The Demise of “Open Skies?”: Commercial Remote Sensing in an Age of Terror
- Paper number
IAC-05-E6.1.07
- Author
Mr. John Heath, United States
- Year
2005
- Abstract
From the beginning of the Cold War, the United States has followed a policy of non-interference with the remote sensing activities of other nations. President Dwight Eisenhower first proposed this policy, known as “Open Skies,” in 1955. Although the Soviets rejected President Eisenhower’s proposal as a pretext for espionage, both the US and USSR came to abide by the “Open Skies” policy in fact- particularly after the focus of remote sensing for national security purposes moved from overflights by reconnaissance aircraft to reliance on satellites. Throughout the period of the Cold War, neither side deployed anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons nor actively interfered with each other’s collection of imagery and data from space. In fact, “Open Skies” took on new importance in the realm of arms control as remote sensing, free from interference, provided the only truly verifiable means of compliance with treaty obligations. For example, Article XII of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty expressly stated that each party could use their “national technical means” for verification; “national technical means” included remote sensing from space. In short order, the “open skies” policy became the accepted practice of all state actors. Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990’s, rapid changes have occurred in the field of remote sensing. First of all, remote sensing from space, especially satellite imaging, has increasingly been conducted by private commercial entities as opposed to the traditional state actors. The technology employed by private companies (and hence the resolution of their images) has improved dramatically. Very high quality images and other data are available for purchase over the Internet. The consumers of this data from commercial entities now include both state and non-state actors. Unfortunately one of the potential new “consumers” of commercial remote sensing images are terrorist organizations. In the broadest sense, terrorists (with an Internet connection and enough money) can access commercial remote sensing images to gather intelligence against and plan attacks on the targets of their choice. Perhaps the most dramatic example occurred in April 2004 when insurgents ambushed several American contractors in Fallujah and strung their charred bodies from a bridge over the Euphrates River. In videotape released to an Australian reporter, a spokesman for the group Islamic Army in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack and held up a satellite image of the ambush site. According to the narrator, this image had been marked up and used to plan the attack. These troubling developments beg the question of whether the United States and other nations will finally have to abandon the “open skies” policy in order to combat the emerging threat from insurgent groups and trans-national terrorists? Part I of this paper traces the history of "open skies" and the development of commercial remote sensing. Part II looks at the real/potential dangers of unregulated, high quality, commercially available remote sensing data. Part III looks at the state of both international and municipal law governing remote sensing activities. Part IV examines the policy options available to governments to control/regulate the availability of this data to non-state actor groups.
- Abstract document