Big Brother Gives Up Some Toys

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Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will notify Congress this afternoon that her department is killing a controversial Bush administration program to expand the use of spy satellite imagery by domestic law enforcement and other agencies, department and congressional officials said.

Napolitano made the decision after state and local law enforcement officials said that access to secret overhead imagery was not a priority, an official close to the secretary said.

Former president George W. Bush's top intelligence and homeland security officials authorized a program to expand sharing of remote-sensing data to domestic agencies in May 2007. But since details of plans to create a National Applications Office were reported that summer by the Wall Street Journal, congressional Democrats barred funding for what they said could become a new platform for domestic surveillance that would raise privacy and civil liberties concerns.

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