Privacy Digest

Intel chief: Curbs on public satellite photos may be needed | KOMO-TV - Seattle, Washington | Technology: "The director of a little-known U.S. spy agency that analyzes imagery from the skies says that the increasing availability of commercial satellite photos may require the government to restrict distribution.

'If there was a situation where any imagery products were being used by adversaries to kill Americans, I think we should act,' Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said Tuesday in a rare interview at his office in Bethesda, Md.

'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.

Murrett oversees a growing intelligence discipline known as geospatial intelligence - the study of imagery, such as satellite pictures or video taken from aircraft, to discern features or activities happening anywhere on the planet.

A part of the Defense Department, his agency usually operates unnoticed to provide information on insurgencies, nuclear sites, terror camps or troop movements. In the United States, the agency is increasingly getting into the business of helping after natural disasters such as this week's tornadoes in the Midwest, or for events that require heightened security such as President Bush's Sunday trip to Jamestown, Va., for the 400th anniversary of the settlement's founding.

Throughout the Cold War, U.S. spy satellites were secret military assets. But in the late 1990s, commercial companies got into the game. Two U.S. companies - Digital Globe and Geoeye - now launch commercial satellites and distribute their images, and they have growing competition from overseas.

With the help of about $1 billion from Murrett's agency, the companies plan to launch new satellites with higher resolutions later this year.

While the public will begin to see crisper images online and elsewhere, government regulations will require the companies to degrade the quality of the imagery to a half-meter resolution. That means items that size are the smallest thing the satellites can detect from their positions, which are generally a few hundred miles above the earth."

(Read Original Article - Via KOMO-TV - Seattle, Washington | Technology.)