Military surveillance aircraft slated to be set aloft over suburban Baltimore this year were built to have the ability to distinguish between humans and wheeled vehicles from a distance of at least five kilometers, according to documents the Army has newly released to a privacy group.
But the documents contain such heavy redactions that it is unclear how precise the resolution is for the video systems on the blimp-like aircraft, nor is it clear whether the cameras can be equipped with facial recognition systems capable of identifying individual people, said Julia Horwitz of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington.
“There is a lot of potential for privacy abuse if a surveillance device can identify a human at five kilometers away,” said Horwitz, the consumer protection counsel for the group, which is fighting a legal battle for information about the surveillance aircraft. Five kilometers is about 3.1 miles.
The Army last year announced that it was bringing its JLENS system, short for Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, to be tethered on land owned by the Aberdeen Proving Ground, for a three-year test of its capabilities. The test is scheduled to start in October.
Calls to the public information officer at Aberdeen Proving Ground were not returned Wednesday afternoon. Army officials have previously said that the surveillance system is intended to spot missiles and other threats to national security, not monitor the activities of people living or traveling below along the busy I-95 corridor.
The JLENS system – which includes a pair of white, 243-foot-long balloons tethered to the ground -- can stay in the air continuously for up to 30 days and is designed to spot missiles from a distance of 340 miles. Its radar systems also can detect what security experts call “swarming boats,” the kind of small, agile watercraft that, when loaded with explosives, can threaten ships.
Yet the JLENS aircraft have raised privacy concerns, in part because Raytheon, which developed the program for the Army, has tested the surveillance system’s ability to use powerful, high-altitude cameras capable of seeing people and vehicles from many miles away. Those tests took place at a military facility in Utah.
The Army and Raytheon have declined requests from The Washington Post to reveal the video, infrared and other capabilities of JLENS. For a story in January, the Army told the Post that it has “no current plans” to mount such surveillance cameras on the JLENS, but it also declined to rule out using such systems or the possibility of sharing the resulting footage and other information with federal, state or local law enforcement officials.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request in November for information revealing the capabilities of JLENS and followed with a lawsuit in May, after the Army failed to produce any documents. A federal district court judge in Washington on Aug. 20 ordered the Army to release documents. The privacy group has received a first batch, from 2009. The Army must produce others before Oct. 10 under the ruling, and a legal fight likely will continue over the extent of the Army’s redactions.
Horwitz said that the first batch of documents included extensive information on the weapons systems that the JLENS can carry, including Hellfire missiles, but paragraphs related to surveillance capabilities were the most heavily redacted.
Craig Timberg is a national technology reporter for The Post.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/03/armys-eyes-in-the-sky-built-to-spot-people-from-5-kilometers-away/
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