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Satellite Imagery 246

Posted by michael from the top-down dept.
The NYT has a piece on the history and future of satellite imagery. Short but interesting.
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Satellite Imagery More

Satellite Imagery

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  • Military Might (Score:5, Funny)

    by ringbarer ( 545020 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:23PM (#5988552) Homepage Journal
    Billions of dollars of military spending, all to be able to look down a large breasted woman's cleavage.

    Our tax dollars at work!
    • If my tax dollars were used to get me top-notch voyeur pics of beautiful women, I'd certainly have a lot less reason to bitch about taxes. Of course I am am sensitive to women who don't want to be used as sex objects. Certain exhibitionist girls could wear a GPS-enabled bracelet, and then the government could use its spying power to get me awesome upskirt, downblouse, nude beach, bedroom, and shower pics and videos. Sounds like a fair return on my tax dollars to me.

    • Re:Military Might (Score:5, Funny)

      by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @09:26PM (#5988830)

      This reminds me of a story from Sweden.

      They had installed very expensive surveillance equipment along the whole Swedish coast, to monitor the baltic sea. The system was operated by drafted personell which were supposed to be looking for signs of Soviet submarine activity.

      When it was uncovered that most of the time spent monitoring with the very expensive surveillance system was used to monitor hot chicks on the Swedish beaches, there were heads rolling.

      • the very expensive surveillance system was used to monitor
        hot chicks on the Swedish beaches

        ...and all I can think of is: "Can you blame them?"
      • Have you ever seen Swedish chicks? That would have been the best job in the world.

  • Google Partner Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ryan Stortz ( 598060 ) <ryan0rz&gmail,com> on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:26PM (#5988570)
    Here's [nytimes.com] the google partner link for those of you to lazy to register.

    • Re:Google Partner Link (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Thank for posting.

      As often as I see news.google display slashdot stories and as often as slash links to both google and the NYT site I am still blown away by the fact that there is no /. partner link to the NYT site, come on guys its has been years and some thousands of articles... Please someone set that up already...
      • The slashdot team considered partnering up with NYT using the subscription funds, but instead decided to hire a satellite for photography at nudist beaches, so we'll have to eat more 'free reg reqd.' lines yet.
    • Or you can use this:

      username: plasticuser
      password: plastic

      Compliments of http://www.plastic.com (slashdot like site)
    • My thanks to the man who is too lazy to type "o" twice in a row...

  • Short but interesting. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Flounder ( 42112 ) * on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:28PM (#5988576)
    Short but interesting.

    Kinda like the Slashdot article, just leave out the interesting part. C'mon guys, can maybe we get a bit verbose about what you choose to put up on /.?? Maybe a little cut and paste of an interesting piece of the article? Or maybe a little more witty repartee by the editors.

    • Or maybe a little more witty repartee by the editors.

      If they want to get witty, they can use the comment system and open themselves up to moderation like everyone else. Most people read this site for the news*, not so they can see what CmdrTaco thinks about the news.

      *Okay, so most people actually read this site for the trolls. But no one is reading it for michael's commentary on satellite imagery.

    • Re:Short but interesting. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:54PM (#5988706)
      Dont worry the article will have a much more interesting header in the dupe tomorrow.
    • Actually this approach might be decent. There is nothing to make fun of the editors for, there is no snide remark that gets everyone riled up. One of the only reasonable actions upon seeing this posted is to actually *read the article*! gasp!
    • "C'mon guys, can maybe we get a bit verbose about what you choose to put up on /.?"

      It's the typo reduction system. It left out the misspelled words.

  • WMD (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mefein ( 664330 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:29PM (#5988581)
    If the satellite monitoring is so good, how did they manage to be so wrong abount WMD in Iraq. I can't help wondering if there was ever any real evidence...

    • Re:WMD (Score:1, Insightful)

      by pilot1 ( 610480 )
      Do us conservatives a favor, and wait 6 months before you make any more comments on WMDs that you can't prove.
      Just because we haven't found any yet (or possibly because the government isn't ready to revel the information) doesn't mean that they don't exist.
      Give us time, and I assure you that we'll discover that they had them, and they probably also moved them to other countries.

      • "Us conservatives?" (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 18, 2003 @09:07PM (#5988758)
        Don't lump us all together with you. I'm a staunch conservative and considered the justifications for the Iraq "war" more or less fabricated (including the WMD charges.) The world is not as black and white as you seem to think.

      • Re:WMD (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @09:32PM (#5988860)
        (or possibly because the government isn't ready to revel the information)
        You have got to be kidding. If the goverment had that information it would be rammed down our throats 24/7 for the next month as justification for the war in the first place.

        and they probably also moved them to other countries

        Yeah I can just see the head of some bananna republic thinking to himself that despite the fact that Sadam was universally hated in both east and west and the most powerful army in the world will invade on the even the assumption of possession of these weapons why not hide then for him. What harm could it do eh ?

        Did Iraq have limited chemical weapon capability yes, probably developed from Antrax sold to them by the US. This is where the US certainty come in. They 'know' because they provided the foundation.

        Did Iraq they have WMD? more than likely not. Does it matter? NO the US has access to the Oil, all else is irrelevant now.

        • Re:WMD (Score:3, Insightful)

          by BTWR ( 540147 )
          Does it matter? NO the US has access to the Oil, all else is irrelevant now.

          The flaw in your argument is that the US also had access to any iraqi oil fields it wanted in 1991, but didn't take it.
        • Erm, you are aware, aren't you, that at the time of the previous Gulf war, Sadam asked Iran if he could hide his airforce there in order to plead that he didn't have one and was being unfairly attacked.

          This was the same Iran which he'd perviously been attacking for 10 years in the Iran-Iraq war.

          Iran said "yes" and hid his ariforce for him.

          (Oh, they then refused to hand any of them back afterwards, though :-D )

          It is far from impossible that he woudl have successfully had other nations (who are sympatheti

      • Re:WMD (Score:2, Funny)

        by schmink182 ( 540768 )
        Yes, I agree. We need to give the weapons inspectors more time! Don't rush them, they're doing their job.

        Irony courtesy of The Daily Show.

      • Re:WMD (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jericho4.0 ( 565125 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:15PM (#5989028)
        Correct. Saddam probably moved them to other countries, like say, Syria. Good thing we'll be bombing them next.

        Your willingness to belive an obvious lie is stunning. I'm as happy as anyone to see Saddam's reign over, but he did not have WMD, had no connection to Bin Laden (or to any international terrorisim, beyond funds for PLO bombers families), and was not planning to suddenly rise up and destroy the U.S.

        P.S. The 9/11 bomers all came from Saudi Arabia.

        • NO!!! They had AL-UM-IN-UM centerfuges, dammit! If posession of aluminum isn't absolute proof of WMD, I don't know what is (thanks to the wonderful US news networks)!

          • I heard Tony Blair say that they had AL-LOO-MIN-EE-UM centrefuges, which, as everyone knows, are MUCH WORSE that the garden variety AL-UM-IN-UM ones. Nasty stuff, that AL-LOO-MIN-EE-UM.

            8-)

        • I'm as happy as anyone to see Saddam's reign over, but he did not have WMD

          Saddam's regime freely admitted to having certain quantities of WMDs after Gulf War I. The regime could not account for even those it admitted to having previously. Essentially, they said "what we had we destroyed, but we forget what we did with the destroyed stuff." I find that suspicious. Don't you?

      • Give us time, and I assure you that we'll discover that they had them, and they probably also moved them to other countries.

        Jeez, someone mod this "hilarious."

        Was the war meant to prevent the use of these Weapons of Mass Destruction by terrorists to whom Saddam threatened to give them? Seems to me I recall Bush telling me it was... If waging the war has prompted the weapons to be neatly scurried across the border into Iran or Syria, how exactly does that prevent them from reaching the hands of terroris

    • Re:WMD (Score:1, Insightful)

      by MBCook ( 132727 )
      We have found quite a lot of evidence of WMD in Iraq. Even if we hadn't, freeing the people was worth it. That said, they're just taking picutes so the normal limitations of "can't see through things" are still there. If you think I'm wrong them post a picture of the inside of NORAD taken from a satalite to prove me wrong.

      • Re:WMD (Score:5, Funny)

        by TwP ( 149780 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @09:04PM (#5988748) Homepage
        If you think I'm wrong them post a picture of the inside of NORAD taken from a satalite to prove me wrong.

        OK, here ya go! [tigersweat.com]

        • Re:WMD (Score:3, Funny)

          by MBCook ( 132727 )
          That must be a pretty low flying satalite. Let's try from a satalite in ORBIT this time ;)

          • Re:WMD (Score:2)

            by TwP ( 149780 )
            Actually, it's a Kubrick series satellite using "multipath photon interference" technology to reconstruct images from the apparent eye level of a six year old.

            The images are created by sampling an evanescent photon field about 22 times per second and recording those images using AR coated optics onto a specially treated cellulose material. Those images are then digitized into a proprietary format, encoded using a 54 bit encryption scheme, and disseminated to the populace at large. I do believe the imag
      • I am not knocking anyones right to free speech.. The French were perfectly entitled to express their opposition to the US approach to the war, and anyone can say what they like about the French . The war was not justified as a mission to free people (which I agree is a good thing), it was justified by saying that there was proof of WMD and that action needed to be taken to protect us from that. It is much easier to prove that something exists than not exist. I fail to see why the US cannot produce somethin

        • Re:WMD (Score:4, Insightful)

          by 1stflight ( 48795 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:08PM (#5988992)
          Long story short, even with the best survalenece(sp?) it can't find what doesn't exist. The problem the conservatives are running into is that, the US can't find WMD that were supposedly ready to use in 45 minutes. Basically they weren't hidden at all if they have to be readied so quickly and yet, there is no evidence of anything. Additionally, we supposedly had "Secret evidence" indictatin _exactly_ where those WMDs were, and lo and behold, now with unfettered access, we still aren't finding shit. We owe the UN inspectors an apology, they were did better with less, and a lot fewer dead bodies.

          The best technology is worthless in the hands of people who are willing to lie to get what they want. Remember the farce that was Colin Powel going to the UN, satelite photos of tractor trailers, and warehouses.... can't image any country that was tractor trailers! They must be producing wepaons with them..

    • Re:WMD (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yet they found a billion dollars, in a matter of hours and days, something just doesnt add up, go figure...

    • Re:WMD (Score:2)

      by JJ ( 29711 )
      Because of two factors. First, the satellites that provide good pictures are overhead for only a few minutes at a time. (Geosationary ones can only see things a meter across or more and can be fooled easily.) Second, WMD's can be made so small nowdays that they could be hidden in your average sedan. If I wanted to hide from all satelitte monitoring (or UN monitoring) enough smallpox biotoxin to wipe out the population of Earth, I'd need about twenty Peugots with dedicated boots. Think they could still be hi
  • Or they would be able to find more to write about

    Sorry couldnt resist :)

  • "Short but interesting" (Score:3, Funny)

    by A Proud American ( 657806 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:37PM (#5988625)
    Hate ta break it to ya guys, but that's never a good thing to hear ;-)

  • In the future... (Score:3, Funny)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:37PM (#5988630)
    ...why not just post:

  • Fabricated (Score:5, Funny)

    by isa-kuruption ( 317695 ) <kuruption@kurupti[ ]net ['on.' in gap]> on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:39PM (#5988637) Homepage
    Haven't you people learned anything? The New York Times is obviously an untrusted news source. I mean, please, satelite imagery? Next thing you know, they'll tell us the Earth is round and the moon isn't made of cheese!
    • The moon isn't made out of cheese....?? (Sigh) There goes my grand scheme of running Kraft out of business.... ack!

    • Re:Fabricated (Score:3, Offtopic)

      by MagPulse ( 316 )
      I thought it was interesting when I learned how long humans have known the Earth is round. In relatively modern (non-prehistoric) history, Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth [rice.edu] as 25,000 miles, which is basically correct. He did this in 230 B.C. He also used the fact that the sun is really far away, so the rays coming from it could be treated as parallel.

      Another test you can do is to stand at about sea level and observe a ship. Then travel away from the ship on the ground and it will slo
    • Haven't you people learned anything? The New York Times is obviously an untrusted news source. I mean, please, satelite imagery? Next thing you know, they'll tell us the Earth is round and the moon isn't made of cheese!
      Or worse, that rockets can move in a vacuum with reaction engines - engines that need something better than a vacuum to react against...
    • and the moon isn't made of cheese!

      Shhhhh! What you really need to be suggesting is that the moon is made out of money!

  • Damn it that green patch is not my dope! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:40PM (#5988646)
    Ignore any vegetation at:

    Latitude: 45 53S. Longitude: 170 30E

    Thank you.

  • The problem with spy satellites is predictability. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cheesybagel ( 670288 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:41PM (#5988651)
    The satellites often use well defined orbits and hence are easily trackable. This means someone using deception techniques can hide their actions.

    They have their uses. But you will always get higher resolution using aircraft (they are closer to the ground). Not to mention aircraft can actually be easily directed to a target.
    • Assuming that no one has created a stealth telescope coated with optical and radar stealth. Or side-scanning satellites. The US government has not demonstrated these capacities at all.....
      • Assuming that no one has created a stealth telescope coated with optical and radar stealth. Or side-scanning satellites. The US government has not demonstrated these capacities at all

        Just for the sake of argument...

        If the US government had such capabilities, hypothetically, do you think they would demonstrate them?

        When did we first start hearing lots of speculation about stealth aircraft, and when were they first flying?

  • Ethical Issues (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stalyx ( 633692 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @08:46PM (#5988677)
    In my opinion, in a few years all of america would be blanketed by satellites that archives everything that we do. However, ideally the archives would be encrypted and only a court order could enable enforcement agencies to see what people are up to.

    For example, imagine if we could trace back the steps of the 9/11 terrorists right up to the point where they entered the country, I am sure that would give valuable information.

    Nevertheless I am strong advocate for privacy (aren't we all?) therefore, its best that we put the laws in place before its been abused.

    • Re:Ethical Issues (Score:4, Informative)

      by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @09:10PM (#5988770)
      The logistics of that would be very hard to do.

      In a few years there will be 300 million people in the United States with roughly a 140 million autos on 6.7 million km of roads and nearly 15,000 airstrips.

      There is no way that in a few years there will be any way anyone can track the movements of all those people and vehicles.

      • Thats the beauty of it.. you do not have to track it.. it would be like this giant security camera, and when a problem arises you can go back to the archives and trace back steps...

        Ofcourse this would require extreme amounts of storage space, but I do not think technology will be the barrier..

        • And how many hundreds of birds would it take to cover the contiental United States?

          Plus theres the problem that Keyhole can't see through clouds, so then you deal with lower resolution Lacrosse SAR imaging.

          It'd take hundreds or thousands of birds in low earth orbit over the US to cover everything from every angle, plus in urban centers it would be next to worthless, so then you have to cover them with UAVs. I'd expect LA would take a couple hundred UAVs to cover completely.
      • Yeah, but you don't have to track everyone.

        Just the "bad guys".

        Given the current average of 2 "bad guys" to every
        1000 people in the US (The other 998
        people, hereafter known as the "moral majority"),
        that shouldn't be a problem. The logistical
        problems of tracking 600,000 "bad guys"
        throughout the U.S. will be a aided by the
        introduction of mandatory "Neighbourhood watch"
        schemes. (Brown shirts will be optional).

    • ideally the archives would be encrypted and only a court order could enable enforcement agencies to see what people are up to.

      That might be doable, but what's the point really? It just puts law enforcement at a serious disadvantage, when any private-secotor indvidual can get all of that information with a few bucks, no need for a court order... Quite troubling when these satellites are privately owned and have no regulations what-so-ever.

      Soon we'll find out that they all have infra-red cameras as well,

  • As technology becomes more powerful, tracking of people and their actions is facilitated. Now, some technologies (e.g. the Telephone) have regulations that restrict use/disclosure of the information gathered (e.g. wire tapping requires a court issued warrant in the U.S.). Given that GPS informatoin and satellite information exists, what usages restrictions would be appropriate? Perhaps non disclosure except under court order?

  • real-time satellite imagery analysis? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spiritu ( 8757 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @09:15PM (#5988790)
    Have you any idea the amount of space required to store this stuff? Bandwidth costs?

    Let's say you have a (currently non-existant) 1mm imaging platform on a satellite. 1mm per pixel of resolution allows you to identify most things fairly well, but you still might have trouble reading a newspaper's body clearly. Headlines would come through okay - keeping in mind, of course, that you have to make the shot obliquely to get some sort of an angle on it - straight down doesn't help here. Now take a picture of a square 200km by 200km. How many pixels is that? Let's say you take that picture with 24 bits per pixel denoting colour (and not, say, the way you would do it which is with more than three bands... but I digress). How many bits is that?

    It's easier, by far, to do things like fly over the area you want at a less sexy height, like 20,000 feet, with a high-end remote imaging and sensing platform mounted inside your medium-to-low end plane. 500TB cartridges store a good amount of images, and you can jack them directly into your central machine back home while the computers go to work analysing the data they contain.

    It also costs signficantly less.

    • Re:real-time satellite imagery analysis? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fname ( 199759 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:17PM (#5989039) Journal
      It's a good point, (the NYT article discusses total real-time surveillence, and this is not sensible with satellites, unless you have a large, maybe 1km, pixel size) but you're missing some key details.

      First of all, a lot of these images are shot of hostile territory, and we can't fly over them. Think N. Korea, China, Russia, etc.

      Second, if 1mm pixel resolution existed, why would you use it to shoot an area 200km x 200km? If you needed that much detail, you'd zoom in. If you wanted an overview, you'd zoom out. What technology you'd use doesn't affect that.

      If you used a plane to shoot a 200km x 200km area at 1mm resolution, it'd take up just as much space, although bandwidth is more abundant at the lower altitudes. Even with that, at 3 bytes/ pixel * 200km * 200km * 1,000,000 mm/km *1,000,000 mm/km * 1 pixel/mm^2, that's a big number, 120,000 Terabytes! So you could use 240 500TB cartridges to take these pictures at a 1mm resolution. That amount of data of unwieldy at any altitude!

      Finally, as far as using satellite photos of pedestrian locations (LAX, Washington DC, etc) that we could image using airplanes, I think it's more a matter of cost and convenience. For one-time site surveys, an airplane is clearly the way to go. But for sites that need to be re-imaged daily (highway and building construction, coastal erosion, etc), satellite imaging is probably both easier and cheaper.
      • At what altitude does a nations airspace end and space begin?

        Just kind of curious, b/c what if North Korea (somehow) managed to shoot down an American sattelite, and then claimed it was in their airspace... Are there international treaties/laws (that only some nations have signed) that dictate this, or is it just common sense (which doesn't hold any legal ground at all)?

        • Well, one interpretation from the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is 50km. That figure is probably based on ITU (International Telecommunications Union) resolutions. That's the altitude at which the priviledges of my Amateur Radio License peter out. Operation higher than 50km puts you in the Amateur Space Service.

  • Privacy Violation (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 18, 2003 @09:25PM (#5988824)
    The president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, keeps one on him at all times in case he is kidnapped or is the target of an assassination attempt.

    The growth of the technology-enabled police state is shocking. You can't even kidnap a guy anymore without worrying the victim might violate your privacy by hiding some beeper up his butt. We better think long and hard before letting this genie out of it's bottle.

  • Satellite Imagery at Home (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Yupnik ( 5094 ) * on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:09PM (#5988998) Homepage
    If you like playing around with satellite images from Microsoft's Terraserver, try USAPhotoMaps [jdmcox.com]. This (Windows only) software will download multiple images from Terraserver and stitch them together seamlessly. You can also switch between photo images and USGS topo map images.

    Spy on you your neighbors. Check out the 6 pixels representing the car you owned 5 years ago. Really cool.

  • Where can I find images of Canadian cities? I know there is terraserver and lots of resources for American cities..
    Like this one for Mac OS X, Terrabrowser. [apple.com]
    So anyone have any ideas about Canadian cities?
    • I think Terraserver has some Canadian images if you pay for it. Speaking as a penny-pinching Canadian (I want to hang onto the five cents that our government taxes leave me per year), it'd be nice to see some free resource for this. I'm not sure I want to buy my own satellite to do it, though.

  • too many secrets (Score:2, Interesting)

    by darkitecture ( 627408 )

    "or possibly because the government isn't ready to revel the information"

    I can't remember who said it exactly (any fellow slashdotters out there who can help me out with that?) but in reply to some conspiracy nut who was ranting and raving about how the US Government didn't have the right to keep secrets from him, he said words to the effect of, "The US Government isn't in the habit of keeping secrets from it's people. They keep secrets from enemies of the state. Now if only the US population could keep

  • Games to play with surveillance (Score:3, Funny)

    by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:29AM (#5989820)
    Some years ago, police made very common sweeps of this region looking for UV sources commonly found with indoor pot production. This wasn't satalite mind you, but standard aircraft. In order to protest this form of surveillance, basicly under the weirdo impression that you needed a warrent to do such things, I and a few friends wanted to setup small piping in the lawn, and put neato catch phrases like, "Eat at Joes". However, this would have been costly and time consuming, so the best thing I could do was arange the hose in cursive letters... "RARE" popular spoof of the phrase, "Rare to keep kids off drugs". Needless to say the resolution enough on their IR cameras was high enough to actually spy the hose tangled lettering, enough to get the cops to ask a few questions about what's going on in the back yard.

    But in order to prevent satalight spy cams from seeing you, there is a hightech solution known as an umbrella that's quite effective.

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