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.......