Spy Chief Hints At Limits On Satellite Photos 309
An anonymous reader writes "Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says that the increasing availability of commercial satellite photos may require the government to restrict distribution. '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. This would include imagery on Web sites such as Google Earth, because the companies that supply the photos get help from the NGIA with launches." I had never heard of this particular intelligence agency. During the early months of the invasion of Afghanistan they bought up all satellite imagery over that country, worldwide, in a tactic later dubbed "checkbook shutter control."
Restriction on restriction (Score:5, Insightful)
More realistic is that they have to learn to live with the fact that satellite images are available to the general public and adjust their strategy accordingly.
Re:Restriction on restriction (Score:5, Interesting)
Or US companies will just start doing more flyovers like they have been for Microsoft's Live Maps which offer views of locations from multiple locations (N, E, S, W). They are already trying to ban picture taking by civilians at various locations (what is this fucking North Korea?) and the flyovers will be next
Re:Restriction on restriction (Score:5, Informative)
The general public has basically no need for this sort of information, but a hypothetical attacker does. There may not actually be many terrorists or spies in the US right now, but there's a decent chance that there are some, and in the past they've been very interested in this stuff. Maybe they can get it anyway, but let's make them at least risk exposure to do their reconnaissance, OK?
You can rant all you want about security through obscurity, but the real world isn't a cryptosystem. The attacker has less time to study your nuclear site security offline (at least, as long as photographing it is illegal). Furthermore, Kerckhoff's principle doesn't say that systems shouldn't be obscure, just that their security shouldn't depend on it. Obscurity is still a valid defense in depth.
Re:Restriction on restriction (Score:5, Insightful)
Once upon a time, it was considered that governments would use official secrets only to protect genuinely sensitive information.
That time has passed. Western governments have been caught with their pants down, repeatedly, abusing their privilege of withholding information from the public for political reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with safeguarding the security of the nation and its people.
Perhaps, but (a) you were talking about detailed information relating to critical infrastructure, which is pretty close to being a straw man in a discussion about satellite imagery that clearly has many potential uses for the average person and probably doesn't show more than three big buildings in an L-shape, and (b) this question is really a matter of principle and not of specifics: should the presumption be that information must be released to the people by the people's government, or that the government may withhold information at will from the people?
My views on this one are pretty clear now: no political administration should be allowed to keep any information away from the public, without a clear national security reason for doing so, as determined by an impartial official observer not directly connected with or accountable to the administration of the day.
If you don't understand why the balance of power must be this way to protect the people, take a look at my sig, and then read a good book on 20th century history with that in mind.
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http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Barksdale+ AFB+LA&ie=UTF8&ll=32.4938,-93.665201&spn=0.002927, 0.005343&t=h&z=18&om=1 [google.com]
Those are B52s and those are their parking spots. While not realtime data with Google Earth at least you can get the latitude and longitude of those spots. That Air base like most the rest of the US has no real anti-aircraft defense systems it would be very easy to target those planes. You ca
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The general public has basically no need for this sort of information
I actually agree with this statement. Personally, I am a curious person, and I like to look stuff up purely for the sake of looking, but I'm also intelligent enough to understand that in some cases the need for security outweighs "curiousity". Such as the example given in TFA about the US paying to restrict satellite images of Afganistan during the conflict there. If doing this saves the lives of US soldiers, it doesn't bother me that I can't check out military camps in Afganistan from satellite pictu
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There's a much easier and obvious way to save the lives of US soldiers, but unfortunately I only want to provide that information on a need-to-know basis.
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Re:Restriction on restriction (Score:5, Insightful)
They *bought* all the imagery.
You can restrict information in many ways you know.
-nB
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The same information can be sold many times, it's not something that can be out of stock.
There is always the chance of someone having the information and not wanting an "exclusive deal" with the US intelligence community.
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not likely.
Money talks.
"sure you can buy it, it costs $"
"mumble mumble no redistribution, mumble pay $$"
"well, normally I get $ from at least three companies, plus many 1/$ from smalltime users"
"mumble, family, mumble $$$$$$"
"deal!, you want the disks?"
"nah, we got better, mumble, destroy"
-nB
Reverse monopoly will stop that (Score:3, Insightful)
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I casually know the guy who owns Space Imaging. He's an old friend of one of my oldest friends who runs a GIS company and uses tons of satellite and aerial imagery (usually of military bases, actually). These companies already operate under a vast and complex body of regulations about who can and can't get pictures of various places, so this was probably a smaller step for them to take than most people are assuming.
There are a few things to kee
Re:Reverse monopoly will stop that (Score:5, Insightful)
>Ever want to launch a satellite from US soil again?
Nah, thanks, Russian/Chinese soil works just as well for us.
>Ever want to do business with a US company again?
We prefer selling to the EU, Russia, Africa and god knows who else. Actually, it is the US companies that want to do business with us. If they can't - too bad for them.
>You have an office in $random_country_we_are_invading
Why should we? The US is stretched to deal with Iraq itself as it is, pretty good bet they can't spread their forces to the rest of the world as well. Egypt sounds nice at this time of year, or maybe Greece. Then again Russia has always been a favourite, and they don't care about satellite imagery for businesses as long as their military gets their copy of Pentagon for wall posters.
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They really don't even have to go that far.
"Thank you for your business. As you chose not to comply with our request you are now in violation of our existing contract, which shall be terminated immediately. Also be advised that you will be removed from the GSA's approved vendor list, meaning that no governmental agency will be permitted to contract for services from you. In other words, we hope that the millions of dollars you have gotten from us have been
Re:Restriction on restriction (Score:5, Funny)
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Um, it's not the NGA that would have to 'adjust their strategy.' It's the many facilities, run by everyone from the DoE to DoS to DoD to state and municipal entities, all of which would have to adapt to it.
Re:Restriction on restriction (Score:5, Insightful)
90% of whats gone wrong in the last six years is almost entirely due to a acute arrogance mixed with bad case of ignorance on the part of the people in the Bush administration. That's a really dangerous cocktail.
Russia, China, the E.U., Japan and India all have respectable capabilities to build and launch satellites, and more are joining the club. When the Space Shuttle is scraped there is probably going to be a very long window in which Russia and China will be able to put men in to orbit and the U.S. wont. The U.S. tries to bottle up satellite imagery I'm sure Russia or China will fill the void just to poke a finger in the eye of the U.S.
To me this just sounds like another round of post 9/11 fear mongering.
The U.S. seriously needs to wake up to the fact that the biggest threat to its National security is its massive trade and budget deficits, broken education system, energy dependence on parts of the world it can no long control, and a plunging dollar because no one has confidence in the U.S. anymore.
If the U.S. were spending money on those issues instead of on an out of control defense industrial complex:
A. It would be a lot more prosperous and secure
B. The rest of the world would hate the U.S. a lot less and have fewer reasons to want to attack it
The best defense program the U.S. could invest in right now is a serious effort to improve car mileage ASAP and then to develop clean, renewable and affordable energy sources.
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The best defense would be getting rid of the elements
that are inside the US that are actively trying to
damage the US.
The current admin does everything, seriously, everything
wrong, which creates long term damage.
You can predict what their response will be to any
situation: whatever will create damage will be the choice.
The list is long. Katrina is a good example.
Re:Restriction on restriction (Score:4, Funny)
wrong, which creates long term damage.
You can predict what their response will be to any
situation: whatever will create damage will be the choice.
The list is long. Katrina is a good example."
If the current adminstration was able to cause Katrina, then perhaps that tinfoil hat isn't going to be enough.....
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Actually this administration scrapped the FEMA structure & bundled it into homeland security without creating clear channels of communication - at the same time blocking a lot of the old channels.
Next they had a report that New Orleans was in danger from a cat 3 or better hurricane - a report that was frighteningly accurate - that they discarded because they felt the damage estimates were much too high. This is just one of many examples for this administration where they cherry pick the information to
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The US Government could absolutely stop the distribution of commercial high resolution satellite imagery, plus keep tabs on what satellite imagery people obtain, at least at the outset.
The method is simple. The method is foolproof to the point that it could only be circumvented by space faring nations. While it would be moderately pricey, but within the range of the kind of money it takes to fight the Global War on Terror(tm) it is
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panic? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Have you ever tried this near military locations? And what kind of sentence did you get?
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Then again, I did not RTFA, so maybe I missed something.
on control of information... (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of the old saying, "Beware of he who would restrict you from information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
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Isn't that from Alpha Centauri? 1998's not old, and I don't know of it from any other source.
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1998's not old
Get back in your wheelchair you fossil! That's almost a whole friggin decade ago!
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If it's your birthdate, no, if it's your age then...
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You didn't have unlimited access to satelite photography in the past, how is restricting said information in any way going to make them the masters of you. Governments have had this information for years and citizens did not.
Censorship is also a loaded word here too. They are not censoring your freedom of speech nor anything which you have inherit rights to. You, as a human being, do not have an inherit right to any bit of information that might exist on the face of the earth and it is silly
A Message from the Ministry of Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Sincerely,
Winston Smith
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Re:A Message from the Ministry of Truth (Score:5, Funny)
Do you need some Sucrets? Maybe you should have called-in sick to Slashdot today.
It's an allergy. (Score:4, Funny)
He's just allergic to BS.
You americans are living in intelligence hell (Score:4, Insightful)
nsa, fema, homeland security (what the fuck is that), cia, fbi, this new thing in the article now, count as much as you can im sure there are more.
i started to often think which rules your country - congress, senate and president, or these "service" organizations.
Re:You americans are living in intelligence hell (Score:5, Insightful)
Fatherland was taken.
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Oh man, don't give Blair ideas - he'd love that one. Thank God he's going soon, not that Brown's much better mind.
Re:You americans are living in intelligence hell (Score:4, Funny)
Re:You americans are living in intelligence hell (Score:5, Informative)
you can be jailed for going over the speeding limit by 20 mph
This is bogus - you're only going to get jailed for doing 20mph over the limit if you kill/mame someone in the process.
there are more cameras than people
Where'd you pull that statistic from? Sure there are a lot of cameras, but nowhere near that many.
its illegal to own GPS recievers that tell you where the speeding cameras are
Completely bogus - GPS receivers and speeding camera maps (and the combination of the 2) are completely legal.
new speeding cameras that identify individual cars and time you over long distances to see if you broke the average speeding limit
Not over long distances - over short distances such as a mile or so. You're talking about the SPECS cameras, which many consider to be much safer than GATSOs since they don't cause hard braking. (Note: I'm opposed to speed cameras, but I don't see how you can claim that SPECS is worse than GATSO).
I'd rather live in the US than in England.
It seems that you're basing this almost entirely on bad information.
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And the US has mandatory monitoring of every single phone call. I consider my phone calls more private than what I might do walking down the street. I don't care if someone sees me picking my nose or scratching my arse. I *do* care about my phone calls being spied on.
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Sorry to ruin your day but they monitor the world's calls (pretty much) via Echelon. With a major node in the UK, you can be sure that's one country that gets included.
Somewhat pointless, horse, barn, ... (Score:5, Informative)
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They have $$, and money talks. So much so that during the beginning of the Afghan war, they simply BOUGHT UP EVERY SAT PHOTO AVAILABLE of the area for months.
Half-meter resolution is good. If you know what you're looking at, you
Re:Somewhat pointless, horse, barn, ... (Score:5, Informative)
For all those who ask 'how hard can it be?' (shades of Top Gear...) entry level into the commercial Very High Resolution satellite business starts at around half a billion -- don't forget the ground segment. Even future missions are not planning to go much below
The Man may well have bought 'all the coverage of Afghanistan' -- from a single operator. The Ikonos mission (1m pixel) was the only one operating at the time. The US Govt. does retain 'shutter control' rights of all the VHR missionslicensed by them - which is all the current VHR missions. That will change - especially with COSMO-SkyMed [eoportal.org], a constellation of all-weather radar satellites with a max. resolution of >1m, coming soon.
There's a intro to VHR satellite imagery here [eurimage.com].
Coming soon to a country near you... (Score:3, Interesting)
On the plus side, the images that are already out there are staying out there, so some things like Google Earth are just going to become outdated, but they've already been doing this in some other circumstances - ever try to look at any of the buildings in DC for instance?
Will the images out there stay out there? (Score:2)
It's easy to take down a website. I see fanfiction websites (think "derivative works") disappear all the time. The government can't keep satellites from other nations from taking pictures at whatever
torn between privascy and rigth to know (Score:5, Insightful)
I also really don't like the idea of companies making imagery of my property available to whomever wants it. My business is my business and is not for sale. I guess preventing that from happening is futile as well.
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Ofcourse that only works if you have a relatively small property.
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Rent it out, you know.
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If you are charged with destruction of national property you can ask them where it was clearly labled, and of course claim that you thought it was a meteorite and you were upholding your right to bear (admittedly a little overpowered) arms to defend your home, family and country.
Of course they would just throw you in jail with no charges and claim 6mths later that "army contractors have finnish
How to stop companies selling pictures of home (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Identify company selling pictures of your house showing the picture or design you painted.
3) Sue them under the DMCA for selling pirated reproductions of your copyrighted "artistic work" (aka the paintjob on your house).
Slashdot Strategy Sessions (Score:2, Interesting)
"we would not want imagery to be openly disseminated of a sensitive site of any type, whether it is here or overseas"
This guy has it all wrong - they should be opensourcing these images, not closing them off. Let the denizens of parents' basements across America search for signs of Osama. We could have slashdot strategy sessions:
slashdotter 1: 'We need to lure them with a weak force down the center, then surprise outflank them - it worked for the Carthaginians.
slashdotter 2: 'You asstard: the Carthaginians were destroyed - the Romans sowed their fucking fields with fucking salt. someone mod this dipshit down
I welcome... (Score:2)
NGA = NIMA (Score:5, Informative)
For profit division (Score:2)
The Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), is the distributor of public sale National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) topographic maps, publications, and digital products.
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While you are there, check out their Kids Site. I can't make up my mind if this is funny, sad, or both.
WARNING: That link is not to be used while intoxicated. Trust me on this one.
My friend, I just visited and I assure you; I cannot handle this trip sober. On the bright side, you'll be able to forget it, whereas I must now live with it. There are just some things you can't unsee. I, most unfortunately, do believe that talking planets and satellites fall into this category. I think this confirms something or other than Hunter S. Thompson once said... I'm not sure what, but it has to !
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Don't Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a ... (Score:5, Insightful)
These restrictions are clear violations of the Constitution, which creates no power for our government to prevent our recording public places. Not to mention absolutely unamerican in attitude.
There's so much accumulated destruction of America to fix now that it'll take generations to even catch up to where we could be, not to mention all the new problems accumulating while we're catching up. If we can even reverse momentum at all.
Re:Don't Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a (Score:2)
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And of course the interiors of "public" buildings that are actually classified/restricted (including offices requiring appointments), and new plans still closed to public access, should not be photographed without proper authorization.
That's why we
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Re:Don't Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are out doing something in your fields, anybody can observe you.
If you are in your house, what you do is private.
In between -- things get murky. Anybody can walk up to your front door an knock of course, but the area in the immediate vicinity of your house, call the curtilage, has an intermediate level of protection. People can't poke around it with impunity to find things out about you. They can't stand in the bushes outside
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I certainly don't think government censorship, even specifically banning photography of public places, is "uniquely American". I've been engaged in the US end of the "droit de regard" debate for well over a decade, though I can cite French examples.
Complaints by Americans about unamerican activity of our government (and it
oh really... (Score:5, Insightful)
During the early months of the invasion of Afghanistan they bought up all satellite imagery over that country, worldwide
Did they buy everything Russia has*? How? Is it really credible that Russia would enter into some kind of clandestine NDA over this material? And what would it mean if they did? We can assume that the US government has more money than $GOD to execute its evil. But what would be the motive here? To prevent before-and-after comparisons? Did they buy up all Iraq's too?
* - There must be a substantial archive of Afghan intelligence somewhere in Russia, as a legacy of the 9-year war. [wikipedia.org]
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Nine year old data, unless it is part of a "then and now" data set or some specific study about historical trends, is useless.
Agency names (Score:2, Informative)
Intelligence Agency? (Score:3, Interesting)
I question the legitimacy of any intelligence agency this sloppy. I bet they have as much depth as the DHS.
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>I question the legitimacy of any intelligence agency this sloppy.
I hope slashdot will let me make an anon posting today.
I know quite a few of the people who work in that office, because they provide a great deal of Geospatial data to us research types, to the USEPA, to the USGS, to state agencies, etc.
The thing I wanted to point out is that many of them could, if they chose, greatly increase their salaries if they wanted to work in the EPA, USGS, or for a municipal survey organization. They choose to s
What for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Important strategic installations are already satellite-proofed because of the Russians. The rest doesn't matter because there are so many other ways to find out the same information.
This is just like the time a National Geographic photographer was denied permission to photograph a bridge becuase of security concerns. He pointed out that if someone wants to know where the bridge is, they can read a map. If they want to see it they can drive over it as many time as they want. It didn't sway them and in fact he was told if he went up in the helicopter he would be shot down. Morons.
India is the only other country .. (Score:2, Interesting)
ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) is the world's third and only second non-US supplier of 1-m imageries and perhaps the most competitively priced; the data comes at a premium of nearly 40 per cent. Some data is internationally priced at $18-20 per picture of a sq km.
From http://www.india-defence.com/reports/3031 [india-defence.com]
Restrictions? Laugh
Can you receive and decode this stuff yourself? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure they use some type of encryption, but you know, thats not always (e.g. HD-DVD) the barrier it is supposed to be. Also, recent events such as the Tamil Tigers hijacking satellite bandwidth makes me wonder just what might be possible.
Anyone do any satellite hacking?
Re:Can you receive and decode this stuff yourself? (Score:5, Informative)
look, forget it. Weather satellites are geostationary, and the pictures they send are small. There's a intro to VHR satellite imagery here [eurimage.com].
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Nothing to it - all you need is a 12m tracking dish capable of keeping up with a Low Earth Orbit Satellite on a circa. 90 minute orbit, hardware capable of handling the huge bandwidth required (a single QuickBird scene of about 272 km^2 runs to gigabytes, then you can hack into the satellite to persuade it to unload the raw data from the on-board solid-state memory to your PC which knows how to process it into system-corrected data and then...
I have one of those at work, but they won't let me play with
NGA successfully restricted aero data (Score:4, Insightful)
FWIW, this is also the agency that successfully pulled Dafif, a huge database of periodically updated worldwide aeronautical information historically available for free to the public, off the public Internet. Here's a brief story [navaid.com] about it and where you used to be able to get it [164.214.2.62]. So in a sense this sort of statement is very much in character; this guy is probably "just doing his job". He is a DoD employee, after all.
Now, they will probably have a much tougher time pwning all the satellite images, especially in future, because they aren't the sole provider of such images. The right answer is probably competition, i.e., for more commercial providers to get satellites up... makes it that much harder for any one agent (or agency) to corner the market, anyway. And TFA seems to suggest that that is indeed happening.
It does sort of seem like a basic drawback of so-called open-source intelligence [wikipedia.org] (which has nothing to do with "open source" per se) that everyone else pretty much has the ability to get at it too, if they look hard enough. Perhaps the complaint is that now they don't have to look very hard at all.
High res photos on Google Earth are not Sat (Score:3, Informative)
Surprised it's taken so long (Score:4, Interesting)
With a bag of goodness like that online, I just don't know where to 'snoop' next!
GCHQ UK (Score:2)
I've lived there for so long, the site no longer holds any interest for me, but it does kind of make a mockery of the ruling. Hell, in the live bird's eye view, I can see my car on my driveway.
More like Censorship via Copyright. (Score:3, Insightful)
More like Censorship via Copyright right? Isn't this play on the rise? By private individuals as well as governments?
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=zotzbro [youtube.com]
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Re:NGA not NGIA (Score:5, Funny)
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That's easy. Download USAPhotoMaps, the free...shareware program. All the map data gets downloaded to your local HD and is there for ever and ever.
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This may come as a shock but there's actually other people and places outside the USA so this is a partial solution at best.
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Of course, by this argument the Saudi terrorists were perfectly justified in attacking the WTC.
This is the Bush justification of murder. I want you to do this, and if you don't, you are a legitimate target. You are either for us or against us! We have bigger guns!
Have you worked out yet w
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