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US buys up all satellite war images by Duncan
Campbell (download
Word file)
Guardian (UK)
(www.guardian.co.uk)
Wednesday October 17, 2001
The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars to prevent western media from seeing highly
accurate civilian satellite pictures of the effects of bombing in Afghanistan, it was
revealed yesterday.
The images, which are taken from Ikonos, an advanced civilian satellite launched in 1999,
are better than the spy satellite pictures available to the military during most of the
cold war.
The extraordinary detail of the images already taken by the satellite includes a line of
terrorist trainees marching between training camps at Jalalabad. At the same resolution,
it would be possible to see bodies lying on the ground after last week's bombing attacks.
Under American law, the US defence department has legal power to exercise "shutter
control" over civilian satellites launched from the US in order to prevent enemies
using the images while America is at war. But no order for shutter control was given, even
after the bombing raids began 10 days ago.
The decision to shut down access to satellite images was taken last Thursday, after
reports of heavy civilian casualties from the overnight bombing of training camps near
Darunta, north-west of Jalalabad. Instead of
invoking its legal powers, the Pentagon bought exclusive rights to all Ikonos satellite
pictures of Afghanistan off Space Imaging, the company which runs the satellite. The
agreement was made retrospectively to the
start of the bombing raids.
The US military does not need the pictures for its own purposes because it already has six
imaging satellites in orbit, augmented by a seventh launched last weekend. Four of the
satellites, called Keyholes, take photographic images estimated to be six to 10 times
better than the 1 metre resolution available from Ikonos.
The decision to use commercial rather than legal powers to bar access to satellite images
was heavily criticised by US intelligence specialists last night. Since images of the
bombed Afghan bases would not have shown the position of US forces or compromised US
military security, the ban could have been challenged by news media as being a breach of
the First Amendment, which guarantees press freedom.
"If they had imposed shutter control, it is entirely possible that news organisations
would have filed a lawsuit against the government arguing prior restraint
censorship," said Dr John Pike, of Globalsecurity, a US website which publishes
satellite images of military and alleged terrorist facilities around the world.
The only alternative source of accurate satellite images would be the Russian Cosmos
system. But Russia has not yet decided to step into the information void created by the
Pentagon deal with Space Imaging.
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