IP: Spy Satellites available for hire..

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 01:39:19 -0700
> To: dave () farber net
> From: "Suzanne M. Johnson" <sjohnson () cncdsl com>



> from the LA Times
> full story at:
> http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_spy000613.htm?MAIL
>
> Spy Satellites Evolve Into Private Eye in the Sky
>
>    By ROBERT LEE HOTZ, Times Science Writer
>
> Since January, John Pike has been taking his own satellite pictures of the
> world's most       secret military bases and then making them public on the
> Internet. The images and the debate they have provoked are an experiment in
> the high technology of democracy, for anyone now can share a view from
> orbit once reserved solely for those with the highest of superpower
> security 
> clearances.
> ..............clip............
>
> The satellite images offer ways to second-guess governments, blur national
> borders
> and rearrange a host of relationships that until now depended on the
> ability to hide
> things--even entire cities--from the public's prying eyes. Even from orbit,
> a photograph of an unguarded moment can speak volumes. For example, U.S.
> government satellite images of newly dug mass graves in Kosovo and Bosnia
> have been used to call attention to possible war crimes, showing that human
> rights abuses can be detected from orbit. "It is sort of like visual truth
> serum," said Space Imaging Vice President Marc Bender. Commercial satellite
> imaging eventually promises to transform everything from arms control and
> human rights investigations to environmental monitoring and pollution
> control, several satellite experts said.  "There are a whole bunch of
> non-government groups who are trying to do this," said Ann M. Florini, an
> expert at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace on commercial satellitepolicy.
> "There are enormous potential applications in environmental issues and in
> humanitarian relief."
>  .............clip.......
>
>
> The biggest stir, by all accounts, is among those least likely to make
> their complaints public--the operators of the U.S. intelligence satellites,
> for whom such telling views from orbit have until now been their own
> exclusive specialty. They are most upset that such images--although
> perfectly legal under U.S. and international law--are public at all.
> .........clip.......