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."

Comments

Re:Restriction on restriction

[wirelessbuzzers]

They are already trying to ban picture taking by civilians at various locations (what is this fucking North Korea?) and the flyovers will be next :( Once upon a time, it was considered acceptable that some information was unavailable to the public. For instance, the layout of nuclear facilities, the locations and materiel of defensive bases, or the site layouts and security measures of critical but vulnerable civilian infrastructure (dams, nuclear plants, hazardous waste facilities, fuel refineries, chemical plants, etc). It used to be that taking high-resolution pictures of such installations, systematically mapping the civilian and military infrastructure, and giving them out to foreign governments was considered treason. This was true for years in the USA, Canada, and wherever else in addition to "fucking North Korea." It seems reasonable that this should continue to be true.

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.