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.