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Satellite Pics Going Dark?
isdale writes "Defense Tech reports the U.S. Gov't. is proposing to exempt satellite images from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The proposed exemption has already passed the Senate and awaits House/Senate conference committee this month. Not only does the exemption apply to Gov't. satellite images, but also any commercial satellite images the gov't buys and 'any... other product that is derived from such data.' That would include maps, reports, news footage, etc. This would heavily impact news gathering and probably the income of commercial satellite operators - who would only be able to sell to the U.S. Govt. And how big is the deficit already?" peter303 writes with a more optimistic story in USA Today " about building and launching a satellite for as little as $65K," as long as you can squeeze it into a 4 inch-cube.
It only seems to apply to images the government buys. Its like they legislating exclusivity agreements, as well as revoking FOIA on this data. If a company puts up a satellite that takes pictures and they dont sell the images to the govt, how would it affect them? I dont think it would.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Terraservier doesn't have satellite images, it has aerial photographs.
From the site: The committee recommends a provision that would exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), (section 552 of title 5, United States Code), data that are collected by land remote sensing and are prohibited from sale to customers other than the United States and its affiliated users under the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992, (section 5601 et seq. of title 15, United States Code).. The exemption would also include any imagery and other product that is derived from such data. State and local laws mandating disclosure by a State or local government would be preempted. (Bold emphasis mine)
So this would appear to mean that only some subset of stuff, which is prohibited from sale currently, would be removed from FOIA.
What, exactly, this is I do not know, but it wouldn't surprise me if this means "When the military buys a commercial satellite pass over a suspected terrorist camp and forbids the satellite company from reselling the image (which seems reasonable, otherwise there would be a huge market in 'see what the DoD is taking pictures of' industry), no one can file a FOIA request to access that image".
I think that the story is misleading. Exempting satellite imagery from the FOIA does NOT mean that commercial companies couldn't sell the imagery to news agencies - you just wouldn't be able to make the government sort through and cough up all the unclassified satellite images that it has bought. I'm guessing that defensetech.org is one of those sites that makes wild paranoid predictions about the military.
This is a very specific class of satellite photo. Commercial photos sold to private users are still legal; so are government photos obtained via non-exclusive contracts. The submitter and article have the facts all wrong!
This would only prohibit the release of data that is already prohibited from sale to customers other than the US Government.
As it currently stands, commerical imagery operators are prohibited from selling certain data to anyone but the government. Third parties cannot buy this data. However, there is nothing to prohibit someone from filing a Freedom of Information request once the government buys it. This would close that loophole.
Good to know that they would want to take away technology access that allowed people to evacuate before the hurricanes in Florida. Un-fucking-real.
First line of the story: "You might be able to see the hurricanes heading for Florida. Maybe. But just about all other commercial satellite imagery could be put off-limits, if a new Senate bill goes through as planned."
XPlanet takes its data from university of Dundee, which uses MeteoSat. From meteosat's page, they say:
They're purchasing exlusive rights over certain image areas to avoid having to classify the data output from all the commercial satellite operators.
Maybe you could argue that they should just go classify it anyways, but the result will be the same. The Government reserves the right to tell commercial image satellite operators where they can't take pictures, or can't sell the images they do take. This is not news. The mechanism by which that is enforced is just adjusting a bit.
Well sir, you got rated a troll for speaking what is quite possibly the truth. A huge number of people are in a collective state of denial and cannot even stand numbers for fear of for fear of disturbing their collective psychosis.
People file FOIA requests all the time, successfully. Just the most recent example off the top of my head was more Bush guard unit records, and there are many many more.
I believe the present government is too secretive, and I can't swear the Secret Service has never shown up at somebody's door to politely suggest cancelling a request, but the act is used all the time.
That means that the gov't can create a blank spot on the map for regions where they have "special interests". These interests could be anything from military bases (think, Guantanimo) to war zones (insert obvious choices here) to public utilities (nuclear power plants) to national parks (oil drilling in ANWAR or logging in Yellowstone).
Also, I do not believe that the satellite owners will have the choice of not selling exclusive rights to the gov't. I think that the licenses that allow these companies to operate require them to grant this type of exclusive license to any data that the gov't wants. (I could be wrong on this, but I remember reading it somewhere.)