Re: [FYI] Free satellite and aerial reconnaissance systems

["Axel H. Horns" <axel.horns@fitug.de>]

On 19 Feb 99 at 18:42, I wrote:

> [Die armen, armen Militaers... erst entwendet man ihnen die 
> Kryptographie, und nun dies!  --AHH]
> 
> http://jya.com/public-eye.htm

Hierzu nun noch ergaenzend:

http://jya.com/sat-track.htm

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20 February 1999. TTA. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-02/20/033r-022099-idx.
html 

The Washington Post, Saturday, February 20, 1999; Page A01 

Hobbyists Track Down Spies in Sky 

Glowing Satellites Are Not So Covert 

By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer 

As Operation Desert Fox unfolded in December and the Pentagon released
reconnaissance photographs taken from space of destroyed Iraqi
targets, retired CIA scientist Allen Thomson sat at his home computer
in El Paso and produced a schedule of classified U.S. satellite
overpasses of Baghdad from the hour the bombing began. 

Thomson was not trying to alert Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but to
underscore a point he has been making for years about supersecret U.S.
spy satellites: They aren't so secret anymore. 

A global network of satellite watchers post on the Internet the
orbital paths and schedules of the five known U.S. spy imagery
satellites. Anyone with a personal computer and a basic understanding
of astronomy, from foreign intelligence agencies to weekend hobbyists,
can calculate when these billion-dollar birds will pass over any point
on Earth, and observe them as points of light hundreds of miles high
in the night sky. 

[...]

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