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Coverage of Terrorism
Press Access to Satellite Images is a Casualty in This War
The Department of Defense owns and controls these pictures.
By Christopher Simpson
Not too many years ago, I invited
the chief intelligence and national
security correspondent
from one of America’s most prominent
newspapers to a conference on news
media use of remote sensing tools to
cover wars and similar crises. He gruffly
replied that it was all baloney (though
he used a different word for it) and
declined to attend. I was curious and
asked him why.
“Remote sensing,” he said, “like using
mind waves to read Kremlin mail,”
is complete crud. (He used a different
term there, as well.)
Today that correspondent tells quite
a different story. He encourages his
paper to use remote sensing tools such
as images gathered by civilian spy satellites,
especially for coverage of the
World Trade Center disaster and the
subsequent war in Afghanistan. Remote
sensing from satellites, sometimes
known as “earth observation” or as
imagery gathered by spy satellites, has
nothing whatever to do with ill conceived
attempts to use purported
psychics for intelligence collection.
Instead, unclassified imagery gathered
from space has emerged as a powerful
tool for capturing unique photographs
and information. Properly
analyzed, these images present to broad
audiences some of the complex ideas
that for decades have been the exclusive
preserve of presidents, intelligence
agencies, and a handful of scientific
specialists. During the past three years
alone, almost every major news organization
in the world has used these
tools to report on natural disasters,
war, closed societies, environmental
destruction, some types of human
rights abuses, refugee flight and relief,
scientific discoveries, agriculture and
even real estate development.
The increasing popularity and effectiveness
of these journalistic tools has
raised concerns in some quarters that
public images might reveal sensitive
information in wartime, most recently
in Afghanistan. Since mid-September,
federal intelligence and security agencies
have organized a sweeping
clampdown on almost every type of
geographic information available on
the Internet, including civilian remote
sensing information. Satellite imagery
of Afghanistan, surrounding countries,
and sensitive installations in the United
States were among the first to go. The
National Imagery and Mapping
Agency—the Defense Department’s
lead agency for satellite image collection
and analysis—went so far as to
attempt to end public distribution of
decades-old, widely available Landsat
5 imagery and of topographic maps of
the United States that have been commercially
available in one form or another
for more than 100 years. They
did not succeed. Nevertheless, NIMA
and other defense agencies have announced
a “review” of publicly available
U.S. maps in order to eliminate
Imagery for news and analysis: At left, a Spot Image satellite photo of Ground Zero captured on September 11, less than three hours
after the towers’ collapse. The thermal infrared band identifies fierce fires (in white in this picture) at the base of the smoke plumes.
Ground spatial resolution of the image—that is, the size of an object represented by a single pixel—is about 15 meters. At center, a
one-meter resolution Ikonos satellite image of the same area taken on September 15. Debris and emergency vehicles are clearly visible.
This image was collected by an observation satellite some 423 miles in space traveling at about 17,500 mph. At right, this LIDAR
image extrusion prepared by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) permits precise three-dimensional
location of elevator shafts, stairwells and broken support structures at the destroyed World Trade Center. When merged with other
satellite data, the final color 3-D image provides approximately 30 meter resolution. Image credits: (left) Spot Image/CNES, (center)
Space Imaging, (right) NOAA.
Nieman Reports / Winter 2001 31