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IP: Spy Satellites available for hire..
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 05:23:32 -0400
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.......
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- IP: Spy Satellites available for hire.. Dave Farber (Jun 16)