The firmament is alive with lenses as Earth’s orbit plays host to government and private satellites. A scoop from Semafor (a relatively new publication headed by New York Times and Atlantic veterans) explores the intersection of commercial interest regarding war information and nations’ desires to protect the locations and quantities of their matériel.
Max Tani reports:
In the early days of the invasion of Ukraine in 2021, commercial satellite companies provided some of the most compelling images and insights into how the conflict was developing on the ground, making that war the first modern conflict in which journalists, researchers, and passionate amateurs could monitor developments in the conflict in such detail.
But as Israel begins its ground invasion of Gaza, the same satellite imagery providers aren’t being as forthcoming.
Planet, a San Francisco-based company launched in 2010 by former NASA scientists, has in recent days heavily restricted and obscured parts of images over the Gaza Strip for many users, including news organizations. Last week, some images of Gaza were removed from Planet’s web application for downloading imagery, and some have been distributed to interested media outlets through a Google Drive folder. The satellite company told some subscribers that during active conflicts, it may modify pictures published to the archive.
You can read the rest here.
Tani’s copy is skeptical about delaying or censoring the satellite imagery. As journalists, we have a general interest in publicly accessible info, as well as professional attraction to any and every resource possible to best report a story. That said, if I were Israel, I’d be leaning on the U.S. to strongly suggest to Planet and other such companies to limit access to vetted parties (which is what I suspect happened here). For one, we know Hamas to have many sympathizers, including among the press corps, that would like to use the images for strikes against IDF positions. For another, what these companies provide — up-to-date high-resolution imagery — can, situationally, be considered military intelligence and are, like American-made munitions, something the federal government can regulate the foreign sale and dissemination thereof.
As always, there should be evident and rational limits to the state’s power to moderate a private company’s property. The example of Israel, a country currently pushing back a bloodthirsty aggressor, merits our temporarily instituting a bit of visual static on our ally’s behalf.