Proceedings of the Workshop - United Nations Office for Outer ...

104 EXPANDING GLOBAL REMOTE SENSING SERVICESPrinciples, thereby strengthening their customary law Increasing restrictions on access tofoundation.57remotely sensed data are relevant toThe Principles specifically incorporate by reference the expansion of global remoteauthorities which date even further back into the 20th sensing services. These restrictionsCentury, including the U.N. Charter, the Outer Space are weakening the principle ofTreaty and relevant instruments of the Internationalopenness upon which much remoteTelecommunication Union. This means that some rulescontained in them and that are relevant to remote sensing law is based and issensing, like spectra preservation, can be invoked and inhibiting global services. Theapplied through the Principles.58 Finally, some of the degree to which decreasedspecific provisions incorporated in the Principles, likeopenness will inhibit the expansionavoiding harm59 and protecting humanity,60 have theirroots in the ancient practices of equity, establishing the of global remote sensing servicestemporal lineage of some aspects of the Principles as will, in the long-term, depend on twobeginning well-before the advent of remote sensing things: which services are beingtechnology.considered and a complex dynamicThe inclusion of customary and treaty law in the of politics, economics, andPrinciples serve as authority for their maturation into technology interacting with the law.law.61 These same facts have been used to supportarguments that the Principles add nothing tointernational remote sensing law as a whole.62 However, Relevance of the principle of openness toin the context of time, 1999 brings the international the expansion of global remote sensingcommunity to a full quarter-century of practice and services.acceptance of the Principles' without any "formaldefection from their terms"63 and with each year thatSocieties, like people, when faced with their ownthis remains the case, the authority of the Principlesmortality are thrown back to the basics. They ask,grows stronger.64"What do we value? For what do we stand?"Philosophy and pragmatism become one. For half of the20th Century, for most of the world, World War IIcatalyzed this experience and it continued throughout57 Christol Past and Present, supra note 25, at 91-92.the ensuing Cold War. Beneath the strategicpreparations, beneath the demonstrations of58 ABA, supra note 27, at 129 - 130.technological prowess, beneath the political positions,59 Principles, supra, note 5, Principle IV, Principle X.beneath it all, was a conflict of ideas. It was a deeplyphilosophical conflict based on the question, which is60 Principles, supra, note 5, Principle XI.the better form of society: open or closed? The UnitedStates, the western European nations, and others61 He Qizhi, Legal Aspects o f Monitoring and Protecting Earth believed in, and fought for, the ideal of an open society.Environment by Space Technology, 20 J. of Space Law 111 atOther nations, led by the former Soviet Union, believed114, (1992).in, and fought for, closed, more controlled societies.62 DeSaussure, supra note 39.63 ABA, supra note 27 at 127.; Christol Past and Present, supranote 25, at 94.64 Chnstol Past and Present, supra note 25, at 94.The fora in which space law developed becameprominent arenas in this contest of ideas. Negotiationsfor treaties, declarations, resolutions and other legalinstruments were rife with the ideological strugglessurrounding the core issue of open versus closed