The business of "spy" photography via satellites
Interesting tidbits in this Wall Street Journal story (subscription required) about the spy photograph industry that gives any web surfer the ability to check out photographs of certain parts of the world on sites such as Globalsecurity.org, a military watchdog group:
It used to be that only the spy agencies of the two superpowers had the ability to take snapshots from space. That changed 16 years ago when a French commercial-government joint venture launched the world's first satellite offering photographs for sale. The quality of those early pictures wasn't particularly good, but in late 1999, an American company, Space Imaging, launched the first high-resolution satellite, Ikonos. It can take pictures with a clarity 10 times that of the French satellite — enough to spot a car on the ground or an American airfield.
...A 1992 law allows the government to declare any part of the earth off-limits to American commercial satellites to "meet significant national security or significant foreign policy concerns."...But news media organizations and freedom-of-information advocates contend that the provision, known as "shutter control," is so vague that it is unconstitutional. "There has long been a standard in which national security concerns can be invoked to limit the free flow of information," said Ann Florini, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "It's that there must be a clear and present danger. This law forgets that."
The issue remained theoretical until last October. That's when the government, concerned that Al Qaeda or the Taliban could use the satellites to peek at American maneuvers in Afghanistan, paid Space Imaging about $4 million for exclusive rights to photographs over the war zone....