6 ms·

US lifts restrictions on more detailed satellite images

55 points by darrhiggs 12y ago

trebor 12y ago
I don't like this. You can already see a lot of detail on these satellite photos. This is a huge breach of privacy. (Not that a 50cm lower limit isn't a breach of privacy.)
- rwmj 12y ago
  Do you worry about people flying planes over your house, looking over your fence, etc?
  - makmanalp 12y ago
    It isn't unreasonable to be afraid of something becoming easy to the point of negligible, correlation of personal data across multiple databases as a result of mass data collection comes to mind.
  - trebor 12y ago
    What worries me more is what kind of corporate espionage these satellite images will be put to use for. They've been able to see the car(s) in a driveway for awhile now. But imagine: now they can pay to see what the most popular cars are in a geographical region; they can look at your deck and determine furniture brands; they can see you sunbathing; they can see what you play with, etc. No longer is it just "buying habits" but they can, en masse, buy the rights to psychoanalyze your lifestyle base on what they see from the outside of your house. I'm pretty certain that a company paying a team of photographers to stalk the average citizen to psychoanalyze their world would be creepy, if not illegal. But this is exactly what they will be doing—and we'll have no ability to "outrun" their team of photographers. Technically, we won't even know when they're overhead. And that does bother me.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      Write an app to calculate orbital elements and pop up an alert: "Imaging object arriving over horizon, take action" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements http://www.heavens-above.com/ http://www.heavens-above.com/ Other countries have done this for years, and cover their equipment with camo cover when opposing country assets are overhead. This is why the Air Force/Boeing X-37B is such a big deal; its an asset that can shift orbits to counterattack known orbit information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/X_37B_Gets_Stranger_999.html http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/X_37B_Gets_Stranger_999.ht...
- McDiesel 12y ago
  At some point you will just have to realize that this illusion of privacy you have is just that... an illusion. Privacy exists in small pockets, and only in places that you control access to. Aside from that, you might as well consider it public.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    Thanks to drones and satellites, privacy no longer exists in private yards, even those with high fences lined with trees. Thanks to infrared photography, structure-penetrating radar, cell phones, etc., privacy no longer exists indoors either. This is not right.
    - ser_ocelot 12y ago
      Is there a suitable material for a lightweight "roof" you could put over your property that would block aerial photography but still allow sunlight and rain to penetrate? One could even make it shielded against electromagnetic frequencies. No more drones hacking your wifi!
      - bluman 12y ago
        Camouflage netting is perhaps the only surefire way to do this, although I'm sure that will attract far more attention than doing nothing at all. Something that would work kind of OK would be to create a large radiometric difference in your property like having a dark black roof and making your lawn as reflective as possible (white cement or gravel, swimming pool). That way when the imagery is processed in an automated fashion it will render your area badly. It still would be possible to go back to the original images and enhance the area manually but can be quite a chore.
      - natosaichek 12y ago
        I think something like this would be cool: http://twistedsifter.com/2012/01/camouflage-cali-hiding-air-bases-factories-plants-netting-wwii/ http://twistedsifter.com/2012/01/camouflage-cali-hiding-air-...
      - 12y ago
- shiven 12y ago
  For all the browbeating about erosion of privacy, I have yet to come across practical, consumer-proof solutions to anything that protects against said loss of privacy. Digital, software, hardware anything? The only solutions out there are range from impractical to ludicrous. Go hoodies, go Tor, go klutzy-PGP, go burkas!! /sigh
  - dublinben 12y ago
    If you're worried about satellites and black helicopters, I think you've already left the realm of practicality. You might as well toss up the camo netting and don your tinfoil hat.
  - hackuser 12y ago
    > For all the browbeating about erosion of privacy, I have yet to come across practical, consumer-proof solutions Agreed. And with few technical options, the solutions must be legal.
- bluman 12y ago
  Effectively the resolution of commercial satellite imagery will be changing from 50cm to 40cm and then 25cm later this summer when WorldView-3 is online. This is vastly less commercial aerial photography which has been around 15cm for the last decade and increasingly around 7cm at affordable costs. I don't believe that satellite imagery will be getting much better due to quantum diffraction. I'm not saying that this isn't a privacy issue it's just that the situation hasn't gotten appreciably worse because of this announcement.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - mikecb 12y ago
      It was just relaxed. But Digital Globe doesn't yet have a bird in the air capable of it. In the fall they will, and it will be available to everyone.
guylhem 12y ago
I don't like this. What is the business of a government in regulating the resolution of whatever form of imagery??? If it can be seen from the sky, or from the street, it's public. Planes, satellites, drones, whatever - you should be free to take pics and sell them if you want. Fortunately, digital camera didn't exist where such kind of laws had been passed, or there would have been similar stupid restrictions (imagine google streetview with n-times 640x480 pics crafted together, or worse - a law restricting the resolution of the reconstructed google streetview you can view on your screen!)
- protomyth 12y ago
  It was more the military side than the civilian, so digital cameras and the like weren't even a consideration[1]. The military was afraid of others having access to the images or knowing how good the images were they were getting. It seems like those concerns have lessened and thus the new rules. 1) digital is just catching up with film for resolution these days.
- dublinben 12y ago
  As a US-based company, DigitalGlobe launch and operate their satellites at the whim of Federal regulators. With the advances in privatized spaceflight, I see this field as ripe for disruption from Chinese or Russian based competition.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Good reason to invest in satellite-killing weapons, then.
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      Which in turn will lead to a booming market in ammunition, MREs, and shovels for digging bunkers.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        I mean for the U.S. Gov.
pingou 12y ago
Does "images that showed features as small as 31cm" means 1 pixel = average color of 31x31cm or is it more complicated?
- natosaichek 12y ago
  That is roughly correct. There is typically a bayer-mask filter on a grayscale sensor, so any given pixel is actually only either blue, red or green, but then a mixing algorithm is applied and you get the full resolution with the appropriate mixing. Of course, there are a variety of filters and a variety of algorithms, so the exact mix will vary across different technologies, but roughly speaking, yes.
joosters 12y ago
I thought that some of the higher-res photos from google earth and competitors were taken by plane, rather than satellite. I wonder how/if the new restrictions apply to lower-flying photography?
- tokenadult 12y ago
  Most of the higher-resolution photography on Google Earth and Google Maps is taken by airplanes rather than by satellites. Google calls it "satellite" view just to emphasize that it is from above, whatever the source.
snarfy 12y ago
For anyone concerned about privacy, higher resolution imagery already exists and is used heavily in industry. See http://www.pictometry.com http://www.pictometry.com. They use airplanes.
- mark-r 12y ago
  For years now Google has shown high resolution images of my own house. The rim of my garden is bright and clear, which is made of 2x4s (9 cm across).
- secabeen 12y ago
  Right. This is a win, because it allows you to get images that previously required airplanes over areas where airplanes aren't feasible or cost-effective.

55 points by darrhiggs 12y ago

I don't like this. You can already see a lot of detail on these satellite photos. This is a huge breach of privacy. (Not that a 50cm lower limit isn't a breach of privacy.)

rwmj 12y ago
Do you worry about people flying planes over your house, looking over your fence, etc?
- makmanalp 12y ago
  It isn't unreasonable to be afraid of something becoming easy to the point of negligible, correlation of personal data across multiple databases as a result of mass data collection comes to mind.
- trebor 12y ago
  What worries me more is what kind of corporate espionage these satellite images will be put to use for. They've been able to see the car(s) in a driveway for awhile now. But imagine: now they can pay to see what the most popular cars are in a geographical region; they can look at your deck and determine furniture brands; they can see you sunbathing; they can see what you play with, etc. No longer is it just "buying habits" but they can, en masse, buy the rights to psychoanalyze your lifestyle base on what they see from the outside of your house. I'm pretty certain that a company paying a team of photographers to stalk the average citizen to psychoanalyze their world would be creepy, if not illegal. But this is exactly what they will be doing—and we'll have no ability to "outrun" their team of photographers. Technically, we won't even know when they're overhead. And that does bother me.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Write an app to calculate orbital elements and pop up an alert: "Imaging object arriving over horizon, take action" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements http://www.heavens-above.com/ http://www.heavens-above.com/ Other countries have done this for years, and cover their equipment with camo cover when opposing country assets are overhead. This is why the Air Force/Boeing X-37B is such a big deal; its an asset that can shift orbits to counterattack known orbit information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/X_37B_Gets_Stranger_999.html http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/X_37B_Gets_Stranger_999.ht...
McDiesel 12y ago
At some point you will just have to realize that this illusion of privacy you have is just that... an illusion. Privacy exists in small pockets, and only in places that you control access to. Aside from that, you might as well consider it public.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Thanks to drones and satellites, privacy no longer exists in private yards, even those with high fences lined with trees. Thanks to infrared photography, structure-penetrating radar, cell phones, etc., privacy no longer exists indoors either. This is not right.
  - ser_ocelot 12y ago
    Is there a suitable material for a lightweight "roof" you could put over your property that would block aerial photography but still allow sunlight and rain to penetrate? One could even make it shielded against electromagnetic frequencies. No more drones hacking your wifi!
    - bluman 12y ago
      Camouflage netting is perhaps the only surefire way to do this, although I'm sure that will attract far more attention than doing nothing at all. Something that would work kind of OK would be to create a large radiometric difference in your property like having a dark black roof and making your lawn as reflective as possible (white cement or gravel, swimming pool). That way when the imagery is processed in an automated fashion it will render your area badly. It still would be possible to go back to the original images and enhance the area manually but can be quite a chore.
    - natosaichek 12y ago
      I think something like this would be cool: http://twistedsifter.com/2012/01/camouflage-cali-hiding-air-bases-factories-plants-netting-wwii/ http://twistedsifter.com/2012/01/camouflage-cali-hiding-air-...
    - 12y ago
shiven 12y ago
For all the browbeating about erosion of privacy, I have yet to come across practical, consumer-proof solutions to anything that protects against said loss of privacy. Digital, software, hardware anything? The only solutions out there are range from impractical to ludicrous. Go hoodies, go Tor, go klutzy-PGP, go burkas!! /sigh
- dublinben 12y ago
  If you're worried about satellites and black helicopters, I think you've already left the realm of practicality. You might as well toss up the camo netting and don your tinfoil hat.
- hackuser 12y ago
  > For all the browbeating about erosion of privacy, I have yet to come across practical, consumer-proof solutions Agreed. And with few technical options, the solutions must be legal.
bluman 12y ago
Effectively the resolution of commercial satellite imagery will be changing from 50cm to 40cm and then 25cm later this summer when WorldView-3 is online. This is vastly less commercial aerial photography which has been around 15cm for the last decade and increasingly around 7cm at affordable costs. I don't believe that satellite imagery will be getting much better due to quantum diffraction. I'm not saying that this isn't a privacy issue it's just that the situation hasn't gotten appreciably worse because of this announcement.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - mikecb 12y ago
    It was just relaxed. But Digital Globe doesn't yet have a bird in the air capable of it. In the fall they will, and it will be available to everyone.

guylhem 12y ago

I don't like this. What is the business of a government in regulating the resolution of whatever form of imagery??? If it can be seen from the sky, or from the street, it's public. Planes, satellites, drones, whatever - you should be free to take pics and sell them if you want. Fortunately, digital camera didn't exist where such kind of laws had been passed, or there would have been similar stupid restrictions (imagine google streetview with n-times 640x480 pics crafted together, or worse - a law restricting the resolution of the reconstructed google streetview you can view on your screen!)

protomyth 12y ago
It was more the military side than the civilian, so digital cameras and the like weren't even a consideration[1]. The military was afraid of others having access to the images or knowing how good the images were they were getting. It seems like those concerns have lessened and thus the new rules. 1) digital is just catching up with film for resolution these days.
dublinben 12y ago
As a US-based company, DigitalGlobe launch and operate their satellites at the whim of Federal regulators. With the advances in privatized spaceflight, I see this field as ripe for disruption from Chinese or Russian based competition.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Good reason to invest in satellite-killing weapons, then.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Which in turn will lead to a booming market in ammunition, MREs, and shovels for digging bunkers.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      I mean for the U.S. Gov.

pingou 12y ago

Does "images that showed features as small as 31cm" means 1 pixel = average color of 31x31cm or is it more complicated?

natosaichek 12y ago
That is roughly correct. There is typically a bayer-mask filter on a grayscale sensor, so any given pixel is actually only either blue, red or green, but then a mixing algorithm is applied and you get the full resolution with the appropriate mixing. Of course, there are a variety of filters and a variety of algorithms, so the exact mix will vary across different technologies, but roughly speaking, yes.

joosters 12y ago

I thought that some of the higher-res photos from google earth and competitors were taken by plane, rather than satellite. I wonder how/if the new restrictions apply to lower-flying photography?

tokenadult 12y ago
Most of the higher-resolution photography on Google Earth and Google Maps is taken by airplanes rather than by satellites. Google calls it "satellite" view just to emphasize that it is from above, whatever the source.

snarfy 12y ago

For anyone concerned about privacy, higher resolution imagery already exists and is used heavily in industry. See http://www.pictometry.com http://www.pictometry.com. They use airplanes.

mark-r 12y ago
For years now Google has shown high resolution images of my own house. The rim of my garden is bright and clear, which is made of 2x4s (9 cm across).
secabeen 12y ago
Right. This is a win, because it allows you to get images that previously required airplanes over areas where airplanes aren't feasible or cost-effective.