Private satellites open uncharted territory in data collection...

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
> Date: January 26, 2019 at 3:49:41 AM GMT+9
> To: Interesting Stuff list <is () iconia com>
> Subject: IS: Private satellites open uncharted territory in data collection...
>
> A company has launched hundreds of small satellites capturing over a million photos of Earth each day for commercial 
> use, offering unimagined possibilities and consequences. 
> EXCERPT:
> David Martin reports on a new, uncharted frontier in the collection of data created by hundreds of privately produced 
> satellites whose millions of images are available to the public and not just the government. His story will be 
> broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, January 27 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
>
> Planet Labs, the satellite company, has launched hundreds of small satellites for commercial use, such as monitoring 
> the health of crops. They get over a million photos from them each day.  "I'm always astonished that almost every 
> picture we get down, we compare it to the picture from yesterday and something has changed," says one of the 
> company's founders, Will Marshall.
>
> Planet Lab has 200 customers, none more important than the U.S. Government. Martin was given rare access to the 
> National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's operations center, where data from U.S. government satellites and Planet 
> Lab is secretly analyzed. 
>
> NGA Director Robert Cardillo now has access to millions more images than in the past, when the U.S. government had a 
> monopoly on the collection of satellite data. "I'm quite excited about capabilities such as what Planet is putting up 
> in space," he tells Martin.
>
> The NGA's analysis of satellite imagery is used extensively by the military and can monitor the movements of foreign 
> militaries, such as the Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. The raid on the compound of Osama bin Laden was 
> made possible through satellite imagery.
>
> Now the rest of the world has access to this technology, those working for the good and those who may be working for 
> the bad. The NGA does not have the authority to declare secret any of the millions of images Planet Lab has collected 
> so far and to come. It's a new frontier with a multitude of possibilities that Marshall of Planet Labs says he is 
> worried about, but nonetheless must explore. "I worry a lot and we wouldn't have started Planet if we didn't have a 
> very strong conviction that the vast majority of the use cases are very, very positive."
> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/privately-produced-satellites-open-uncharted-territory-in-data-collection-60-minutes/
>
> https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/
>
> -- 
> Geoff.Goodfellow () iconia com
> living as The Truth is True
> http://geoff.livejournal.com  



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