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

Restriction on restriction

[denoir]

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.

Re:Restriction on restriction

[garcia]

The only thing they'll accomplish by a restriction is hurting US business. The images will still be available from European and Japanese satellites.

Or US companies will just start doing more flyovers like they have been for Microsoft's Live Maps which offer views of locations from multiple locations (N, E, S, W). 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 :(

Re:Restriction on restriction

[networkBoy]

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

Re:Restriction on restriction

[$RANDOMLUSER]

...non-US commercial sources...

Terraists.

...images will still be available from European and Japanese satellites...

Either they are for US or against US.

...learn to live with the fact...

You must be new here. This regime does not "live with facts".

Re:Restriction on restriction

[demachina]

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.

Re:Restriction on restriction

[adarklite]

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.

Re:Restriction on restriction

[argStyopa]

"The current admin does everything, seriously, everything
wrong, which creates long term damage.

You can predict what their response will be to any
situation: whatever will create damage will be the choice.

The list is long. Katrina is a good example."

If the current adminstration was able to cause Katrina, then perhaps that tinfoil hat isn't going to be enough.....

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.

Re:Restriction on restriction

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

Re:Restriction on restriction

[mjbinon]

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.

on control of information...

[User 956]

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."

A Message from the Ministry of Truth

[r_jensen11]

Ingorance is Strength

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Sincerely,
Winston Smith

Re:A Message from the Ministry of Truth

[Blakey Rat]

remind anyone of anything *cough cough* DRM *cough cough* copy protection *cough*

Do you need some Sucrets? Maybe you should have called-in sick to Slashdot today.

You americans are living in intelligence hell

[unity100]

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.

Re:You americans are living in intelligence hell

[StikyPad]

homeland security (what the fuck is that)

Fatherland was taken.

Re:You americans are living in intelligence hell

[Anomolous Cowturd]

You know you're headed for disaster when your only consolation is being better than the English.

Re:You americans are living in intelligence hell

[FireFury03]

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.

Re:You americans are living in intelligence hell

[Torvaun]

In Rodina, names take you!

Somewhat pointless, horse, barn, ...

[Tjp($)pjT]

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.

Re:Somewhat pointless, horse, barn, ...

[b00le]

There are no commercial European satellites with .5 metre pixel capability. The only commercial European Remote Sensing mission currently is SpotImage -- Spot 5 has a 2.5 m capability.

For all those who ask 'how hard can it be?' (shades of Top Gear...) entry level into the commercial Very High Resolution satellite business starts at around half a billion -- don't forget the ground segment. Even future missions are not planning to go much below .4 metre: the problems of handling huge data volumes, programming the satellite acquisitions, and the trade-off in covereage are not worth the gains in sharpness for most commercial users. The US military can get down to about 10 cm (allegedly), but are believed to use highly elliptical orbits (and huge, Hubble-sized telescopes) which would be inmpractical for commercial operators. 10 cm is not as good as Hollywood has got: the last episode of '24' showed what was supposed to be a Landsat image - only it was thermal infrared at about 1 cm updated once a second (as opposed to 15 m every two weeks or more...)

The Man may well have bought 'all the coverage of Afghanistan' -- from a single operator. The Ikonos mission (1m pixel) was the only one operating at the time. The US Govt. does retain 'shutter control' rights of all the VHR missionslicensed by them - which is all the current VHR missions. That will change - especially with COSMO-SkyMed, a constellation of all-weather radar satellites with a max. resolution of >1m, coming soon.

There's a intro to VHR satellite imagery here.

Coming soon to a country near you...

[Kuroji]

I'm sure that Congress will pass a bill restricting the distribution of satellite imagery attached to something else that must pass in the near future. Something innocuous and large like a budget or telecom related bill.

On the plus side, the images that are already out there are staying out there, so some things like Google Earth are just going to become outdated, but they've already been doing this in some other circumstances - ever try to look at any of the buildings in DC for instance?

torn between privascy and rigth to know

[uncreativ]

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.

NGA = NIMA

[Dolphinzilla]

NGA (NGIA in the submission) the artist formerly known as NIMA - not a new organization just a different name...

Re:NGA not NGIA

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he actually means NIGA - the intelligence agency from the ghetto.

Don't Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a ...

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:panic?

[Anonymous Coward]

While i understand the logic here to an extent, it is a bit of a knee jerk reaction. If somebody really needed ariel photos of a place for illicit purposes it would be MUCH easier for them to obtain them from a balloon, or even an airplane.

Have you ever tried this near military locations? And what kind of sentence did you get?

Re:NGA not NGIA

[Simon Garlick]

nga plz.

oh really...

[toby]

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.

Intelligence Agency?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you click around the NGIA website long enough, you will wind up at an open Netscape LDAP server, where you may freely search the agency's employee LDAP tree. There are some visible admin links, but I didn't click any. Most of the information is mundane, but each search result included full name, employment status (contractor/fte), sex, and user ids. Hint: you get there through a link in a PDF available on the site. You might not find that information interesting, but others might (it is a government intelligence agency, after all).

I question the legitimacy of any intelligence agency this sloppy. I bet they have as much depth as the DHS.

What for?

[snowwrestler]

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.

Can you receive and decode this stuff yourself?

[ikekrull]

I know that weather satellites transmissions can be received and decoded using a PC easily enough - I wonder just how much more difficult it would be to decode signals from imaging satellites from your own dish?

I'm sure they use some type of encryption, but you know, thats not always (e.g. HD-DVD) the barrier it is supposed to be. Also, recent events such as the Tamil Tigers hijacking satellite bandwidth makes me wonder just what might be possible.

Anyone do any satellite hacking?

Re:Can you receive and decode this stuff yourself?

[b00le]

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.

NGA successfully restricted aero data

[brg]

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.

It's an allergy.

[Ihlosi]

Do you need some Sucrets?

He's just allergic to BS.

How to stop companies selling pictures of home

[TheMCP]

1) Paint a picture on your house. Heck, you could even just paint an interesting geometric design on it. Just make it interesting enough that people wouldn't laugh at you if you called it "artistic expression". Stick a copyright symbol on it somewhere. If you're feeling particularly zealous, take a picture of it and register for a copyright with the copyright office.

2) Identify company selling pictures of your house showing the picture or design you painted.

3) Sue them under the DMCA for selling pirated reproductions of your copyrighted "artistic work" (aka the paintjob on your house).

Surprised it's taken so long

[clickclickdrone]

I was on Microsoft Live's maps last night (first time) enjoying the birds eye view of my house (really impressed, can see individual items in the garden and my car parked outside). I then wondered how much sensitive stuff was allowed so I scrolled over to a military research place near where I live. Almost nothing is known about his place apart from its existence and that it's something to do with testing & research. Well, it was all there. I spent an hour looking at the bunkers, tanks, gun emplacements, various buildings, roads, railways etc. I was amazed I was allowed. I then moved over to an island nearby that is shared between military and farmers - non residents need a pass to visit. That was all there too.
With a bag of goodness like that online, I just don't know where to 'snoop' next!

Re:Reverse monopoly will stop that

[GnuDiff]

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.