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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.
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?
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".
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.
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.
--
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.
War on Terror
War on Poverty
War on Internet Piracy
What exactly does 'only during wartime' mean these days?
Dyolf Knip
Jesus. Some /.'ers just love to smash anything the government does.
Implying that this is going to destroy the domestic satellite market? You're an idiot. Seriously.
Lets look at this. Government wants to protect data that protects its soldiers and 'operations'. Solution? They go to satellite corps and say "We're going to make you an offer you can't refuse." And they *OVERPAY* them to not distribute or sometimes even take photos.
That means the domestic satellite imagery market, when confronted by the government, RAKES IN THE MONEY.
When the government isn't doing this, they're back to on their own and competing.
The government has been doing this for *DECADES*. And you know what? American companies still have satellites taking photos! LIKE OMG. It's freaking amazing how when a company gets paid insane margins to do something that they manage to survive.
The only thing about this story anyone has any right to bitch about is: the images the government buys can't be made public, ever. That's a serious concern and killer of our right and power to audit our government.
BTW, you can bet your sweetass we do these same deals with foreign companies.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
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.
--Chag
I read the text of the bill (linked from the article), and I don't see anything in there about about banning privately owned satellites from selling their images to whomever they want. All this bill says is that the government does not have to release images that it has to the public. So no this will have zero effect on the private market of satellite imagery whatsover, unless every satalite owner decides out of their own free will to sign an exclusive agreement with the government. I don't know where the submitter or article got that from.
The important questions are how this affects our rights, whether it will improve security, and which outweighs the other. I'm still thinking about that.
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.
Government wants to protect data
It's always for our protection.
That means the domestic satellite imagery market, when confronted by the government, RAKES IN THE MONEY
Great. Another taxpayer funded pyramid scheme. Another way for you and I to subsidize some businessman that we've never met who happens to have a lobbying buddy in Washington.
The government has been doing this for *DECADES*
And not just in the satellite industry. My pocketbook is pleading for this crap to stop.
The only thing about this story anyone has any right to bitch about is:
Lobbying groups get Congress to steal our tax money, again, as usual?
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Some /.'ers just love to smash anything the government does.
No, just the stupid and evil things it does.
Oh, wait...
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.)
On a hopefully unrelated note, I noticed the following in my web server logs: /faq/satellite_photo/ HTTP/1.0" 200 4449 "http://www.terraserver.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02 (CK-DNJ702R1)"
149.101.1.128 - - [07/Sep/2004:08:48:12 -0600] "GET
That IP address resolves to wdcsun28.usdoj.gov ... and the referral of www.terraserver.com is pretty odd too ... and 10 minutes later, the IP address 149.101.1.116 (resolves as wdcsun16.usdoj.gov) looked at the same page ... but so far, no other accesses from 149.101.*.* addresses - have the black helocopters been dispatched?!? ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
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.
So I can be secretly held (shadow detainees)
in a secret facility (hide and seek from Red Cross)
awaiting my secret trial (military courts for civilian American and foreign nationals)
for breaking a secret law (recent slashdot)
for looking at a secret map (how do we know which ones are OK?)
derived from secret satellite data (that was formerly readily available).
Yes I suppose us Slashdoters are paranoid. If freedom is relative as the Chinese government once professed, maybe we are making the rest of the world a free and democratic society by moving the often referenced "America as a model for a free society" to a police state of Orwellian proportions. Kind of a perverse way of liberating the world isn't it?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.