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Spy Chief Hints At Limits On Satellite Photos

Posted by kdawson on from the don't-look-there dept.

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."

17 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Restriction on restriction by denoir · · Score: 5, Insightful
    They can try to restrict as much as they can, but the fact is that much of the satellite images used by for instance Google are from non-US commercial sources. The only thing they'll accomplish by a restriction is hurting US business. The images will still be available from European and Japanese satellites.

    More realistic is that they have to learn to live with the fact that satellite images are available to the general public and adjust their strategy accordingly.

    1. Re:Restriction on restriction by networkBoy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      FTFA:
      They *bought* all the imagery.
      You can restrict information in many ways you know.
      -nB

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      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    2. Re:Restriction on restriction by demachina · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly. The U.S. bureaucracy in particular, and America in general has such a massive dose of arrogance they are under the delusion they can still dictate anything and everything to the whole planet.

      90% of whats gone wrong in the last six years is almost entirely due to a acute arrogance mixed with bad case of ignorance on the part of the people in the Bush administration. That's a really dangerous cocktail.

      Russia, China, the E.U., Japan and India all have respectable capabilities to build and launch satellites, and more are joining the club. When the Space Shuttle is scraped there is probably going to be a very long window in which Russia and China will be able to put men in to orbit and the U.S. wont. The U.S. tries to bottle up satellite imagery I'm sure Russia or China will fill the void just to poke a finger in the eye of the U.S.

      To me this just sounds like another round of post 9/11 fear mongering.

      The U.S. seriously needs to wake up to the fact that the biggest threat to its National security is its massive trade and budget deficits, broken education system, energy dependence on parts of the world it can no long control, and a plunging dollar because no one has confidence in the U.S. anymore.

      If the U.S. were spending money on those issues instead of on an out of control defense industrial complex:

      A. It would be a lot more prosperous and secure
      B. The rest of the world would hate the U.S. a lot less and have fewer reasons to want to attack it

      The best defense program the U.S. could invest in right now is a serious effort to improve car mileage ASAP and then to develop clean, renewable and affordable energy sources.

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      @de_machina
    3. Re:Restriction on restriction by adarklite · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You can restrict a lot if you put your mind to it. The other countries will do as the US wishes because they don't want their sensitive military and intelligence data posted in a public forum as well. Quid pro quo. We don't want this information released to the general public and you don't want this information released.

    4. Re:Restriction on restriction by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Once upon a time, it was considered acceptable that some information was unavailable to the public.

      Once upon a time, it was considered that governments would use official secrets only to protect genuinely sensitive information.

      That time has passed. Western governments have been caught with their pants down, repeatedly, abusing their privilege of withholding information from the public for political reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with safeguarding the security of the nation and its people.

      The general public has basically no need for this sort of information, but a hypothetical attacker does.

      Perhaps, but (a) you were talking about detailed information relating to critical infrastructure, which is pretty close to being a straw man in a discussion about satellite imagery that clearly has many potential uses for the average person and probably doesn't show more than three big buildings in an L-shape, and (b) this question is really a matter of principle and not of specifics: should the presumption be that information must be released to the people by the people's government, or that the government may withhold information at will from the people?

      My views on this one are pretty clear now: no political administration should be allowed to keep any information away from the public, without a clear national security reason for doing so, as determined by an impartial official observer not directly connected with or accountable to the administration of the day.

      If you don't understand why the balance of power must be this way to protect the people, take a look at my sig, and then read a good book on 20th century history with that in mind.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    5. Re:Restriction on restriction by mjbinon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The general public has basically no need for this sort of information
      I actually agree with this statement. Personally, I am a curious person, and I like to look stuff up purely for the sake of looking, but I'm also intelligent enough to understand that in some cases the need for security outweighs "curiousity". Such as the example given in TFA about the US paying to restrict satellite images of Afganistan during the conflict there. If doing this saves the lives of US soldiers, it doesn't bother me that I can't check out military camps in Afganistan from satellite pictures.

      If I fire up Google Earth tomorrow and find that the Pentagon, Camp Pendleton, etc... are greyed out, I'm not going to lose sleep over it or decry the "loss of my rights and freedom".

      For another example, while the location of Camp David is not exactly completely classified, the US government doesn't go out of its way to advertise, and in fact keeps that info pretty close to the vest. However, if you know where to look, which I do, and zoom in close enough in Google Earth, you'll see that there it is, not just visible, but plainly marked with a POI flag and labeled "Camp David". Personally, I feel this is undermining a reasonable security measure just a little too much.
  2. on control of information... by User+956 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    Reminds me of the old saying, "Beware of he who would restrict you from information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  3. A Message from the Ministry of Truth by r_jensen11 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ingorance is Strength

    War is Peace

    Freedom is Slavery

    Sincerely,
    Winston Smith

  4. You americans are living in intelligence hell by unity100 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    and service hell to boot.

    nsa, fema, homeland security (what the fuck is that), cia, fbi, this new thing in the article now, count as much as you can im sure there are more.

    i started to often think which rules your country - congress, senate and president, or these "service" organizations.

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    Read radical news here
    1. Re:You americans are living in intelligence hell by StikyPad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      homeland security (what the fuck is that)

      Fatherland was taken.

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      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
    2. Re:You americans are living in intelligence hell by Torvaun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In Rodina, names take you!

      --
      I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
  5. torn between privascy and rigth to know by uncreativ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I really don't like the government telling us what information we have the right to have. (sigh) guess we've gone too far down the rabbit hole on that one.

    I also really don't like the idea of companies making imagery of my property available to whomever wants it. My business is my business and is not for sale. I guess preventing that from happening is futile as well.

  6. Don't Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a ... by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are already plenty of public places in the USA with posted signs prohibiting video/photos.

    These restrictions are clear violations of the Constitution, which creates no power for our government to prevent our recording public places. Not to mention absolutely unamerican in attitude.

    There's so much accumulated destruction of America to fix now that it'll take generations to even catch up to where we could be, not to mention all the new problems accumulating while we're catching up. If we can even reverse momentum at all.

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    make install -not war

  7. oh really... by toby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    During the early months of the invasion of Afghanistan they bought up all satellite imagery over that country, worldwide

    Did they buy everything Russia has*? How? Is it really credible that Russia would enter into some kind of clandestine NDA over this material? And what would it mean if they did? We can assume that the US government has more money than $GOD to execute its evil. But what would be the motive here? To prevent before-and-after comparisons? Did they buy up all Iraq's too?

    * - There must be a substantial archive of Afghan intelligence somewhere in Russia, as a legacy of the 9-year war.

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    you had me at #!
  8. What for? by snowwrestler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is the strategic weakness exposed by satellite imagery, that is not exposed by the other myriad sources of information that are available? So you can see the top of the White House on Google Maps. So what, anyone can see it from the Washington Monument or the Hay Adams.

    Important strategic installations are already satellite-proofed because of the Russians. The rest doesn't matter because there are so many other ways to find out the same information.

    This is just like the time a National Geographic photographer was denied permission to photograph a bridge becuase of security concerns. He pointed out that if someone wants to know where the bridge is, they can read a map. If they want to see it they can drive over it as many time as they want. It didn't sway them and in fact he was told if he went up in the helicopter he would be shot down. Morons.

    --
    Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
  9. NGA successfully restricted aero data by brg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FWIW, this is also the agency that successfully pulled Dafif, a huge database of periodically updated worldwide aeronautical information historically available for free to the public, off the public Internet. Here's a brief story about it and where you used to be able to get it. So in a sense this sort of statement is very much in character; this guy is probably "just doing his job". He is a DoD employee, after all.

    Now, they will probably have a much tougher time pwning all the satellite images, especially in future, because they aren't the sole provider of such images. The right answer is probably competition, i.e., for more commercial providers to get satellites up... makes it that much harder for any one agent (or agency) to corner the market, anyway. And TFA seems to suggest that that is indeed happening.

    It does sort of seem like a basic drawback of so-called open-source intelligence (which has nothing to do with "open source" per se) that everyone else pretty much has the ability to get at it too, if they look hard enough. Perhaps the complaint is that now they don't have to look very hard at all.

  10. Re:Reverse monopoly will stop that by GnuDiff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Imagined answers:

    >Ever want to launch a satellite from US soil again?
    Nah, thanks, Russian/Chinese soil works just as well for us.

    >Ever want to do business with a US company again?
    We prefer selling to the EU, Russia, Africa and god knows who else. Actually, it is the US companies that want to do business with us. If they can't - too bad for them.

    >You have an office in $random_country_we_are_invading
    Why should we? The US is stretched to deal with Iraq itself as it is, pretty good bet they can't spread their forces to the rest of the world as well. Egypt sounds nice at this time of year, or maybe Greece. Then again Russia has always been a favourite, and they don't care about satellite imagery for businesses as long as their military gets their copy of Pentagon for wall posters.