WHY IS IT WATCHING YOU?
During the Cold War, reconnaissance satellites spent most of their time gazing raptly at fixed enemy positions. The Russians had their missile bases, parking lots filled with tanks, nuclear fuel processing facilities, government buildings, and other big things it might be fun to drop a nuke on. It was still the era of war with nation states—a simpler time, when the enemy was kind enough to wear a uniform and live where you could find and kill him.
These days, some bad guys are still polite enough to do things the old-fashioned way. Iran and North Korea engage in big projects that require obvious facilities. They build missiles, test nukes, and march armies of guys around where our satellites can see them. It makes the National Reconnaissance Office—the organization that these days runs most American spy satellites—feel needed.
Unfortunately, the guys we actually fight against don’t do the sorts of things that yield a lot of information to space-based intelligence-gathering techniques. They live in caves, travel quickly in small groups, and are often indistinguishable from well-armed farmers. They are extremely hard to spot from the air, and, once spotted, often pass out of sight again just as quickly.
The true utility of modern spy satellites is as navigational aids. In the confusing back country or tortured urban environments of the third world—where all of our wars will be fought for the foreseeable future—accurate, up-to-date maps are critical. Knowing where you’re going in the ever-changing shantytowns and mountain villages in which your typical insurgent lives can be the difference between coming out alive or coming out in pieces. Satellites provide up-to-the-minute maps to forces on the ground as well as helping coordinate the movements of ground and air forces with incredible precision. Mobility and the precise application of force are key components to a successful engagement. Both are made possible by satellite reconnaissance.
But that’s not why a satellite might be watching you. You’re under the gaze of foreign intelligence services because you live in a rich western country with technology and resources that outstrip the rest of the world. Unless you’re an important military commander or captain of industry, your appearance in a high-resolution satellite image is probably incidental to a wider information-gathering campaign. Individuals are very hard to watch from space; you have to have done something pretty extreme to warrant the attention of a satellite.