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

118 EXPANDING GLOBAL REMOTE SENSING SERVICESalso makes the signatory-state a supervising authorityover private activities154 and serves as the interfacebetween domestic and international law, from which thedomestic requirement to license private remote sensingsystems stems.In the United States, domestic authority for privatesystems issues from Congressional legislation155 andExecutive policy.156 Specific licensing regulations to beimplemented pursuant to this authority are beingformulated.157 Determining licensing regulationsrequires balancing the interests of private systemoperators with United States international obligationsand national security and has generated a special issuerelated to openness and one of the most widelydiscussed concerns of remote sensing law: "shuttercontrol." That is, when can the government require acommercial system to cease or modify operations forreasons of national security or international obligations?In the United States, the earliest licenses determinedthat it was "[i]n the event of a national security crisis,as defined by the Secretary of Defense".158 Laterlicenses changed159 and the standards are continuing toevolve.160License requirements are changing, in part, fromapplying the licensing authorization to different kinds oftechnologies. As a result, new licensing procedures areemerging and new attempts at defining licensingrestrictions are being made. The approach so far hasbeen to issue licenses allowing a system to gather dataanywhere, imposing temporal and geographic limitsonly when necessary. National security institutions areless comfortable with this approach for commercialsystems using newer technologies, like hyper-spectraland radar instruments, and have begun to apply newones. New approaches are attempting to controlindividual products more than operations.One approach being used is a process that requiresa licensee, under certain circumstances, to consult with,or obtain, additional government approval after thelicense is granted. This is a two-stage, or tieredlicensing model.161 The first tier approval licenses asystem to operate up to a specific spectral and/orspatial capability.162 To operate beyond the specified159 Shortly after, conditions expanded to include "when nationalsecurity or international obligations and/or foreign policies maybe compromised, as defined by the Secretary of Defense or theSecretary of State, respectively," and if necessary, "afterconsultation with the appropriate agency (ies)," and "to theextent necessitated by the given situation." License issued toLockheed Missiles and Space Company, Inc., by Department ofCommerce, Apr. 22, 1994.154 Outer Space Treaty, supra note 56, Art. VI.155 15 U.S.C. §§ 5621 through 5625 and the Commercial SpaceAct, P.L. 105-303, Oct 28, 1998.156 Presidential Decision Directive PDD/NSC 23 - ForeignAccess To Remote Sensing Space Capabilities, 10 March 1994,[hereinafter, PDD 23].157 62 Federal Register 59317 (November 3, 1997).158 License issued to WorldView Imaging Corporation, byDepartment of Commerce, January 4, 1993.http://www.hq.nasa.gov/off ice/pao/History/sputnik/II37.html,[hereinafter, Worldview].http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Histoiy/sputnik/II39.html160 Licenses are also becoming complex enough to containsensitive proprietary information that must be provided by theapplicant to facilitate the licensing process. As a result, licensesmust now be requested through the Freedom of Information Actso that sensitive material can be redacted before release.161 RDL Space Corporation license for its 1-meter resolutionsynthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, RADAR 1, Issued June16, 1998. The Space Technology Development Corporationlicense for its wide-area, hyperspectral Naval EarthMapObserver (Nemo) satellite in cooperation with the U.S. Navy,issued March 26, 1999.162 Space News, Orbimage Gets Right to Radarsat 2 Data;RSI's Future Unclear, Jan. 25, 1999, at 1,20, col. 1. RDLSpace Corporation is "barred" from selling any imagery with