Socially Useful Spy Satellites
Dmitri Prieto
HAVANA TIMES – We find ourselves immersed in a growing atmosphere of scandal regarding government spying on the digital signals generated in the public or private lives of citizens, chancellors and presidents.
E-mails are read, telephones tapped, lists of cell phone numbers are sold among companies; Facebook concentrates data from its users, and a thick network of spy satellites saturates the earth’s surface with indiscreet gazes.
The global public needs to know this.
The communications media – be they “citizen-controlled” or “classic” social media – has a right to truthful information, without this having to pass through the filters created by states and the mega-corporations that generate public opinion.
It’s time – in these days of Wikileaks and growing sales of the Orwellian novel “1984” – for groups of citizens organized outside of the established powers to construct their own network of spy satellites.
Espionage shouldn’t be the monopoly of “sovereign” entities. True sovereignty belongs to every human being; in order to safeguard our interests in any part of the world the planet’s exterior image should be declared an area of public use for the common good.
Any person should have the right to access through the Internet very detailed images – of the best “espionage” quality – of any segment of that surface.
The powerful should be watched.
It’s time to initiate a crowd-funding campaign to create our own spy satellite network that could operate as a free public service.
When will Cuba allow those ubiquitous “Google cars” to go up-and-down all the calles and avenidas, so that Cuba can become a virtual reality? In many instances, this is already the case if you can find the appropriate YouTube video. Still, one likes to go down to street level, below 1,000 or 2,000 feet, if only to relive those happy days on the streets and avenues of Habana, or Sancti Spirtus, or Bayamo, etc. filled with those shouts and cries which are the music of life!
At least on Wall St there’s a good chance the investor will make a profit. In Cuba there’s a good chance should the investor make a profit the regime will step in and confiscate the business.
Dmitri says: “Any person should have the right to access through the Internet very
detailed images – of the best “espionage” quality – of any segment of
that surface.”
I suspect he does not know that anyone with an unregulated internet connection can simply use Google Earth to zoom in on his rooftop, or Fidel’s rooftop, or my rooftop.
A recurrent theme common to left-leaning Cuban writers here at HT seems to be the desire to achieve or acquire ‘First-world’ technology or capabilities at no cost. I can only assume that it simply did not occur to Dmitri to consider a private acquisition or at the extreme, to build his own satellite. Even his choice of “crowd-funding” as a source of funds is first-world tool. Clearly, the hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions) needed to put a “peoples” satellite in orbit is no small task, but why is the first reaction of most Cubans is to use ‘other peoples’ money without a plan to use their own. Especially bothersome about this is that Dmitri likely assumes that there will be an available pool of ‘useful idiots’ to fund this hare-brained idea. Worse yet, he’s probably right. Finally, how different is Dmitri’s idea from the jinetero on La Rampa in La Habana who cajoles the tourist into paying for the both of them to have a Lobster dinner and then later the jinetero doubles back for his commission. It also rings similar to the Castros plan to seduce foreign investors into investing in the Mariel Free Trade Zone. At all three levels, it involves a Cuban using somebody else’s money. Where do these guys think they are ….Wall Street?