A foundation grant and technical help from the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science in Washington could speed its use. The effort has 
been under way since this past December, when the MacArthur Foundation 
handed the AAAS a $110,000 check to help human rights groups use commercial 
satellite images to document abuses.

The first results appeared May 31, when the AAAS and Amnesty International 
released before-and-after photos of Porta Farm, a settlement the Zimbabwean 
government destroyed last June.

The 16-year-old settlement had boasted schools, a children's center, and a 
mosque, according to Amnesty International's Kolawole Olaniyan. It was home 
to between 6,000 and 10,000 mostly poor Zimbabweans. The new photos showed 
the entire settlement destroyed and abandoned. United Nations monitors 
noted that during the demolition several people, including two children, 
were killed. The government reportedly is trying to build new homes for the 
more than 700,000 displaced nationwide by last June's operation, but aid 
workers say the number of new houses is extremely small compared with the 
large number of displaced Zimbabweans waiting for shelter, land, and jobs.

The satellite images, taken in June 2002 and again this past April, offered 
key graphic evidence of what had happened. They "epitomize the apex of a 
man-made disaster, and they can be of a phenomenal impact in redressing 
such absurdities, now and in the future," noted Zimbabwe human-rights 
attorney Otto Saki in a statement May 31. He and colleagues with the 
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights in Harare say the images could be 
valuable in a case they are bringing against government officials accused 
of masterminding and carrying out the operation.

In Burma (also called Myanmar), satellite images could also help clinch the 
case that human rights groups have been building based on refugee accounts, 
says Mr. Woodrum. His group hopes to present its images to representatives 
of several countries that have relations with Burma. "They have no idea" 
how serious the situation is, he says.

Last week, the satellite effort drew special mention in the government-run 
Burmese press. It charged that the cofounder of Woodrum's group, Burmese 
expatriate and former government prisoner Aung Din, is a "terrorist" in his 
efforts to "fabricate [an] ethnic cleansing issue against [the] Myanmar 
government."

So far, much of the AAAS's efforts have focused on documenting past abuses, 
using archived images that a pair of companies are making available for 
free, says Lars Bromley, with the science organization's office of 
international initiatives. The ultimate goal is to develop an early-warning 
capability that allows groups to focus the public eye on relatively 
small-scale abuses before they become large-scale crises, he adds.

In one case, groups in India have asked him to track the construction of 
healthcare facilities there, he says. Statistical tests applied to the 
data, Mr. Bromley says, can indicate the likelihood that government 
officials are giving preference to certain classes or certain economic or 
ethnic groups when they site new clinics.

Such efforts aren't cheap, he notes. The computer equipment and software 
needed to process the images cost around $10,000 per workstation, putting 
it out of reach of many human rights groups.

Still, several human-rights activists are enthusiastic about the prospects 
for adding eyes on orbit to their expanding arsenal of high-tech and 
low-tech tools.

Amid the newest "targets" for gathering orbital evidence: eastern Chad. 
Amnesty International released a major report Tuesday on human rights 
abuses in the conflict there and is collecting satellite photos to bolster 
its case.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0622/p03s03-usfp.html 

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