Journal: News & Comment

Permalinks to this entry: individual page or in monthly context. For more material from my journal, visit my home page or the archive.

Good old-fashioned capitalist censorship

The U.S. government apparently has the right to prevent photos from U.S.-based civilian surveillance satellites from being released to the public during military operations -- such as those currently on in Afghanistan. But rather than invoking that law and possibly facing freedom-of-the-press lawsuits, it has instead simply gone and purchased exclusive rights to satellite photos of the Afghan conflict, and will not release them.

In theory, the Russians, who have commercial surveillance satellites in orbit, could release any photos they have, but so far there's been no suggestion they will.

Anyone else have a spare satellite kicking around?

 |