[Promotum] RedPill-Tax $ used to silence commercial sats

[Edmund A. Hintz]

     Short version: the commercial IKONOS satellites, which take high res 
ground pix and sell them to whoever wants them, are currently selling 
Afghan pix only to the US Gvmt., who are of course paying handsomely for 
this exclusive right, which is retroactive to the beginning of the 
bombings. Reportedly this comes after claims of high civillian casualties 
in a bomb run. The gvmt. has the authority to censor images through the 
Judiciary branch for security reasons, but this looks like a situation 
where the motivation is saving face rather than lives, hence the end-run 
around the law. While the millitary claim this is to protect American 
soldiers, I'm not so sure that makes much sense-there aren't any American 
soldiers at ground zero to protect, and I don't see how the Taliban could 
use sat photos of their own territory for intelligence reasons. They are 
*there*, aren't they? I'm afraid Occam's Razor comes in to play here-the 
only way I can see the data fit is if they're after suppression of 
information in order to keep popularity ratings high.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,575594,00.html

Exhaustive discussion here:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/17/181639/20


Peace,

Edmund A. Hintz              **|**     "You may say I'm a dreamer,
Mac Techie, Unix Geek,      *  |  *      But I'm not the only one...
Mac/Unix Consultant        *  /|\  *     I hope someday you'll join us,
<ed@hintz.org>              */ | \*      And the world will live as one.
'78 Westy                    *****      Imagine."
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