Curmudgeon
2010-05-05 18:13:34
The issue isn’t posse comitatus (assistance to LE) per se. The military is specifically proscribed from conducting surveillance in the CONUS. DOD can provide imagery of the CONUS (such as assessing flood damage in support of disaster relief) provided the imagery is not greater than a certain level of fine-grain detail. That jibes with NerdyBaldGuy’s RAND citation. Note, however, that the RAND citation is very specific (“Aerial photographic and visual search”); this does not include SIGINT.
This is a holdover from the aftermath of the Church Commission in the ’70s. The last time I read about this, Executive Order 12333 was the policy source.
