A Congressional committee's Democratic leadership has criticized plans by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to use spy satellite imagery for domestic applications before the privacy and civil-liberties issues have been addressed.

In a letter released last week by the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Homeland Security, three Democratic Congressional leaders took the Department to task for its decision to continue to build up the National Applications Office (NAO), a group inside the DHS that will be responsible for using satellite imagery to support first responders as well as law enforcement officers and intelligence officials. While the DHS has reportedly stated that eavesdropping on communications will not be part of the program, the DHS has given Committee members few guarantees, according to the letter outlining complaints and signed by Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, intelligence subcommittee chairwoman Jane Harman (D-CA) and oversight subcommittee chairman Christopher Carney (D-PA).

"Turning America's spy satellites on the homeland for domestic law enforcement purposes is no trivial matter," the three Congressional leaders stated in the letter. "Although we support any Department effort to engage in more effective and responsive information sharing with out nation's first preventers, the serious privacy and civil liberty issues that the NAO raises are manifold and multifaceted."

The Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives and the Department of Homeland Security have been at odds on a number of fronts in the past. In February, Rep. Thompson's Committee criticized the Department's efforts in cybersecurity and questioned how well the DHS was protecting the government's networks. After a more than half-year battle, the House of Representatives rejected the Bush Administration's calls for a more permanent and powerful amendment to the current electronic eavesdropping laws. At the recent RSA Security Conference, however, a key Democrat lawmaker took a more conciliatory approach to the disagreements between lawmakers and Department officials.

In the current debate over the National Applications Office (NAO), the three Committee members requested that the Department of Homeland Security provide them with a timetable describing when a detailed legal framework and a set of operating procedures will be completed, a document describing the current development status of the NAO, and assurances that the NAO will not be staffed until privacy and civil-liberties issues are resolved.

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