SATELLITE PICS GOING DARK?

[Rosco T.]

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001096.html

SATELLITE PICS GOING DARK?

You might be able to see the hurricanes heading for Florida. Maybe. But just about all other commercial satellite imagery could be put off-limits, if a new Senate bill goes through as planned.

The measure, "Nondisclosure of Certain Products of Commercial Satellite Operations," would exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) unclassified, commercial satellite pictures bought up by the government, as well as "any... other product that is derived from such data."

(snip)

For example, "maps, reports, and any other unclassified government analyses or communications that are in some way 'derived from' a commercial satellite image would all of a sudden become inaccessible." News reports would get a whole lot thinner, too. As Barbara Cochran, head of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, notes, the press relies on satellite pictures constantly, to track everything from weather to war to population shifts. "Recent uses include coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts; nuclear and other WMD sites in Iran, Pakistan, India, Libya, North Korea, China, and other countries; flooding in Bangladesh and Eastern India; deforestation in Brazil; wildfires and tornadoes in the United States; and refugee crises in the Sudan Rwanda," she writes.

If this regulation passes, much of that imagery – not classified in any way, and collected by a private company, not a government agency -- would vanish from public view.

[necso]

1. The world is going dark!

[Wwagsthedog]

3. As in "Ages" nt

[htuttle]

2. Sounds like a good way to hand the entire satellite imagery market...

...to another country.

Or would they buy up all Japan's and EU's images too? (won't be long, you know). China will have more of their own satellites soon -- are they planning on shooting them down? Brazil is probably going to try to put something up there soon, too. Think of the money Brazil could make with a monopoly on the open commercial satellite imagery market!

[Az_lefty]

4. This is ridiculous!!

why don't we just lock ourselves in a fucking closet!!!!!
:mad:

[bain_sidhe]

5. "Nothing to see here..." LITERALLY.

They used to just say it. I guess they intend to enforce it, now. Gives a whole new meaning to

[Swamp Rat]

6. They have assumed control

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. This is how empires decline. They strangle themselves.