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Spy Chief Hints At Limits On Satellite Photos
An anonymous reader writes "Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says that the increasing availability of commercial satellite photos may require the government to restrict distribution. 'I could certainly foresee circumstances in which we would not want imagery to be openly disseminated of a sensitive site of any type, whether it is here or overseas,' he said. This would include imagery on Web sites such as Google Earth, because the companies that supply the photos get help from the NGIA with launches." I had never heard of this particular intelligence agency. During the early months of the invasion of Afghanistan they bought up all satellite imagery over that country, worldwide, in a tactic later dubbed "checkbook shutter control."
Actually not like that at all. But you are correct that it's officially the NGA, not NGIA.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
The European satellite imagery is also for sale and can be had in multi-spectral and .5 meter resolution. There are too many commercial satellite image providers and sources to make limiting access unrealistic. Governments can put up there own and collect the data, state sponsorered para-military can just use what their sponsor obtains and high altitude aerial photography can be purchased for almsot any local on an on-demand basis. The "bad guys" have this info easily no matter what is done, all they prevent is sending a picture of your house captured from above to your friends and family and such. All it takes is money to purchase the imagery and at better resolution than most free sources, as well as IR and various other wavelengths if desired. India and China launch satellites too and make satellites. With current known technology it would not be tough to collect the imagery and resell it just to tweak the NRO/NGIA noses.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
NGA (NGIA in the submission) the artist formerly known as NIMA - not a new organization just a different name...
More like they paid for the information not to be distributed.
The same information can be sold many times, it's not something that can be out of stock.
There is always the chance of someone having the information and not wanting an "exclusive deal" with the US intelligence community.
GPG 0x1B479C78
Maps are classified documents! ...oh wait...
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency used to be the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), but they changed their name sometime in 2003 or 2004. They wanted to play with the "big boy" intelligence agencies, all of whom had three letter acronyms, so they changed their name and added a hyphen - they're now known as NGA, not NGIA.
"Is there a way to wget (or similar method) the entire contents of the google earth system to a local server(s) so as to have a local system that can't be taken down/controlled by information supressionists?"
That's easy. Download USAPhotoMaps, the free...shareware program. All the map data gets downloaded to your local HD and is there for ever and ever.
I'm assuming you're talking about England here...
you can be jailed for going over the speeding limit by 20 mph
This is bogus - you're only going to get jailed for doing 20mph over the limit if you kill/mame someone in the process.
there are more cameras than people
Where'd you pull that statistic from? Sure there are a lot of cameras, but nowhere near that many.
its illegal to own GPS recievers that tell you where the speeding cameras are
Completely bogus - GPS receivers and speeding camera maps (and the combination of the 2) are completely legal.
new speeding cameras that identify individual cars and time you over long distances to see if you broke the average speeding limit
Not over long distances - over short distances such as a mile or so. You're talking about the SPECS cameras, which many consider to be much safer than GATSOs since they don't cause hard braking. (Note: I'm opposed to speed cameras, but I don't see how you can claim that SPECS is worse than GATSO).
I'd rather live in the US than in England.
It seems that you're basing this almost entirely on bad information.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Isn't it true that much of the high resolution photography on Google Earth and similar services is derived from standard aerial photography? Mapping is a commercial activity and aerial photography makes an invaluable contribution to the modern cartographer. The photographs are a byproduct of the process as well as a product in themselves.
See my journal, I write things there
The general public has basically no need for this sort of information, but a hypothetical attacker does. There may not actually be many terrorists or spies in the US right now, but there's a decent chance that there are some, and in the past they've been very interested in this stuff. Maybe they can get it anyway, but let's make them at least risk exposure to do their reconnaissance, OK?
You can rant all you want about security through obscurity, but the real world isn't a cryptosystem. The attacker has less time to study your nuclear site security offline (at least, as long as photographing it is illegal). Furthermore, Kerckhoff's principle doesn't say that systems shouldn't be obscure, just that their security shouldn't depend on it. Obscurity is still a valid defense in depth.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Nothing to it - all you need is a 12m tracking dish capable of keeping up with a Low Earth Orbit Satellite on a circa. 90 minute orbit, hardware capable of handling the huge bandwidth required (a single QuickBird scene of about 272 km^2 runs to gigabytes, then you can hack into the satellite to persuade it to unload the raw data from the on-board solid-state memory to your PC which knows how to process it into system-corrected data and then...
look, forget it. Weather satellites are geostationary, and the pictures they send are small. There's a intro to VHR satellite imagery here.
Science fiction for grown-ups...
Are you sure about that? Just by you saying that, out of curiosity I want to fire up Google Earth and find such sites, just to see if they are grayed out or how they look. In fact, does the general public 'need' to look at their house on the satellite map? Do they 'need' to see how Disnay World looks from space? - No they don't. Except for some specific applications people don't 'need' to use satellite maps, Their lives were fine before the Google Earth came about and they would probably been alrigh if Google Earth would have never been released.
The point is that people 'want' to look at those sites. Not because they will go there, or attack them or do anything evil, but just out of curiosity or because 'they can'. As the grandparent put it, the govt. can tell the US business not to map certain areas, but then Chinese, Japanese and European satellites will map it and, surprise, make it available on the net. Besides if the layout of some nuclear plant is the only thing that keeps that plant secure from 'teh terrorists' then we might as well blow it up ourselves because it is close to not having any security at all then.
The attacker has less time to study your nuclear site security offline (at least, as long as photographing it is illegal)
Of course, except for blowing themsevles up and wanting to kill thousands of innocent civilians, such an attacker would _never_ break law and take pictures, right?
The secrecy of location / layout will not and should not be considered as a 'defence'. Because the govt. is reacting this way, means that they do rely, at least partially, on 'security-by-obscurity'. Instead of forcing the US business to gray out maps, they should adapt and accept the fact everything will be visible from space. The did that during the Cold War, I don't know why they can't hold the same assumption now.
but let's make them at least risk exposure to do their reconnaissance, OK?
Performing reconessance is not that difficult and I don't remember any terrorist plots being foiled recently because someone was caught doing reconessance. I do recall many photographers being harrassed for taking pictures of bridges, building and other such things, you know... the same stuff they have been taking pictures of the last 200 years or so...
Let me give you an example of some data that may be dangerous.+ AFB+LA&ie=UTF8&ll=32.4938,-93.665201&spn=0.002927, 0.005343&t=h&z=18&om=1+ AFB+LA&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=32.506468,-93.642467&sp n=0.002927,0.005343&z=18&iwloc=addr+ AFB+LA&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=32.518368,-93.66394&spn =0.001463,0.002671&z=19&iwloc=addr+ AFB+LA&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=32.518368,-93.66394&spn =0.001463,0.002671&z=19&iwloc=addr
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Barksdale
Those are B52s and those are their parking spots. While not realtime data with Google Earth at least you can get the latitude and longitude of those spots. That Air base like most the rest of the US has no real anti-aircraft defense systems it would be very easy to target those planes. You can also see a lot more than three buildings in an L shape. If that isn't good enough for you here are the weapon storage bunkers http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Barksdale
and just for fun some fuel storage http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Barksdale
and just to show you how good these images are these are some older aircraft they have on static display at the base. This is a B52 with a Mig-21 fighter next to it. I am not an expert but the photos are good enough even for me to identify pretty small aircraft. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Barksdale
I am not saying that I like the idea but to dismiss it seems less than honest. This is not a black and white issue.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.