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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.
Software like Xplanet be effected too? I hope not.
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
All this means is that the market for domestically produced satellite imagery will evaporate overnight and the owner/operators of foreign imagery services will profit enormously as US customers procure data from an open, unfettered market abroad. Another nail in the coffin of privatize space ventures. Go Congress!!!
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
If you put in the exact address of government buildings in TerraServ's Satellite/Urban pictures they are blacked out. Even though you can put in a relevant location and pan to what is blacked out. =o
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In the end we are ALL disconnected....
I'm sure there'll be plenty of commercial ones providing the data!
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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.
Why not instead make this only enforceable during wartime? The government would have to pay to access the streams so providers don't lose out, and the guys with mapping projects could still get their lower resolution images.
Would this include the data from USGS at the Terraserver? If not what satelite pictures are available to us citicens, and where can I get a 72" poster of my home town before it becomes *illegal*. I was just thinking about FOIA a few minutes ago while I was reading comments on the Michael Moore article, I guess I better get what I can before I cant. Now if I could only find a notary(sp?).
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Now they can send us to war on claims that they have photos of chemical weapons labs in whatever country. But of coarse we can't see them, the photos are all classified.
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This concludes our transmission to Oceania.
Time to burn some Karma...
So, let me get this straight: Terrorists might be able to use satellite imagery to plan an armed assault on some target in the US. The response is to limit 1st amendment rights, but to leave 2nd amendment rights unchanged.
I guess it just depends on who's slippin' you the bills.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If you people let Bush stay in Office for a second term, you damned well deserve the Police State that you're gonna get.
-- Proud to be Canadian. Sickened to be so close to the potential high tech equivelant of the USSR.
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".
Would someone explain how they can do this? It's our (the taxpayers) money. Shouldn't we have free and open access to these pictures? I can understand having time delayed pictures in times of war, so that we don't show our hand. But honestly, what good does this really serve? Will I have to pay to get pictures of the earth, that I've already paid for (in taxes)? Well whatever happens, better start hoarding sattalite pictures now fellas.
Next thing you know, a typical GPS will have to be accurate to +/- 60m and the size of a fridge to fend off would be terrorists.
-Randy
Of course! Must be Satellite in Cube! Dumbass! Even Time obey Cube! NASA is Stupid for not obey Cube design! Dumbass!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
During the height of the invasion of Afghanistan the government used taxpayers' money to buy up all the satellite images from the private, commercial satellite Ikonos. This allowed them to avoid the problems if they had just tried to censor it. Now they're trying to censor it straight out. The argument _then_ was that they needed to censor it to protect troop movements -- a valid argument. However there has been no release of this years old data which would allow us to evaluate whether what we were being told at the time was a lie or not.
So any info that belongs to the public, whether generated by public equipment or bought by public dollars, is to be secret from the public? But of course it will be available to government contractors, like Halliburton, under no-bid contracts that are also secret.
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make install -not war
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.
Now they can send us to war on claims that they have photos of chemical weapons labs in whatever country. But of coarse we can't see them, the photos are all classified
Right, because in the days when we *could* see the photos, we all saw right through the deceit. Powell's performance in front of the UN didn't fool anybody - mobile weapons labs indeed! Harumph! Any fool can see that those trucks are for filling helium balloons.
Another nail in the coffin of privatize space ventures. Go Congress!!!
I think what you mean is "another nail in the coffin of privatized American space ventures". Anyone in Europe, meanwhile, interested in privatized space ventures would be dancing for joy at news like this; the U.S. congress would have just handed them a market on a silver platter.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Remember, in the war on terror "national security" trumps commen sense every time.
In short, the end result seems to be that news organisations have to pay market prices for their information, and private satellite operators make a few more sales...
When we can build a handheld digital camera for less than $500? Heck- I bet with off the shelf parts any competant hardware hacker could build a cubesat for under $2000- Maybe the other $38,000 is the launch fees?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Those satellite images are a loose cannon, recording illegal flights the government would rather keep secret. Like the Iran/Contra CIA/NSC drug/gun flights. Or the 9/13-14/2001 bin Laden family evacuation. Or whatever other secret traffic about which we haven't even heard in our complacent, compliant media.
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make install -not war
No offense, but has anyone considered that being able to obtain detailed government satallite imagery might not be the best thing in the world? It didn't matter when our only enemies had the same damn images from their own birds, but now are enemies don't run spy satalite networks so maybe we shouldn't be just giving it away.
I do security
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!
They'll need one heck of a firewall around the US, so we can't just go to European sites for their images of our territory.
This accomplishes nothing, and is therefore obviously silly. There is a mindset back of it that seems to think only the US and US companies have satellite images useful for terrorist purposes. Actually, it's an incredibly close parallel to encryption, in many ways. It's going to hurt US companies, it'll push the supply of that data overseas, and it'll do nothing to stop the bad-guys from getting the data, either.
I should probably write to Bernie tonight, since it's beyond Leahy and Jeffords already.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
And about the other story: WOW. I would love the chance to send up a four-inch cube into space. God alone knows what the hell I would do with it -- I'm no electronics guy -- but the possibilities are simply too cool to be believed. I'd be tempted to go back to university and get an engineering degree just to be able to be part of a project like that.
But hey, who says that's necessary? $40K for a launch, even U$, isn't that much if you get a bunch of people together. There's people that chip in to buy an airplane -- how long 'til we see people (besides the good folks running OSCAR, that is) getting together to build and launch their own cubesat? God knows I'd be there in a heartbeat...
Carousel is a lie!
_Electric Eye_ - Judas Priest
Up here in space
I'm looking down on you
My lasers trace
Everything you do
You think you've private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
I'm watching all the time
I'm made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I'm elected electric spy
I'm protected electric eye
Always in focus
You can't feel my stare
I zoom into you
You don't know I'm there
I take a pride in probing all your secret moves
My tearless retina takes pictures that can prove
I'm made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I'm elected electric spy
I'm protected electric eye
Electric eye, in the sky
Feel my stare, always there
There's nothing you can do about it
Develop and expose
I feed upon your every thought
And so my power grows
I'm made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I'm elected electric spy
I'm protected electric eye
Protected. detective. electric eye
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"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
The story is crazy on its face -- paranoid and just totally off base. It seems they want to exempt satellite imagery from FOIA. That doesn't mean that they still wouldn't release hell of information into the public domain, as they do now. It seems more likely that they don't want to have to release pictures of things that they found interesting, or even release information on where they wanted pictures of.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
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."
Weather satellites are owned and operated by the government, not commerical operators. They will likely remain available. And yes, satellites provide information that land-based weather radar can not. (how many radar stations are there in the middle of the Atlantic?) Of course, the NASA is trying to kill TRMM, the only satellite-based weather radar, but that's another story.
--Chag
Don't you remember what happened last time someone tried to file a FOI request? The Secret Service bullied him into cancelling it.
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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.
NO!!! IT has to be a 4 Corner Cube ! The satellite can be placed then at the four quadrants of the orbit SIMULTANEOUSLY!
I have been informed that the academic pedant hirelings are conspiring to defame my 4-inch Cube, as a means to discredit the Time/Life/Truth Cube Creation Principle.
You CAN grow 4-inches !
I will wager $65,000.00 on it!
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
Restricting what the public can see and access. Maintaining secret laws for secret reasons and defended in secret trials?
WHERE THE HELL ARE WE?!
Don't we have enough dead junk in space already? Why fill the orbits up with cheap, dead hardware that's more likely to bring down a space shuttle or destroy an important satellite as the dead piece of junk descends in orbit. Off the shelf is great for cost, but what's the bigger cost of having more chunks of metal in orbit than we already do.
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.
I'm still not following why I should not have access to information 1) categorized as unclassified and 2) purchased by my government. If it's a security threat, then classify it. If not, my money paid for it and if I can be bothered to fill out a FOIA request, I should have access to it.
(To quote from the proposed bill: Compelled release of such data and imagery by the United States under FOIA defeats the purpose of these licensing agreements, removes any profit motive, and may damage the national security by mandating disclosure to the general public upon request. While the data and imagery could be protected from disclosure under FOIA by classifying them, the United States prefers to keep them unclassified. Unclassified matter is more easily shared with coalition partners in contingency operations and with State and local officials in disaster relief and homeland security operations. )
Restricting the public's access to unclassified government information to protect a profit motive is not a step with which I'm comfortable. If it's a security risk, classify it, but don't start blocking access to unclassified information just because you can't be bothered to make it classified because it make take an extra step or two to share the info.
If it doesn't fall into one of the nine exempted areas of FOIA and you can't be bothered to make it classified, we paid for the damn information and should be able to make use of it.
I read somewhere (sorry, it's been a long time) that maps of varies soviet cities were downright inaccurate for "security reasons."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
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.
And open another one - for the government to use to slam the door on FOIA requests, not just for the imagery, but for anything "derived from it".
Which means that the government could include a gratuitous satellite picture in any report they wanted to make exempt from the FOIA.
Just as the California legislature includes a couple school busses in nearly any appropriation bill, to bypass the voter-initiated constitutional requirement that appropriations bills requre a supermajority but lowers the bar on school funding bills. (A loophole that has led to the near bankruptcy of the state.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I work on the UA's Cubesat program. I'm the one who wrote the (minimal) operating program for our four cubesats. This program has been a lot of fun.
I'm not entirely sure what we'll find with our design, but as 10cm cubes go, ours isn't bad. It stores sensor information on a timed schedule and has two-way communication with our ground station, plus an autonomous beacon transmitting on a separate frequency.
I think the article was a little misleading about the usage of COTS parts in these things. For sure, we did not build our own microprocessor, but most of the work tying together components is custom designed stuff by students. Our controller board (with PIC microcontroller), our power board (with AA batteries and charge regulator), and the radio board were all student designed and built.
The components on those boards, such as the PIC, the radio, and the AD converters is, of course, COTS, but that's about it.
Launch will be "Real Soon Now". Can't wait... and I really hope it works!
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
Capitol Hill, too.
How long before the terrorists look for targets by looking for blurs in the terraserver database?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.)
Ah, so they're only allowed to withold unclassified information from us if they don't let others buy it. So, they can keep unclassified information classified, just because...and this Freedom of Information Act works most of the time, except on occasion, even though the data isn't important enough to be classified?
I'm somewhat confused. Can you explain to me again why I can't look at unclassified information?
The U.S government has always been able to do this with satellites licensed by them - it is called 'shutter control'. In the case of Afghanistan, they preferred to buy the output of Ikonos (the only Very High Resolution satellite then operating) not only to keep it from anyone else but because the data was actually useful - coverage is always a problem with satellite data. Not only that - I think you'll find private companies operating satellites like QuickBird and Ikonos will sell you exclusive rights to imagery if you are willing to pay enough.
You can't keep the imagery from the govt, however. And did you know they will not let those companies sell imagery over Israel or the occupied territories at less than 2 metres resolution, as against the 60 cm capabilities of QuickBird for example.
All this legislation does is prevent using the FoI Act to circumvent restrictions already in place - for US-based companies. And they're not worried about weather sats or Landsat, I'm sure...
Just because it isn't classified doesn't mean the information should be posted on every corner. A lot of information is designated "for official use only", which is dependant upon the agency. It isn't classified, but it also isn't freely distributed.
There are specific legal guidelines regarding classified information. This includes how to classify it, how to store it, how to transport it, and when/how to destroy it. There is a lot of information that should be kept private, but doesn't meet the guidelines for classification.
A directory of all department employees, home phone, address, emergency contact, and home email is an example. This information is not classified. However, I do not know anyone that would want their employer making suck a directory public.
The other main issue regards the distribution of information. State police, fire, and other emergency officials do not have access to classified information at any level. Yet I can imagine information that the federal government may wish to distribute to them while not wanting to make it public knowledge.
A lot of satellite imagery that I have seen deals with climate measuring. It's not clear from reading the proposal itself if this "unclassified" data is included.
<AluminumFoilDeflectorBeanie mode="On"> might be a handy way to keep those filthy pinko commies and terrorists from showing evidence of climate change and messing up our plans to use up as much as possible before The Rapture(tm) comes, using our precious, precious unclassified photos...</AluminumFoilDeflectorBeanie>
That's the part that gets me - they're talking SPECIFICALLY about "unclassified" (i.e. NOT "Top Secret(tm)", etc.) information. The recommendation in the proposal explicitly mentions, in effect, the fact that, well, they COULD just classify the stuff that they don't want to show to potential commie terrorists (or the people who paid for it e.g. US Taxpayers) but that's just so inconvenient to have to do...
More grist for the Aluminum-Foil-Deflector-Beanie-defended conspiracy mill (from the proposal):
"Compelled[by the FOIA, etc.] release of such data and imagery by the United States under FOIA defeats the purpose of these licensing agreements, removes any profit motive, and may damage the national security by mandating disclosure to the general public upon request. While the data and imagery could be protected from disclosure under FOIA by classifying them, the United States prefers to keep them unclassified. Unclassified matter is more easily shared with coalition partners in contingency operations and with State and local officials in disaster relief and homeland security operations.[emphasis added]
It's terrible to think what horrible disasters could befall the US while we dare to "remove any profit motive" from taxpayer-funded "remote sensing" (which, presumably, includes imagery from sources other than satellites as well?) projects. I know I would feel safer if I wasn't allowed to look at this unclassified material that I'm paying for... And, gosh, I also feel better knowing my highly-paid legislators are Doing Something(tm) about, um, I guess terrorists or environmentalists or something.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Radar and satellite imagery aren't interchangeable when it comes to weather. Radar is used to detect precipitation, and suffers from a number of problems based on its use of radio emissions (masking, bending, line-of-sight, false returns, and so on). Satellite imagery is usually used to determine temperature, which in turn can be used to ascertain the presence of clouds and their height.
irb(main):001:0>
However, there is nothing to prohibit someone from filing a Freedom of Information request once the government buys it. This would close that loophole.
That's not a loophole, that's the point.
It's not like they'll say it's only exempt from the FOIA for n-years either, it seems pretty permanent to me...
Little known fact (in the U.S.):
During the Bush propaganda run-up to the 1991 Gulf war, the Bushies (same guys as the current Bushies, hence the name) put out the "fact" that Saddam Hussein had amassed troops on the border of Saudi Arabia. Stopping that massive invasion of Saudi Arabia was one of the major reasons to start the war.
Here's the part the U.S. has total amnesia about: news organizations, after the war, simply requested satellite photos of the Saudi border in question at the time we insisted the Iraqis were amassing its invasion.
Guess what? There were no troops there. Empty land. The troops story, like the Iraqis-threw-preemies-from-incubators crock put out by a Washington DC PR firm, was a "misstatement", as the same Bushies still call such things today.
Or a big, fat, loathesome lie.
Now, here in '01 the Bushies have created exceptions from the Freedom of Information Act. Lookee here, three years after that, they are using that questionably legal tactic to shut the hole in the wall of their fake universe that tripped them up 13 years ago: the presence of a camera.
They really don't like cameras, unless its in the hands of the police, taking YOUR picture when you dare to protest the Bushies in public.
If a third party places cameras in orbit, I guarantee they will threaten the owners into compliance with their demands, or they will reserve the right to blow them out of the sky.
This isn't flamebait. This is a scream. They are blindfolding us and gagging us, and they don't even bother to justify it. They just assume we won't care. And they are right.
This law makes perfect sense to me...
This law simply aims to close this one back door. Anyone who disagrees needs to RTFA. There are existing laws on the books limiting dissemination of satellite imagery (and for good reasons). It is these existing laws which contain the FOIA backdoor. The door simply needs to be shut.
The larger problem stated in the subject is one of appropriate security classifications and subsequent timeliness of declassification. It super easy to stamp "CLASSIFIED" or "SENSITIVE" when the item in question may not really be either.
Also, the article mentioned images from war-zones that were sufficiently aged as to question the appropriateness of maintaing any security classification. I think that there are many factors to consider other than simply, "The image is 2 months old, release it!". There is a great deal of information in aged imagery that could be had if one were diligent and intelligent enough to extract it. Take for example, and image of Baghdad that happens to have some tanks and HUMVEES in it and is 6 months old. Seems innocent enough, until you start looking at multiple images of the same or similar scenes. When enough small bits of information are available, the "enemy" could interpret troop movements, tactics, deployed strengths, etc...
That being said, an image from Afghanistan showing a sheep herd and a single transport truck on a dirt road from 3 years ago shouldn't be deemed "SECRET" because there is no small bits of 'intel' in it.
I filed for an FOIA for the latest satellite images of Hurricane Ivan. This is what they gave me.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.