IP: Pentagon buys war satellite pictures

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:23:33 -0400
> From: Eric Rosenthal <eric () creative-technology net>
> -To: farber () cis upenn edu
>
>  This is from the London Times web site.
>
>
>         America : last updated, October 17, 2001 00:59
>
>
>
>         Pentagon buys war satellite pictures
>
>         The US military is paying for the exclusive rights to commercial 
> satellite imagery of Afghanistan even though its own satellites give 
> better pictures. This could serve two purposes: to provide an extra eye 
> on Afghanistan, and to prevent anyone else from peeking at the war zone. 
> The images of the Ikonos satellite, among the best available to the 
> public, will add to those collected by military satellites and airplanes, 
> Joan Mears, a spokeswoman for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, 
> said. Ms Mears declined to discuss how much the government was paying for 
> the pictures, only saying that the agency had paid for exclusive access 
> to the area involved in Operation Enduring Freedom, the military code 
> name for the strikes in Afghanistan. The agency's contract with 
> Denver-based Space Imaging began on October 7 and is believed to be in 
> the multimillion-dollar range. A Space Imaging executive said the US 
> government had signed a large contract with his company, not only buying 
> exclusive rights to the imagery but paying for all the time that the 
> satellite is over the target area. This serves to prevent anyone else 
> from using Ikonos to take pictures of the war zone. It also prevents 
> Space Imaging from selling the pictures to anyone else, which the company 
> does with most of its imagery. Mark Brender, executive director of 
> government affairs and corporate communications for Space Imaging, 
> declined to reveal the amount of the contract but said "it was a 
> wonderful business transaction". Top-of-the-line Ikonos pictures have 
> one-metre resolution, meaning the satellite can distinguish features on 
> the ground one metre in size or larger. "You can count the cars in a 
> parking lot, tell which are pickups and sedans, and tell what colour they 
> are," Mr Brender said.


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