Pat Flannery writes:

The NSA already has those; huge parabolic dish SIGINT satellites that can pick
up pretty much all radio-based communications on the Earth's surface:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/magnum.htm

Eh? Where's the challenge in that? That's so 80's.

I'm talking real-time ground AUDIO.

Or better yet, point it at Mars and let's hear whats happening there...

When is somebody going to think to put a microphone on one of those
surface probes? Let's hear the wind blow... To think we might be missing
out on all those Martian mating calls even today! Horrible!

;-)

Dave