Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Cosa avranno da nascondere?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4278871,00.html
US buys up all satellite war images 
 Duncan Campbell
 Guardian
Wednesday October 17, 2001
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.

forse le strategie militari adottate?
e magari sono cosě cattivi da volerle nascondere anche ai talebani?

 e magari sono cosě cattivi da volerle nascondere anche ai talebani?
Si' perche' i talibani hanno bisogno di sapere dalle foto del satellite
dove sono piovute le bombe e che danni han fatto.
Certo.
Ciao,
Filippo