So long, privacy: New satellites blow Google Earth away
Filed under: Technology, Google
So you want to see if your wife is cheating on you. She told you she would be at yoga class, but a quick check of satellite images shows you her car is not there. You then check the driveway of a male friend she seems to be seeing a lot of. Bingo, the red VW Bug is in the driveway. She's totally busted. Call the lawyer. Paranoid, maybe. But soon such a scenario will be entirely possible. Satellite company DigitalGlobe (DGI) is launching sophisticated birds that are upping the ante on image refreshing from orbit. And in the process, they are shattering any hope you had left for offline privacy.
During the Beijing Olympics last summer, a DigitalGlobe satellite was snapping pictures of the city with an eight-second refresh rate, according to this blogpost by John Battelle. While those images were high enough up not to be able to divine close-in detail, the satellites can perform very rapid refresh imaging of smaller areas on terra firma, as well. Welcome to the new era of personal satellite surveillance.
Yes, I am overstating the immediate danger here a bit. DigitalGlobe has no intention of offering its service to suspicious spouses or to gumshoes on sleazy surveillance missions. Rather, the company, which managed a $1 billion IPO in June 2009, aims to sell its imaging capabilities to governments, big business, scientists, media and other heavy consumers of extremely detailed digital maps and pictures. This is big business with potentially enormous markets such as oil exploration, military operations, forestry, urban planning, and corporate intelligence. Getty Pictures, the huge photo agency, has linked up with DigitalGlobe to vend images to big media shops.
But the new constellation of DigitalGlobe birds takes Web-accessible satellite imagery to a new and unprecedented level in terms of image refresh rates and down-to-the-pixel detail. On October 5, 2009, DigitalGlobe will launch WorldView-2 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. If successful, the launch will increase DigitalGlobe's satellite constellation to three. The three satellites will give DigitalGlobe, ". . . the highest collection capacity – more than 1 million square kilometers per day – of high resolution earth imagery directly to customers around the world," according to company information.
A look at the color images posted on the company's site is both breathtaking and shocking in terms of the level of detail and true color snapped from so far above the Earth. They images are clearly superior to the ones we've all seen coming out of Google Earth and other online mapping programs. That these images can be refreshed every few seconds -- something that Google nor any other online map provider can presently provide -- is astounding.
Battelle, who plans to showcase the technology at his upcoming Web 2.0 Summit in October, 2009, likens the new satellites to a Web crawler for the planet, a constantly refreshing generator of digital information tagged to locations that will help us categorize movements, changes, and other useful variations in our world. His enthusiasm for a new form of geophysical Web crawler and geographical data tagging is understandable. Myriad good uses of such technology are obvious, including surveillance of rapidly changing wildfires in Los Angeles, something that DigitalGlobe did for free.
Still, it's hard not to consider the darker side of this new found mastery of the skies and to think that we are approaching one of those before-and-after technology moments that shape the way we live.Remember, before the days of the Web crawler, no one worried about their college friends posting stupid drunken videos on YouTube the day before a big job interview. And damaging Facebook flashbacks were not even a glimmer in the mind of the most forward-thinking technophiles. But thus far humans could take a little bit of solace in the fact that offline behavior remained more or less private.
None of this is to directly fault DigitalGlobe. The company is merely following the march of technology. But these developments it makes it very easy to envision snooping on a wayward spouse via satellite in the very near future and for not too much money. Frankly, that creeps me out and I think it should creep you out, too.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
9-14-2009 @ 6:59PM
Rock Fossil said...
Rare Earth said it best, " Hey, Big Brother as soon as you arrive, you better get in touch with the people Big Brother and keep me satisfied"!!!! George Orwell, penned 1984 as a vision quest into the surveillance anathema that woud befall us all in his version of a futuristic world circa 1984. Well, it's now 2009, a mere quarter of a century later and Big Brother is here!!!! Oh well, better late than never......HMMMMMMM, I wonder what Government will really use this new technology for??? our benefit or ????????????/
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9-14-2009 @ 7:13PM
jmo said...
I'm curious, placing your paranoia aside-if you found out there was a real Santa or God for certain watching everything you do-would you blow your brains out or just say "screw it" and do your thing? Or are you under the delusion that what you do is so important to an eye in the sky?
9-14-2009 @ 7:34PM
Paul said...
Jmo- You're just a voyeur! Paranoia has absolutely nothing to do with it! Its my take on the military Industrialized complex and its subversive use of technology against the world's citizenry. Obviously you are too young to have experienced privacy as a right..........B.C., before computers!
Oh. did I forget to mention the audio portion of the subjugation of our privacy rights which ended during the reign of King Bush and the illegal N.S.A. wiretaps on innocent Americans... all under the guise of Homeland Insecurity? Please go back to reading Winnie the Pooh and be safe in your Brave New World!!
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9-15-2009 @ 8:00AM
JMO said...
As for me being too young-I'm 65 and have been involved in more than you. As for accusing me of being a voyeur, just because your wife lets we watch her before and after sex is not part of the forum. You, my young middle aged putz should have gone away with the rest of your pals in the old ussr-you're just a communist.
9-14-2009 @ 8:29PM
Yon said...
By the time our government agencies for spying and security get the technology, it'll be ten years. And then they'll totally overwhelmed with the data and drown in it.
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9-15-2009 @ 1:30AM
jimmy said...
Hahhaha Loved your post ! you are so right ! like trickle down economics !!! hahahahahahahaahahayhahhahaaa
9-14-2009 @ 8:29PM
Leon said...
Now maybe there will be no excuse that the military can't find Osama bin Laden
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9-14-2009 @ 8:36PM
jt44mag said...
i just love it when these idiots just call us paranoid or delusional ...when we stick up for OUR bill of rights and free speech ..!!!...EVERY government that starts out on the path to totalitarism has methods of watching the private behavior of its citizens ...insuring that it can put down dissent before it spreads ........notice its not intended for use by private citizens...why .??..because we could spy on the government ....they can black out the defense areas but government officials would freak if we could actually see who they talk to and what they actually do ..!!!!....j.t.
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9-14-2009 @ 8:49PM
Paul said...
This is big business with potentially enormous markets such as corporate intelligence. Getty Pictures, the huge photo agency, has linked up with DigitalGlobe to vend images to big media shops.????????????????????????????????????????
Corporate intelligence, now thats a scarey thought along with the other senarios. Perhaps we the people need to stop this privacy intrusion once and for all. Any suggestions ?
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9-14-2009 @ 9:06PM
Ray said...
I checked out their site. I'm unimpressed. MapQuest & Google are both better.
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9-14-2009 @ 9:08PM
Tom said...
Project : Looking glass
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9-14-2009 @ 9:17PM
jawann said...
lets not all be so naive. We know why this article was published and we know what it is going to be used for.
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9-14-2009 @ 9:19PM
Ron Abney said...
Big deal, if you people had nothing to hide, it wouldn't make any differances, would it???
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9-14-2009 @ 10:01PM
Lightening Arrester said...
Maybe soon going underground will no longer be rogue and risque, but vogue and secure. . . . .
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9-14-2009 @ 10:07PM
rob87irocusmc said...
The fear of this kind of thing is assuming that we, the people, will let it get to that point without taking all necessary action to stop it. And I don't mean holding signs at protests.
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9-14-2009 @ 11:24PM
Don said...
What's the big deal, they do this on "24" every week!
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9-15-2009 @ 12:01AM
PAULY SHORE BUMPED HIS HEAD.... said...
ANYBODY KNOW WHERE I CAN FIND JACK KEVORKIAN, CAUSE I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE, MY LIVER IS MESSED UP AND I AM IN TOO MUCH PAIN. THANK YOU!
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9-15-2009 @ 12:15AM
Priscilla said...
Comment No.11:
You are right. I think the same way. I don't cheat on my spouse, I don't have anything to worry about. Since I don't have anything to hide, I prefer to be spied to dissipate any doubt. Nothing to hide; absolutely nothing. I am a common person who eats and drinks in the open.
My only concern is when I am using the bathroom.
The criminals should have the ultimate concern. We can probably use the streets again knowing that everybody is being watched and rapists and killers will be caught easier.
God help us because things are getting a little hard these days.
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9-15-2009 @ 1:51AM
T.C. said...
The comment "if you have nothing to hide, then what are you afraid of/" is the first ignorant statement that opens the door for dictatorship. Read the fourth amendment while it is still on the books.
The government has to have just and probable cause to come into your house, listen to your phone calls, watch you to track your activities., They can't do this with the off chance that you might be doing something illegal. If you have nothing to hide they are supposed to leave you the hell alone.
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9-15-2009 @ 2:35AM
AlYerPal said...
If the government were going to spy on YOU, believe me, they already have and will continue to do so on their own whim and caprice.. and they don't need these new systems to do it. The technology in this article is caveman ancient to them. That's why its existance is now in the public's knowledge today.. so they can sell it to industry on the open market. When this stuff was first developed in the early 1970s, it was totally under wraps.. but is now made public because better technology has replaced it. What you really need to be concerned with is what the new stuff that is currently under wraps involves. But hey, just stick around for another 25 years and you'll find out then what they are hiding today.
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