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Coverage of Terrorism
Private satellite companies in the
United States have thus far closely cooperated
with the government’s effort
to block media access to the large majority
of current imagery. Lockheed
Martin subsidiary Space Imaging Corp.,
located in Thorton, Colorado
(www.spaceimaging.com) operates the
Ikonos satellite. It captures images of
the earth at about one-meter ground
spatial resolution, and that is precise
enough to permit experts and even
ordinary readers to identify many types
of military and civilian operations.
During the first week after September
11, Space Imaging released to the
media high-resolution photos of
Ground Zero at the collapsed trade
towers in Manhattan and at the Pentagon.
The New York Times, The Wall
Street Journal, scores of major publications,
and every major television news
organization in the world employed
these dramatic photographs to analyze,
document and explain what had
taken place during the attacks. Meanwhile,
SPOT Image, a French satellite
company with a significant share of the
U.S. market (www.spot.com), provided
somewhat similar 15-meter resolution
“images of infamy” it had gathered from
more than 400 miles in space.
As dramatic as those photos are,
they have since become something of a
fig leaf that has obscured more recent,
sweeping restrictions on news media
use of satellite imaging. Beginning at
least as early as October, the Department
of Defense (DOD) has moved
aggressively to shut down media access
to overhead images of the heavy
bombing of Afghanistan, except for
photos that the DOD presents at its
own news conferences. In the process,
the DOD appears to have sidestepped
its own regulations, some legal experts
say, and might have broken the law.
The present controversy about public
access to satellite imagery began a
bit less than a decade ago when the
U.S. government drafted elaborate
regulations claiming it had the authority
to exercise “shutter control” over
U.S.-licensed satellites. Executive agencies
authorized a procedure they would
use to shut down collection of otherwise
available imagery when key members
of the President’s cabinet agreed
that national security, foreign policy,
or similar matters might be endangered.
Critics contended that the “shutter
control” procedures amounted to
governmental prior restraint on publishing,
a type of censorship that the
Supreme Court has long held to be
unconstitutional in almost every circumstance.
The Radio-Television News Directors
Association said that the first time
the procedure was actually used they
would challenge its constitutionality in
court. Similar objections came from a
number of news and publishing organizations
and some representatives of
the civilian satellite companies themselves.
But until October 2001, no clearcut
test cases had arisen. Then, as the
United States began its bombing campaign
in Afghanistan, the DOD signed
contracts with Space Imaging to purchase
exclusive rights to all of the
company’s imagery collected anywhere
near Afghanistan.
These tactics, known as “preclusive
buying,” have been a feature of U.S.
economic warfare since at least World
War I. Earlier preclusive buying efforts
sought to choke off shipments of tungsten
and other strategic minerals to
Nazi Germany, for example. This time,
though, the object has been to shut
down U.S. news media access to information
about the war in Afghanistan,
the flight of refugees, and the widening
crisis in West Asia.
Today, the Defense Department and
Space Imaging contend that this preclusive
buying is a simple contract
matter. “This was a solid business transaction
that brought great value to the
[U.S.] government,” said the company’s
Washington representative, Mark
Brender. “Nothing more; nothing less.”
But critics contend that the Department
of Defense has used the contracts
usually under contract to the United Nations,
national governments, U.S. government agencies,
the World Bank, or corporations.
www.digitalglobe.com
DigitalGlobe, formerly known as EarthWatch,
successfully launched its QuickBird highresolution
satellite in autumn 2001. It plans to
offer full image-gathering capability during the
first quarter 2002. DigitalGlobe, like several of
its competitors, also markets imagery from
Canada’s RADARSAT International, Russia’s
space program, India’s satellite program, and
other sources. Availability and currency of these
data vary by region.
www.dfd.dlr.de
DFD-DLR, Germany’s state remote sensing
organization, installed an advanced, mobile
four-meter ground receiving station near Kitab,
Uzbekistan, some months prior to the outbreak
of war.
www.globalsecurity.org
GlobalSecurity.org is a space and international
security-oriented think tank, most of whose
analysts were formerly associated with the well
known Federation of American Scientists
satellite imagery Web site. The latter site has
been significantly cut back, while
GlobalSecurity.org’s site includes key materials
gathered during the FAS project and a considerable
amount of new data. The site is particularly
useful for satellite imagery and high quality
maps of the Afghan war zone, as well as an
archive of publicly released DOD imagery.
www.orbimage.com
Orbimage currently specializes in high quality,
weather satellite-type imagery that covers an
entire region of the globe in one image.
—Christopher Simpson
Nieman Reports / Winter 2001 33