The Eye in the Sky

Two American companies dominate the commercial satellite imagery business – Virginia-based GeoEye and Colorado-based DigiGlobe. DigiGlobe manages most of the work you see on Google Earth, but both companies are major providers to the U.S. government. The above image was taken of the recent Bangkok, Thailand floods, for example, by DigiGlobe. For those of us who have scoped out our home or neighborhood on Google Earth, the images only go so far… good to a point, but blurry when you get down to the last few meters of view. So, we assume, satellite images really aren’t particularly revealing or intrusive. Not exactly.

You see, in the United States, regulations prohibit civilian commercial sales of such imagery to the extent there is half a meter or better of ground resolution. But that doesn’t mean that vastly superior images aren’t available to those with licit access to the product, folks like police departments, the FBI and any number of government intelligence agencies. DigiGlobe currently has three satellites circling the earth that sample most of the planet up to six times a year.

But they are gearing up for a 2014 launch of a new satellite (“WorldView 3”), with improved optics and electronic resolution capacity. “The best images to make it out of the WorldView-3 will have a considerably better resolution than .5 meters. Once complete, the satellite will have an image resolution that ranges between .3 and .46 meters. Government regulations require images from the WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 to be resampled to a lower resolution before being offered to private customers… Intelligence services and the Defense Department will be able to use WorldView-3 for satellite imagery that is crisper and clearer than anything currently on the market. Instead of Google Earth's blurry (though admittedly cool) close-up imagery, government customers will have access to images that look like they jumped out of a science fiction movie.” FastCompany.com, November 29^th.

Whatever the technology, the privacy concerns from this capacity have generated protests and actions to attempt to limit what images can be shown and under what circumstances. While U.S. law tells us that there can be no expectation of privacy in public places, the ability of satellites to peak over fences and into private areas of personal residences is troubling. “[O]ne of Google's responses to concerns about privacy laws outside the United States has been a pledge to blur the faces of people who are filmed on Street View photos taken both inside, and outside the U.S. Google began blurring faces on May 13, 2008 and the images published since then, including the first launch of images in Europe on July 2, 2008, have all used face blurring (this process is automated; as a result even facial images on posters and billboards are often blurred).

“Google delayed the release of its Street Views of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area following concern expressed by the United States Department of Homeland Security that some of the images taken might be of security-sensitive areas... The Department of Defense has banned Google from publishing Street View content of U.S. Military bases and asked Google to remove existing content of bases. Google has complied with this order.” Wikipedia. Some nations want posted warnings when the cameras are operational and covering a particular area. The chorus demanding increasing limitations is rising in Europe, particularly Germany, such that Google may pull its Street View from the EU. As satellite mapping increases, nations with severe cultural and religious proscriptions – such in many parts of the Middle East – are quite concerned that such images would present private images in a public forum.

But even if Google withdraws its publication of such images, they are still there. Maybe some local voyeur might not have easy access to this capacity were such a ban to be enforced, but the government has more than enough imagery to make most of us wince. Throw in the private use of drones, and you have an ability to penetrate some of the most private areas of our lives, even allowing high resolution cameras to peer into unblocked windows (infrared sensors can reveal a bit more, even with curtains closed). How often do you wonder if someone is actually watching you? Are you paranoid or is it real?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the notion of living in a complex, modern society has certain elements that I find a touch unsettling.