Eyes in the sky

While this article may seem initially to be about technological advancements, at its heart is a social issue that affects all of us - the residents of this world. How we respond to this issue may very well determine the future course of how the technology gets developed and used.

US federal regulations have placed certain limits on the frequency and granularity of the images that can be taken by commercial satellites. However, factors such as advancing technology, competing rivals from countries where the US regulations do not apply, slower pace of development of regulatory framework around data privacy - all of these and more have led to a situation where soon civilian commercial satellites will be able to provide almost real time and more granular image updates of Earth such that potentially (quoting the MIT Technology review article now) everyone from advertisement companies to suspicious spouses to terrorist organizations will have access to such data with far reaching implications. Effectively this would mean that anyone could be watching anyone else at any given moment!

Unless data privacy rules and societal norms quickly evolve to address these potential situations, the collective humanity may find itself hurtling and eventually in a post of bother where misuse of such capabilities have no legal remedy. The below article appearing in the MIT Technology Review magazine elaborates on this topic - a very interesting read I say.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613748/satellites-threaten-privacy/