Commercial Satellites Alter Global Security

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is giving US troops high-definition satellite photos of Afghanistan, but they aren’t getting the pictures from the government’s network – they’re getting them from commercial vendors.

In an article on the USA Today website, Peter Eisler says the move is “a remarkable turn, given the warnings that security experts in the USA and worldwide raised a few years ago about giving the entire planet — terrorists and rogue states included — access to high-resolution satellite photos once available only to superpowers.”

“It’s created a lot of opportunities to do things we couldn't do with (classified) imagery,” Jack Hild, a deputy director at NGA, which provides imagery and mapping for defense and homeland security operations, told Eisler.

Eisler says using commercial satellite images allows anyone, including troops with limited security clearance, to see images of certain areas. This couldn’t happen before, given the security of government satellite photos. The risk of the top-secret pictures reaching enemy hands was too high.

Federal agencies can now also use commercial imagery to guide emergency response and inform the public during natural disasters, such as this year's Hurricane Ike. It's also used by government scientists to monitor glacial melting and drought effects in the Farm Belt.

When commercial satellite photos first hit the market, “the gut reaction was, ‘We can’t allow this imagery to be out there because someone might do us harm with it,’” Hild told Eisler. “Are there still bad things that people can do with commercial imagery? Absolutely … but we think the benefits far outweigh the risks.”