FANTOM PLANET

I may not have attended last week’s GEOINT conference, but the interesting tidbits I’ve heard from attendees have been pretty interesting. Most notably, discussion at the conference about limiting U.S. commercial satellite imagery providers in their resolution and distribution. Yeah, I know. Blew me away too.

The line of thought is no different than the Indian Government or any other sovereign state about concerns of ill-intended use, like use by terrorists. What my sources have said is that senior policy makers are worried about just that and have discussed limiting U.S. firms from improving their technology and who they sell to.

This is not good.

One, “the cat’s already out of the bag, dude.” Commercial satellite imagery is here to stay and so are the dissemination platforms. (Re: SPOT and Geoportail.) There are more non-U.S. platforms that are going to go up in the future along with various disemination systems, like Google Earth, NASA World Wind, and others. If the U.S. doesn’t stay in the game and keeps improving the technology, then it’s going to go elsewhere.

Two, it’s a matter of global economics. There is a legitimate demand for this information, if it doesn’t come from U.S. providers, then it’s going to come from elsewhere. This would force Google Earth to buy commercial satellite imagery from India, Russia, or China someday.

Three, this information has done more to help people than to hurt them. Just look at the example of a number of Indian farmers who used Google Earth to thwart the attemps of their government to reclassify and take away their land. NGO’s and conservation groups can monitor area’s that need monitoring. If this line of thought that is running through some U.S. policymaker’s head is about fear, then they need to get over it. I’d like to note, that putting more information out into the public is a good thing. Where citizens can participate in their communities and add value to them.

The one main idea that should have came out of GEOINT this year should have been make it better for the citizens to help ease this fear.

On a side note, if U.S. law and policy did revert back to more restrictive measures, the U.S. would be no better than any other country who limits the posession of other geographic imformation.

(Update: Jeff at Vector One wrote a similar post about de-classifying geospatial data.)