Michel - Eyes in the sky the secret rise of Gorgon Stare and how it will watch us all

Copyright 2019 by Arthur Holland

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Michel, Arthur Holland, author.

Title: Eyes in the sky : the secret rise of Gorgon Stare and how it will watch us all / Arthur Holland Michel.

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018046435 (print) | LCCN 2018048027 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544971660 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544972001 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Intelligence serviceUnited States. | Aerial

surveillanceUnited States. | Electronic surveillanceUnited States. |

Civil rightsUnited States. | Privacy, Right ofUnited States.

Classification: LCC JK468.I6 (ebook) | LCC JK468.I6 M5155 2019 (print) | DDC 363.2/32dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046435

Cover design by Brian Moore

Cover photograph Getty Images

Author photograph Lee Harris

v2.0519

For my sister, Gaby; my brothersSimon, Maxi, Quino;

my pa, Andreas; my ma, Rachel;

and Erin...

There Earth producd the Gorgon, dreadful monster.

EURIPIDES , Ion

On a clear day in the spring of 1862, two orbs rose quietly into the skies above southeastern Virginia. For the soldiers in the Confederate encampment below, it must have been a wondrous, if demoralizing, sight. These strange forms were Union hot-air balloons, each with two observers in the basket, spies in the firmament. If the observers had camerasand word was that they didthey would be able to produce perfect records of what they saw, instant maps of the Confederate positions that would soon, no doubt, be conveyed to the upper reaches of the Union Armys chain of command.

We watched with anxious eyes their beautiful observations as they floated high up in the air, Confederate general James Longstreet later wrote of the encounter. To Longstreet and his troops, it was clear they were witnessing a turning point in the history of war. It was also clear that there was nothing they could do about it. The balloons, Longstreet lamented, were well out of range of our guns.

One hundred and fifty-five years later, on a searingly hot afternoon in June 2017, Steve Suddarth, a former US Air Force colonel, is radioing air traffic control for clearance to take off from Albuquerque International Sunport, the citys main airport. The flight, he tells the tower, is a photo mission. Riding shotgun in Suddarths white single-prop Cessna, I am not sure I would have used such a mild term to describe our plan. The plane is equipped with a military-grade surveillance camera, and we intend to watch wide tracts of the city in a way many of its residents probably never imagined was even possible.

Air traffic control grants us free rein within a broad swath of airspace 12,000 feet directly above the city center. As we climb out of the airport through the choppy desert air, the landscape falls quickly from our wings. Soon enough, the entire town lies rolled out below us, shimmering in the afternoon sun.

Mounted on the windshield is a tablet displaying a satellite map of the city. Using a wireless keyboard he keeps stowed beside his seat, Suddarth clicks on a large white building in the center of town and a new image appears on the screen. It looks like a satellite picture, superimposed perfectly over the first, showing all the same buildings and roads. But when Suddarth zooms in, the image becomes like a sample of pond water seen through a microscopefull of life. There are cars, trucks, and buses on the streets, stopping and starting at traffic lights, turning at junctions, parking along sidewalks. Everything is moving. This is live video delivered from the camera. The frame covers two-dozen city blocks.

Suddarth explains that the camera is linked to the Cessnas autopilot, which is programmed to steer the airplane in such a way that the target area never falls out of the frame. To demonstrate, Suddarth takes his hands off the controls, and without pause the airplane pitches left. Once the airplane finds itself in range, he says, the camera will put us into a wide circular orbit. Our particular targeta mall, Suddarth tells me cheerfullyremains dead center on the screen.

After completing the loop, we swing the camera over to the University of New Mexico. On the athletics field, tiny shadows dart about on the screen: students exercising.

From the university, we turn to Sandia Heights, an affluent neighborhood on the northeastern edge of the city. Using the tablet, I zoom in on a four-lane road cutting across the area. A bright blue car is turning onto a tree-lined street. I follow it. Suddarth is talking about the systems technical details, but I am absorbed in the story unfolding before me. The car is driving slowly, and it seems to be meandering. Maybe theyre lost, I think, or perhaps theyre on a joyride. Or maybe theyre up to something.

And then, sitting in this odd little plane steered by a robotic camera, I start to feel uncomfortable. The people in the car dont know they are being watched. Even if they did, like Longstreet and his soldiers there is not much they could do about it. More to the point, I am troubled because, whatever their story, it is none of my business.

The story of how we got here, though, is my business, and theirs too. Even before 1862before, even, the advent of manned flightit was obvious that an eye in the sky would be a great military asset. As seen from above, your adversary is an open book. You can determine where theyre hiding, track them wherever they go, even anticipate their next move. By the First World War, every major military power had eyes in the sky, with dramatic consequences for those on the ground. Battles were won and lost on the strength of aerial surveillance. One reporter, writing about the airborne camera in 1917, declared it to be many times deadlier than its equivalent weight of high explosive. In the years since, militaries never stopped seeking a wider, sharper, more penetrating view of the ground.

I started studying airborne spycraft in 2012, when I was a senior at Bard College, a small liberal arts school nestled on the banks of the Hudson River about two hours north of New York City. Looking for a new academic diversion beyond my regular coursework, I had founded, along with my freshman-year roommate Dan Gettinger, the Center for the Study of the Drone, a research initiative that sought to put Bards protean approach to intellectual inquiry to the many vexing issues posed by the advent of unmanned vehicles. One of our earliest projects involved comparing civilian accounts of military drone attacks to the descriptions of Harpies in classical literature, namely the Argonautika, a third-century epic poem by Apollonius of Rhodes.

Our timing, it turned out, had been providential; by the time Dan and I graduated, public interest in drones had swelled so much that we figured we might still get some more mileage out of our idea. The day after we donned the cap and gown, I began working for the college as the codirector of the center.

Over the years that followed in that role, I studied many disquieting technologiesHellfire missiles, laser-guided bombs, the prospect of Amazon delivery dronesbut there was only one that reliably haunted my dreams.

Its called WAMI (pronounced whammy), which stands for wide-area motion imagery. This is what Steve Suddarth and I used to spy on the unsuspecting residents of Sandia Heights. If the aerial-surveillance technology of 1917 was more dangerous than TNT, this is a weapon of mass destruction. By name and by design, WAMI watches a very broad area, in some cases even a whole city. It is so powerful that when you want to look at something closely, you simply zoom in on the image itself; the camera continues to record the entire view. While I tracked the blue car, the camera was still watching the rest of the neighborhood, recording residents every move.