Limits On Satellite Photos

[Dubh Aingeal]

Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGIA), says that the increasing availability of commercial satellite photos may require the government to restrict distribution.

I could certainly foresee circumstances in which we would not want imagery to be openly disseminated of a sensitive site of any type, whether it is here or overseas,' he said. This would include imagery on Web sites such as Google Earth, because the companies that supply the photos get help from the NGIA with launches.

I had never heard of this particular intelligence agency. During the early months of the invasion of Afghanistan they bought up all satellite imagery over that country, worldwide, in a tactic later dubbed "checkbook shutter control."

[ZhukovCodeslinger]

I am familiar with that agency (im pretty sure they have been around since the regan era)... but they were relatively obscure until recently.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

I thought i read somewhere that there is alredy a restriction on how high the resolution is allowed to be for public use, and also a time-lag requirement. Its been awhile but i clearly remember reading a few articles about it, one like 12 years ago and a few more along the way.

I'm not sure what that is exactly but something like "the photos have to be at least 72 hours old and can only be of XYZ resolution max".

Similar to how there is a restriction on GPS positioning data resolution.