If "they" can see bones and tell what they are then "they" can damn sure see what people are doing. Scary.

"Satellite images showed animal bones strewn about Robert Rhodes' property."

[url]www.theiowachannel.com/news/1474235/detail.html[/url]

As a side note: $20,000-30,000 for killing dogs! Jeeze!

Someone once told me of a friend of theirs in the intelligence community.  Apparently during the late 80's or early 90's the Russians sent the White House a series of satellite photos.  They were of a guard outside the White House... you could tell he was smoking a cigarette.

A few days later the Kremlin received a packet of photos of a fellow standing outside their buildings.  Not only was it clear he was smoking a cigarette, but you could read the brand name on it.

Apocryphal story?  Maybe, but I don't doubt we now have satellites with resolution this good.

Alabama authorities say they're considering criminal charges against Rhodes if any of the animals underwent severe pain or were tortured.

Now how in the hell could they ever prove that?

What in the hell is wrong with my post!

No expectation under the Open Fields Doctrine.  The images, I believe, depicted the bones strewn about the property, not buried underground.  They use the same technology to bust marijuana growers.

I don't think they saw indivual bones more likely they saw the light colored area caused by lots of bones. Most commercial satellites have a resolution of several, 1-2, meters.

Yeah, heard that one too, but its fiction. Neither the US nor USSR would ever divulge their technical capabilities...(although if given to Congress, then you can be sure it will be in the newspaper in a few hours).

I use to see the photos in the early 80's from the KH-11 sats. (They were considered "OLD" at the time and were due to be replaced). Even so, the best detail at the time was about the size of a license plate. It was blurry, but in some cases you could just make out the plate. They are now 4 generations past the technology of the KH-11, but I doubt you could make out the detail on a pack of cigarettes.

Now you could probably make out the design on the pack and some of the larger lettering. You could even determine what coins are being held in someone's hand by their size, but much more than that and you begin to run into things like atmospheric distortion. There is software that will correct some of the distortion, but they are beginning to reach the same limitations that astronomers ran into (until they launched Hubble, which eliminated the atmospheric distortion).

Of course, this is only the military satellites. Commercial sats have far less resolution.