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"satellite imagery for oil tankers" - Interesting. If hedge funds floating drones above oil tankers, I'd guess they'd be accussed of corporate espionage / spyi

"satellite imagery for oil tankers" - Interesting. If hedge funds floating drones above oil tankers, I'd guess they'd be accussed of corporate espionage / spying / invasion of privacy? Ok, so oil tankers are big and "in the clear". What if $TANKERCORP floats big parachute balloons above its tankers to imply "looking past these is unauthorized viewing"? Then if a HedgeFund gets a clever angle on a satellite photo.. is that the equivalent of breaking a lock, or violating CFAA?

dsacco 9y ago
Satellite imagery like this is legal to within a few feet of practical resolution, pretty much anywhere. The effective countermeasure is hiding things from a satellite, not attempting to sue satellite operators for flying overhead. I'm not aware of a specific law against using anything that is literally viewable from the sky, at least in the United States (someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked Google Maps blurs out some locations or keeps them outdated because the government requests it, not because of a formal law forcing them to do so). There are two other notes in response to your question: 1. Drones are different from satellites, and are more susceptible to regulation in the way you're positing because they can be prevented from flying above specific areas. However, most of the same problems with countering them apply, because drones can record better three dimensional footage. In your specific example, if a tanker disguised itself overhead, it would still be legal to have a drone monitor the tanker from the sides, as long as doing so didn't break any law set by the FAA. 2. Drones are actively used these days for things like monitoring production facilities ("how many cars come out of this factory" for an oversimplified version). If they have to monitor from a distance, so be it, they'll do it. The effective countermeasure here is to have a huge amount of land that can't provide any intelligence, because the drones aren't allowed to fly over it and can't see far enough in to the facility. There's definitely a productive ethics discussion that can be had here, but the legal precedents don't really allow for combatting these techniques right now. If it's public, it can be collected, ingested and used in an algorithm to determine alpha.
- paganel 9y ago
  > someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked Google Maps blurs out some locations or keeps them outdated because the government requests it, not because of a formal law forcing them to do so In the Eastern European country from where I'm from (a NATO member) the Google StreetView car even got to photograph and publicly put on the Internet the outside of military and air bases with clear signs of "do not take photographs" visible on StreetView itself. It's funny, my company also used to work in this space (local business directory with business addresses, photos of said business etc) and one of my former colleagues got detained for a day because of taking photos of businesses in the downtown area of one of the biggest cities in my country. He hadn't seen that there was a military "objective" in his line of view (probably some military HQ or someth, not a proper military base with tanks and trucks). Talk about the advantages of being an internet giant like Google.. Later edit: I was talking for example about links like these: https://www.google.ro/maps/@44.4062748,26.0524843,3a,80.8y,239.77h,95.92t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJmkNyhGqTVOG55p8vhmrig!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en https://www.google.ro/maps/@44.4062748,26.0524843,3a,80.8y,2... . That is actually the HQ of NATO's "Multinational Division Southeast", whatever that is (http://www.nato.int/cps/in/natohq/news_125356.htm?selectedLocale=en http://www.nato.int/cps/in/natohq/news_125356.htm?selectedLo...). Fact is that if I were to take photos of those buildings as a simple citizen I would be breaking the law, not sure how Google got away with it.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nradov 9y ago
Hedge fund researchers have also chartered private airplanes to fly over oil storage facilities and use infrared cameras to check tank levels. In the USA at least this is completely legal as long as they observe regular FAA flight rules. For the oil market as a whole this is a good thing since it helps price discovery. It's not practical or safe to put a huge parachute or balloon over a tanker to block overhead imagery. Any sailor can tell you it just wouldn't work.

dsacco 9y ago

Satellite imagery like this is legal to within a few feet of practical resolution, pretty much anywhere. The effective countermeasure is hiding things from a satellite, not attempting to sue satellite operators for flying overhead. I'm not aware of a specific law against using anything that is literally viewable from the sky, at least in the United States (someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked Google Maps blurs out some locations or keeps them outdated because the government requests it, not because of a formal law forcing them to do so). There are two other notes in response to your question: 1. Drones are different from satellites, and are more susceptible to regulation in the way you're positing because they can be prevented from flying above specific areas. However, most of the same problems with countering them apply, because drones can record better three dimensional footage. In your specific example, if a tanker disguised itself overhead, it would still be legal to have a drone monitor the tanker from the sides, as long as doing so didn't break any law set by the FAA. 2. Drones are actively used these days for things like monitoring production facilities ("how many cars come out of this factory" for an oversimplified version). If they have to monitor from a distance, so be it, they'll do it. The effective countermeasure here is to have a huge amount of land that can't provide any intelligence, because the drones aren't allowed to fly over it and can't see far enough in to the facility. There's definitely a productive ethics discussion that can be had here, but the legal precedents don't really allow for combatting these techniques right now. If it's public, it can be collected, ingested and used in an algorithm to determine alpha.

paganel 9y ago
> someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked Google Maps blurs out some locations or keeps them outdated because the government requests it, not because of a formal law forcing them to do so In the Eastern European country from where I'm from (a NATO member) the Google StreetView car even got to photograph and publicly put on the Internet the outside of military and air bases with clear signs of "do not take photographs" visible on StreetView itself. It's funny, my company also used to work in this space (local business directory with business addresses, photos of said business etc) and one of my former colleagues got detained for a day because of taking photos of businesses in the downtown area of one of the biggest cities in my country. He hadn't seen that there was a military "objective" in his line of view (probably some military HQ or someth, not a proper military base with tanks and trucks). Talk about the advantages of being an internet giant like Google.. Later edit: I was talking for example about links like these: https://www.google.ro/maps/@44.4062748,26.0524843,3a,80.8y,239.77h,95.92t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJmkNyhGqTVOG55p8vhmrig!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en https://www.google.ro/maps/@44.4062748,26.0524843,3a,80.8y,2... . That is actually the HQ of NATO's "Multinational Division Southeast", whatever that is (http://www.nato.int/cps/in/natohq/news_125356.htm?selectedLocale=en http://www.nato.int/cps/in/natohq/news_125356.htm?selectedLo...). Fact is that if I were to take photos of those buildings as a simple citizen I would be breaking the law, not sure how Google got away with it.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nradov 9y ago

Hedge fund researchers have also chartered private airplanes to fly over oil storage facilities and use infrared cameras to check tank levels. In the USA at least this is completely legal as long as they observe regular FAA flight rules. For the oil market as a whole this is a good thing since it helps price discovery. It's not practical or safe to put a huge parachute or balloon over a tanker to block overhead imagery. Any sailor can tell you it just wouldn't work.