Without getting into the conspiracy-ish side of this, I'd like to point out that this is changing. Until recently, I worked at Planet Labs where our goal was to

Without getting into the conspiracy-ish side of this, I'd like to point out that this is changing. Until recently, I worked at Planet Labs where our goal was to image the entire landmass of the Earth, at 3m resolution (not quite as good as Google's most zoomed-in imagery), every day and make it available to everyone. The monitoring system design means, amongst other wins, we don't need to know "something is about to change" to get the before/after pictures, and it also prevents the "checkbook shutter control" the article talks about. You can sign up for an account[0] with just an email address and start digging through imagery right now (unfortunately, purchasing it at full quality is a different story). Make sure to select an Area Of Interest to get down to daily imagery, I'll start you off with one for the Tonopah Test Range[1] which has coverage on 21 different days so far in October. [0] https://www.planet.com/explorer/ https://www.planet.com/explorer/ [1] https://www.planet.com/explorer/#/area-coverage/0.32,1/mosaic/global_monthly_2018_09_mosaic/center/-116.851,37.723/zoom/11/geometry/POLYGON((-116.8971+37.6131,-116.5308+37.6131,-116.5308+37.8955,-116.8971+37.8955,-116.8971+37.6131))/items/PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180533_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180532_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180531_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180530_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180529_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180528_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180425_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180424_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180423_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180422_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180421_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180420_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_174521_0f49,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_174520_0f49/interval/1%20day https://www.planet.com/explorer/#/area-coverage/0.32,1/mosai...