That's mostly self-serving bollocks. If such observation is so good then it would be essential to let everyone know what is being observed and how. Secrecy works against such claims. Cold war espionage was a very different game. If observation had been so effective, the US would not have built so many nukes - or perhaps the secrecy of such observation allowed the US hawks to spin and get the level of overkill the US eventually achieved. Perhaps if you stopped treating the rest of the world as your enemy, we'd trust you more with this shit. But Snowden has shown we must not.

I had hoped that SpaceX might hold higher principles :(

Rubbish. 1984 is nothing to do with the Soviet Union and Communism (see Animal Farm for that). 1984 is all about Britain of the day, the growth of domestic fascism and what the totalitarian nature of the wartime regime the country imposed to survive the war with Germany. Orwell was a propagandist for the wartime government. The Daily Hate of 1984 was directly inspired by the Daily Mail (and still justly merits that description today). Orwell's warning was aimed at Britain and America not Russia.

Litre is the standard spelling for SI units as is gram and second. Nuff said.