House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing titled "Turning Spy Satellites on the Homeland: the Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications of the National Applications Office." Witnesses testified about plans by the Department of Homeland Security to open a new office called the National Applications Office (NAO) charged with civil and domestic intelligence gathering. The NAO would facilitate access to satellite imagery for domestic work such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change, and creating topographical maps but also would be the conduit for all requests for domestic use of spy satellite information - including information destined for emergency response, border control and law enforcement agencies.