Replying to a message of Ross Sauer to Bob Ackley:

 RS> "Bob Ackley -> Jeff Binkley"  wrote in
 RS> news:31516$POL_INC{at}JamNNTPd:

 BA>> Decades ago I was given rather broad access to 'special compartmented
 BA>> information,' which was kept in a limited access vault in a
 BA>> sub-basement of SAC headquarters. In the two years I had that access
 BA>> I never bothered to check any of it out.  When I was debriefed I had
 BA>> to ask what some of the stuff was and they just said 'you don't need
 BA>> to know.'  I still have no idea what it is I'm not supposed to be
 BA>> talking about... 

 BA>> I did have access to satellite photography (in those days KH-9 and
 BA>> KH-11) for most of my tour at SAC, but I only looked at a little of
 BA>> it (and I don't know what I was looking at).  I was never all that
 BA>> interested in the subject.  Whether or not our satellites can read a
 BA>> license plate or tell if some sweet thing lying on a beach is
 BA>> wearing a bathing suit I've no idea; nor do I care, it simply isn't
 BA>> something that interests me.

 BA>> If memory serves, the KH-9 satellites periodically spit out a film
 BA>> cannister that was retrieved (caught in mid-air) by a specially
 BA>> equipped C-130; when it ran out of film it became a piece of space
 BA>> junk.  I think the KH-11 was the first to use a comm downlink rather
 BA>> than film cannisters - note that was over 30 years ago...

 RS> I was just reading about a satellite that was recently launched,
 RS> basically it's an upgraded version of the ones already up there that
 RS> listen to communications, like cell phones.

 RS> Seeing as I don't have a cell phone, (don't need or want one right
 RS> now,) looks like I don't have to worry. 

Forty years ago the US military maintained radio intercept sites all over 
the planet.  Around that time a method of 'broadband' recording was developed
and mounted in reconnaissance aircraft.  Those 'broadband' recordings were then
transcribed at ground installations in the US - said ground stations operated just
like the overseas sites did.  Those overseas sites began to be shut down in the
1980s.  I presume the 'broadband' technology was extended to use satellites rather
than reconnaissance aircraft.


--- FleetStreet 1.19+