[The Afghan War is also taking place in orbital space ... John.]===========================================
US buys up all satellite war images

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,575586,00.html

Duncan Campbell
Wednesday October 17, 2001
The Guardian

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.

· Duncan Campbell is a writer on intelligence matters, and is not the
Guardian's Los Angeles correspondent of the same name.

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