Spies in the Skies

In a striking but unnoticed extension of domestic surveillance, the little-known National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency deployed a U-2 spy plane on the region affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to track hazards to public health.

In an article Thursday, Salon's Tim Shorrock explores the emergence of the NGA, born in 1996 from a partnership between the CIA, the Pentagon and the agency that maintains America's spy satellites.

[...]

In a way, Shorrock suggests the visible mission of the U-2 over New Orleans is akin to the visible mission of the U-2 over the Soviet Union -- a tip of the iceberg in a much larger program that most of America knows nothing about.

  Raw Story

Count me in. I always assume that there are other agencies we aren't - and won't be - told about, but I never heard of the NGA before. I was out of the country when Katrina hit New Orleans, so if it was mentioned in the news at that time, I wouldn't have caught it.

In 2004, the National Security Agency (which has overseen Bush's warrantless wiretapping program) announced they'd signed an agreement with the NGA to share resources and staff, including their sources, information infrastructure and "exploitation techniques." The document itself is classified, though according to Salon an NGA press release explained "the pact allows 'horizontal integration' between the two agencies, defined as "working together from start to finish, using NGA's 'eyes' and NSA 'ears.'"

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.