It's a bit of a farce to classify these cameras stuck on the side of a rocket with horrible resolution and which are clearly not designed to effectively image the surface of the earth as "remote sensing systems."
The definition in the law even specifically excludes "Small, hand-held cameras shall not be considered remote sensing space system," i guess so that astronauts don't have to get a license 12 months before every mission. SpaceX cameras providing the video for the webcasts are certainly small and could be "handheld," so it seems to come down to the fact that no human is up there with them.
Remote sensing systems are a thing, and there are good reasons to regulate them. Tiny cameras stuck to the side of SpaceX rockets should not be classified as "remote sensing systems." When I think of remote sensing satellites, Landsat series and friends come to mind, not an off the shelf camera stuck on the side of a rocket.
It's a farce that you need a license to take pictures at all. I'm sure Russian and Chinese satellites already take photos of the US military bases regularly.
I don't know about you, but Facebook is under US jurisdiction, and I'd rather they didn't launch a remote-sensing satellite without going through some regulatory hoops.
But they do, commercial satellite imagery is a big business (anyone who has used Google Earth knows this). It's just not the business SpaceX is in so it's not worth going through the hassle.
Since we're talking about cameras and not missiles, I ctrl+f'd for "picture" and "camera" on all of those links and didn't see any results. Do those treaties prohibit cameras?
Oh no, don't get me wrong, I think the regulation is totally stupid. Why bother regulating something over which you have no control of? It is just putting unnecessary barriers for domestic innovators while your real competition is not wasting precious cycles.
Can't think of anyone that ever take a situation and abuse it, push it too far, do something it wasn't intended to by its initial design... definitely wouldn't consider anyone such as law enforcement agencies or city, state or federal government doing any such thing... because you know, people are reasonable, right? </sardonic sarcasm tag>
I guess abusing loopholes is the monopoly of authority.
Sure, I was thinking of this specific case only. If someone starts to use tiny cameras in a way such that they are actually useful for remote sensing, then by all means regulate them.
This makes me wince. Is broad interpretation of that rule really the best use of an "extremely small" office that probably has a really good reason for existing otherwise? These sorts of regulatory foot faults have a very real cost to innovation. Think of what these videos have done for public interest in space travel and the imaginations of millions. Unless there's some overwhelming reason for this rule to apply in these circumstances, it's time to rewrite or reinterpret.
"Extremely small office" is a typical public sector reply in the PIIGS in order to get a bribe to 'make things move faster'.
Or a piece of bureacracy in order to harass anyone we want, anytime we want.
Also.. an "Act" on what to do in Space? Seriously? So when that thing flies over (e.g.) Japan should it follow Japan's laws? Or we only count the base location? In which case movie it to (e.g.) Greenland and problem solved!
All these years of watching Star Trek universe (series & movies) taught me nothing!!!
First, there are quite a few very obvious reasons why it's in humanity's interest to regulate space missions. You want to minimise space debris, for example, because it could result in a series of collisions making near-earth orbits a wasteland you can't cross.
That's why there are rules on the size, structure, orbits, data sharing, disposal mechanisms and other features of space missions. These are set out in international agreements and enforced by the operator's country of origin. Greenland is a territory of Denmark, and your proposed "pirate launches" would be regulated by the European Space Agency. Problem (really) solved!
There's also stuff like the Outer Space Treaty, a valiant (and mostly effective) effort of international cooperation preventing a wasteful and dangerous arms race in space. Yeah, Trump seems to be reneging on that as well, go figure.
"Extremely small office" is simply a fact. There are three people working on this subject. Since most people will agree that SpaceX's videos really isn't much of a problem, nobody is actually complaining about past non-enforcement. Therefore, the lack of enforcement really isn't a very strong argument for increased funding, is it?
Providing a potentially understaffed office with the resources it needs isn't a "bribe". These people would not personally get any money. They are not asking for money from SpaceX or any other interested party.
Regarding this specific licensing requirement, a good read is https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/CRSRA/files/15%20CFR%20Part%2096.... It's the result of a public deliberation and shows the different goals, stakeholders, and experiences underlying the regulation, and how they have to be balanced.
> All these years of watching Star Trek universe (series & movies) taught me nothing!!!
>First, there are quite a few very obvious reasons why it's in humanity's interest to regulate space missions. You want to minimise space debris, for example, because it could result in a series of collisions making near-earth orbits a wasteland you can't cross.
Preventing space debris is not related to this topic in the least. Neither is preventing a "space arms race".
>Providing a potentially understaffed office with the resources it needs isn't a "bribe".
It seems to me that the best way to solve this problem is to get rid of this useless office.
I don't think it's good discussion etiquette to link to an unreadable wall of bureaucratic text and not give any context. I.e. at least state one good reason for this regulation.
> Preventing space debris is not related to this topic in the least. Neither is preventing a "space arms race".
The relation is OP's complete and naive refusal to entertain the possibility and usefulness of regulating private activity in space.
> It seems to me that the best way to solve this problem is to get rid of this useless office.
> I don't think it's good discussion etiquette to link to an unreadable wall of bureaucratic text and not give any context. I.e. at least state one good reason for this regulation.
See: it's this attitude that keeps the level of such discussions at a kindergarten level. The linked document contains text, yes. But it's perfectly readable English. The first paragraph is headlined "SUMMARY" and contains this justification for the regulation and the office implementing it:
They are intended to facilitate the development of the U.S. commercial remote sensing industry and promote the collection and widespread availability of Earth remote sensing data, while preserving essential U.S. national security interests, foreign policy and international obligations.
You can easily find a later section entitled "Purpose" that expands on it:
(1) Preserve the national security of the United States;
(2) Observe the foreign policies and international obligations of the United States;
(3) Advance and protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests by maintaining U.S. leadership in remote sensing space activities, and by sustaining and enhancing the U.S. remote sensing industry;
(4) Promote the broad use of remote sensing data, their information products and applications;
(5) Ensure that unenhanced data collected by licensed private remote sensing space systems concerning the territory of any country are made available to the government of that country upon its request, as soon as such data are available and on reasonable commercial terms and conditions as appropriate;
(6) Ensure that remotely sensed data are widely available for civil and scientific research, particularly environmental and global change research; and
(7) Maintain a permanent comprehensive U.S. government archive of global land remote sensing data for long-term monitoring and study of the changing global environment.
Those seem to be seven good reasons. If you want to argue their merit, you should start with a good-faith effort to understand them.
I really don't see any of those reasons as being sufficient to cover SpaceX launch videos other than in the most narrow bureaucratic sense.
(1) Is dubious at best in this context, given that they do permit the first couple of 10's of KM up and only after that does this office's authority come into play. By then any imagery at HD video resolution of the United States has zero implication for national security. (2) and (3) are neutrals by my interpretation. And it actually flat out contradicts (4), (5), (6) and (7), since it isn't promoting it but actively tries to reduce it and blocks the public dissemination of the live streams they were already making available.
GGGPs arguments made no sense, yours are more verbose and seemingly better founded but they also make no sense.
This is just a nice example of a bunch of people with no actual stake in the outcome flexing their bureaucratic muscle, the equivalent of the little people behind government institutions little windows in places of 'public service' whose only role in life seems to be to ruin yours and to send you to another colleague behind another window.
> If you want to argue their merit, you should start with a good-faith effort to understand them.
That goes for you too, in particular for stuff you quote.
In reading through the document linked, NOAA is not going off on their own in order to demand this license. US congress made public laws relating to what commercial industry can and cannot do for space sensing. NOAA is the organization in charge of ensuring that the law is actually followed. They do not (and should not) have the ability to decide which companies/people can and cannot follow the law. From the text:
"The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
issues regulations revising the agency’s
requirements for the licensing,
monitoring and compliance of operators
of private Earth remote sensing space
systems under Title II of the Land
Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992 (the
Act). These regulations implement the
provisions of the Act, as amended by
the 1998 Commercial Space Act, and the
2003 U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing
Policy."
Yes, but for the past three decades this wasn't a problem during space launches and now that SpaceX comes along on their 50th+ launch it suddenly is a problem.
To me that looks like a trumped up reason, if there was any real concern then it would have been noted at launch #1.
> Yes, but for the past three decades this wasn't a problem during space launches
More than likely, that's because the commercial companies who needed the license got the license.
> now that SpaceX comes along on their 50th+ launch it suddenly is a problem.
Probably because the technology on this payload fall under the requirements of the law to need it, and the company who owns the payload didn't get the license. Or, NOAA was unaware of the satellites until now and realize they need to follow up. Since they are a small shop and are not omniscient, that can happen.
EDIT: I misread the article, I meant the launches, not the payloads.
Based on the article text, it looks like it wasn't even NOAA following up so much as SpaceX doing their due diligence at the very last minute and realizing they needed a license too late to get it approved. In which case, it's probably the billion dollar launch vehicle provider whose processes really warrant the most questions and not the three person bureau tasked with navigating license applications through other areas of government.
It's amazing how people can get from a description of that sequence of events to tinfoilhattery about bureaucrats "flexing their muscles" with "trumped up reasons". If anything, a logical explanation is probably the opposite: NOAA doesn't have enough control of the remote sensing licensing process to do a flagship government contractor the favour of forcing a license through, and certainly don't have the power to rewrite the law to accord to people's views that SpaceX's videos aren't sufficiently high resolution to matter.
Given that it's publicly documented[1] that license approval involves coordination with (as a minimum) U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of the Interior and at least 120 days should be allowed, and SpaceX chose to apply three days before a launch I'd have a hard time interpreting the fact the license was not granted in time as the fault of anyone other than SpaceX.
Given that a few weeks prior there appeared to be no problem it would have been trivial to issue a 'provisional' license until the slow wheels of government could do their job.
Keep in mind that these launches are doing more for American goodwill and image right now than anything else the administration is doing and from that perspective alone they are worth a bit of leniency.
120 days to approve something that has been going on for the better part of a decade might seem reasonable to you but it does not seem reasonable to me, there is a segment of the population that feels that yellow pieces of paper are more important than reality but I'm not a part of that segment. Paper should serve the people, not the other way around.
> it would have been trivial to issue a 'provisional' license until the slow wheels of government could do their job.
I don't think it's ever "trivial" for a license-stamping body to make up a new kind of permit, particularly not over a three day period and when it's bodies like the Department of Defense they're cutting out of the picture.
Ultimately, if SpaceX wished to take the view that the existing law was not well drafted, not relevant to their particular filming, something they may have already breached without consequence and not in the US government's interest to pursue, they were perfectly entitled to take the risk of leaving the cameras on and seeing if anyone did anything about it. Quite why you think it should be incumbent on NOAA to breach the law on their behalf I have no idea.
> Quite why you think it should be incumbent on NOAA to breach the law on their behalf I have no idea.
Because up to that point nobody had shown any good reason why the license was required in the first place and 10's of launches had been done without the license. This is too little, too late and doesn't serve anybody.
No harm was ever done by transmitting low resolution images from space.
> Paper should serve the people, not the other way around.
I definitely agree with you on that, and I agree that the government can be over burdensome and take too long. However, NOAA is the one charged with enforcing the law on it, they did not write the law. If you disagree with the law, I encourage you to write your congressman and see what it takes to change the law.
I think there is a fundamental disagreement on the intent on what NOAA is doing. I personally don't see it as hostile, nor do I think they are flexing their muscle.
If it was true that SpaceX only came to them 3 days before the launch, I think that is unfair to NOAA to ask for a license so quick. If they did follow the 120 day policy and NOAA didn't give them a license, then the fault is on NOAA.
What I find odd is NOAA's own statement says: "SpaceX applied and received a license from NOAA that included conditions on their capability to live-stream from space."
So is SpaceX violating their license? I think there is much more at play when just what the article says. Personally, I have a feeling another government agency saw what SpaceX was doing, saw they didn't have a license, and NOAA got in trouble because they weren't enforcing that law, and now NOAA is caught in the cross fire.
> More than likely, that's because the commercial companies who needed the license got the license.
More likely: they just woke up to the possibility of showing the world they exist.
> Probably because the technology on this payload fall under the requirements of the law to need it, and the company who owns the payload didn't get the license.
I don't see what it has to do with payloads.
> Or, NOAA was unaware of the satellites until now and realize they need to follow up.
It's not about the satellites, it is about the launches, specifically video from orbit.
> More likely: they just woke up to the possibility of showing the world they exist.
I mean, the only evidence we've got is an article which quite clearly states that (i) SpaceX were the ones who contacted NOAA (ii) NOAA did not contact SpaceX regarding other launches, say it was SpaceX's responsibility to contact them and they don't think they have the resources to go chasing unlicensed remote sensing companies anyway (iii) Cameras on launches SpaceX carries out for government don't actually need permits anyway, which probably applies to a lot of SpaceX launches
So I'm not sure what gives you the confidence to confidently assert that it's "more likely" the precise opposite happened?
You are conveniently leaving out the bit from TFA that states that NOAA only recently started to enforce this particular part of their charter.
That is why SpaceX contacted them. If they had not and they had launched without obtaining permission and streamed the footage there would have been a nice 'gotcha' moment and they tried to avoid that.
> Cameras on launches SpaceX carries out for government don't actually need permits anyway.
So what's the point on restricting them on other launches? That proves this whole thing is high grade bullshit.
I am "conveniently" leaving it out because it is a vaguely worded "appears..." piece of journalese
which contradicts the rest of the article and established fact. Nobody has disputed that SpaceX contacted NOAA first, there's no dispute that they process 40-odd applications every year, no dispute that the policy of licensing remote sensing has been in effect for a long time, amended more than once and that recent moves in the legislature (recent as in a couple of years ago, so SpaceX really had time to notice) have been proposals to relax it rather than to strengthen it.
And yeah, also no dispute that the government grants missions planned by its own agencies a remote sensing license - can't imagine why you would expect it to be otherwise tbh? But agreed, enough indents :-)
No problem. It's a pretty messed up article to begin with.
First they state that NOAA only recently started enforcing this, then they talk about SpaceX applying belatedly and finally there is the whole confusion about the bit where NOAA's charter only comes into play when they reach orbit, which removes most of the reasons they could be worried about in the first place.
Yeah this article is very confusing. I said it in an earlier comment, it wouldn't surprise me if another government agency (DoD, NSA, CIA) saw what SpaceX is doing, saw they didn't have a license, and got NOAA in trouble, and now they are trying to do their due diligence and got caught in a cross fire.
That's an interesting viewpoint and maybe explains some of the weirdness around this whole affair.
Even so, it is hard for me to imagine what DoD, NSA or CIA might have in terms of reasons why low resolution video transmission from space would be problematic, especially since for other launches the 'from orbit' videos are not deemed a problem and from where I'm sitting they are functionally identical and potentially more problematic (because they are government launches).
I read most of the relevant sections of the document, and there are good reasons for regulating remote sensing systems. I'm fairly familiar with remote sensing systems (SAR, scatterometry, etc) and I'm most interested in reasons why it makes sense to classify the cameras SpaceX stuck to the side of the rocket as remote sensing systems. While technically accurate according the definition provided in the law, it seems pretty dumb. The law even specifically states that handheld cameras don't count, so the distinction apparently comes down to whether there is a person up there to hold a camera that is easily "hand held" size.
Strictly speaking sensing is the act of making a reading from a sensor, the fact that they transmit the video back to the earth already seems to be in violation (since that could be intercepted and since SpaceX apparently does continue to have access to the feed).
> (5) Ensure that unenhanced data collected by licensed private remote sensing space systems concerning the territory of any country are made available to the government of that country upon its request, as soon as such data are available and on reasonable commercial terms and conditions as appropriate;
#5: The forign policy / state dept / military parts of the US govt want to minimize potential risk of domestic US remote-sensing companies accidentally or deliberatly antagonizing a foreign government... seems prima facie reasonable.
To gain leverage during diplomatic negotiations, a foreign power could take the position that one of our "so-called" private civillian satellite companies was actually a front for a state intelligence operation. It would be difficult for state dept to provide evidence to the contrary if they didn't already have contacts with each private space company.
Is anyone aware of a diplomatic complaint ever being made along these lines? Maybe in the cablegate archives?
well the danger here is that if US regulation becomes to burdensome then some other country will step up and other countries may just flat out ignore it. Which means an exciting and upcoming area of technology may eventually move off shore and hopefully one day off planet.
so effort will need to be made by pioneers in this area to shape US policy so it achieves the needed goals without being oppressive enough to shift to other sites
No, not really. SpaceX's usage is obviously far too trivial to trigger any of the concerns motivating the regulation.
BUT: Exhaustively specifying all possibilities in law is rather impossible, and any attempt would make legal texts even more verbose. Giving an agency the leeway to waive regulations on a case-by-case basis may however appear (or be) arbitrary. Although I suspect the latter may still happen once the agency has had more than three days to think about it.
Otherwise, it may just be preferable for SpaceX to spend a few hours submitting the application. It's really not rocket science.
1) The idea that an NOAA regulation is going to stop somebody from acting militarily against the US. (A Chinese military command somewhere: "Sir! We cannot point our spy satellites at the earth yet because the US NOAA hasn't issued us a license yet!" "DRATS!")
2) The idea that somebody doing something nefarious would even be sharing this information with anybody.
3) The idea that any of this should be covering what is clearly a utility meant to display the effectiveness of a stage seperation.
This whole thing sounds like an April fool's joke to me.
I think the idea is more that the regulation will stop private U.S. companies from acting militarily against other countries. E.g., the U.S. has a treaty with Israel that forbids publishing high-resolution satellite imagery of Israel, and one of the functions of the licensing system is to implement that treaty.
We should attack the problem from the other direction, and for entities without special exemptions, require proof of consent from any identifiable people and organizations whose activity can be discerned in the recordings they retain or make commercial use of.
The public interest would appear to outweigh the narrow rights of the licensing office here.
And it's not as if we don't have hours of footage from those places at the same resolution already so whatever horse they're trying to keep in the barn has already bolted.
> The public interest would appear to outweigh the narrow rights of the ....
If only that was ever used to make regulation. We might have a decent copyright law by now in the US. I still blame Micky Mouse and Disney for all bad copy right law.
I think that that is better explained by the power of money in American politics than anything else. On another note, copyright laws in the rest of the world aren't that much better which means that even that is only a partial explanation at best.
But I take your point that public interest is rarely the thing foremost on politicians minds when they create their laws.
>And it's not as if we don't have hours of footage from those places at the same resolution already so whatever horse they're trying to keep in the barn has already bolted.
That would suggest that public interest would not outweigh the rights of the licensing holders.
I don't understand all the "Let's assume this law is very good in most cases" sentiment here. You can assume anything you want about government, but I will not assume competence or good intent, and I think if you did more historical research you wouldn't either.
Which is another way of saying "this is some evidence in favour of the theory that the earth is actually flat and the government is trying to hide it".
No, the US regulates US-based companies, just like in any other field. This includes making the ability to conduct large scale surveillance of the earth's surface subject to license.
> No, the US regulates US-based companies, just like in any other field. This includes making the ability to conduct large scale surveillance of the earth's surface subject to license.
I wonder how that comports with this limitation on the U.S.: ‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …’ Seems pretty cut-and-dried to me that if they launched the camera, they have a right to publish the photos.
Why don't you try your theory about it being impossible to prohibit photos/videos by wandering into a military facility with a camera and explaining to the angry men with guns that they can't legally interfere with you?
I'll wait for you to report back on how that goes.
I don't think many people would argue collection of multispectral and radar images of the earth from space for commercial distribution was what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they talked about freedom of speech. Legal restrictions on photography, particularly commercial photography, came before satellites.
Weird how HN spends most of its time complaining about digital panopticons, CCTV etc and then is up in arms about the basic principle of regulating companies increasingly moving towards selling the ability to discreetly take images or video of any area at any time. (I can see the logic in excepting low res SpaceX launch videos from that and doubt they'd have had any problems at all if they'd applied for a license in time, but you draft regulations for the rules not the exceptions, especially when there's only a handful of companies to license)
It's probably not very effective at all at stopping people doing shady stuff.
The people doing shady stuff are either the US government (who will give themselves permission) or other country's governments (who won't even ask permission). So what exactly does it prevent?
Hey, (almost) everyone on Star Trek speaks english, with an American accent (apart this perfect human being called Jean Luc Piccard!!)(or with slight Russian accent). Even the Ferenghi!
Government over-regulation at its finest. I can certainly understand the FCC being involved here to manage bandwidth allocations, but a license to send pictures is ridiculous and is walking into murky water with First Amendment rights.
I bet this law exists because the military asked for it. Spy satellites have military importance, so they want control over anything that looks even slightly like a spy satellite.
Maybe, but I don't think so. This seems like a silly regulation someone at this "extremely small" office (or the NOAA I suppose) came up with that slipped its way onto the books one way or another.
The latest spending bill was 2,232 pages of allocations, nuance, and a wide variety of different laws and rules that have nothing to do with spending. How many members of congress do you think read this bill and actually considered each item in it before voting on it?
Here [1] are some statistics on how much legislation congress churns through each year. The last congress, in their 2 years, enacted 329 different laws, passed 708 different resolutions, and also dealt with a whopping 10,334 other pieces of miscellaneous legislation. And congress also has relatively few legislative days where this is taken care of. The house averages around 140 legislative days a year, the senate around 160.
And congressmen spend the vast majority of their time not dealing with legislation, but instead fundraising for their next election, which involves "donors" "lobbying" them on the issues that matter to them. It's a great system, isn't it?
I find the suggestion that the Government was pissed off at Elon for launching his roadster to Mars oddly compelling. SpaceX does make a lot of the "entrenched" space capability look bad in comparison.
That said, I think a simple lawsuit would settle this issue and help give clarity to the powers granted the NOAA. I expect a number of Cubesat experiments might get caught up in this escalation of power as well. And while you're more likely to get someone to say that a cubesat with a re-purposed 10MP cell phone camera is a "remote sensing" camera I think it would be difficult to convince a judge and jury such cameras were a threat to the national security, regardless of where they were pointed.
The NOAA statement on the issue seems to imply that the rule exists because the government wants a measure of control over images of the Earth's surface for "national security" reasons.
The whole point is to prevent giving away information to other countries who don't have it already, not some conspiracy to prevent Americans from seeing the earth. Other countries are free to broadcast their data to the world if they like. The US will probably learn nothing new about the Earth but would learn of at least some chacteristics of other country's satellite tech
I suppose nation-states aren't the only ones who'd like information on US military bases/infrastructure/"nationalsecurityinterests", but I honestly think it's irrelevant. If we were discussing serious imaging systems then sure, but it's pretty clear that a webcam isn't going to give anyone any meaningful information.
The point is that you don't hand out the license trivially. Yes, spacex is just discussing this in the context of a glorified webcam, but webcasts aren't their only business. Such a license needs to consider the whole business. Now the NOAA perhaps should consider a type of limited license, but they can't assume the only imagery technology spacex is interested in is webcams.
This is a list of nations that have managed to put something in orbit. It contains 10 nations, and the ESA. The vast majority of nations do not have the capability.
Non-space-capable countries do routinely put their payload on the rockets of countries with launch capability (though I guess then it can't be an obvious spy satellite).
And let me guess, they also run this through the respective Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, 'NOAAs' so that nobody spies on anyone's secret areas (51? ;).
* They don't want the satellite taking and selling photos of secret US government stuff (or Israel or other areas that would cause the US government grief).
* They want to make sure the satellite doesn't crash or otherwise cause problems for which the US would be liable.
There are privacy implications for air or space based surveillance of the Earth (rather more so for high resolution photography of specific areas of land than video in which the earth is merely a backdrop, but drawing that distinction isn't necessarily trivial). The solution the United States has adopted is to regulate the extent to which commercial entities are entitled to distribute such imagery and video; licensing who is entitled to distribute such images forms part of that regime.
That's probably the most practical option, but even that distinction isn't necessarily straightforward in a launch video (and even the sort of 20m multispectral imagery that's freely made available to the entire world by multiple providers including NASA becomes more of a possible privacy/security issue if remote sensing operators were to permanently point their cameras at the same location). The regulation was likely drafted with a view to the future in an era where all satellite based EO had low spatial resolutions and processing techniques were in their infancy anyway.
Because everything on the surface of the Earth is visible from space, and some people have put things on the surface of the Earth that they would prefer certain other people not know about.
If the license is required to sense remotely, the issuing agency can do some research, then tell the licensee "you cannot broadcast, transmit, or record for later transmission images taken from T+5:53:11 to T+5:56:43". And then they check the flight path, and that's when the vehicle will be directly over one of the Aleutian islands. The engineers shrug their shoulders, and program a 4-minute blackout into the cameras.
And the crew in Alaska can then go around throwing camouflage netting over everything, and inflate the decoys, and not do any work outside, during any times that an object known or suspected to have imaging devices on it passes overhead.
It's a temporary measure, as the superpowers continue to move their most important secret facilities to camouflaged, submarine, or underground facilities. But it won't be long before someone's cubesat with commercial-grade camera unwittingly images something it shouldn't, and the Men in Black visit the owner with a DoD order to classify all their electronic equipment as "Top Secret", with a "no-foreign" endorsement. It would all be confiscated, examined, scrubbed, declassified, and returned after a few months.
The license is likely so that the keepers of the secrets can know the imaging capabilities of some of the objects they track in orbit, and maybe get some cooperation from the owners.
Toyota would have a hard time driving their SUV to Area 51
It would probably not go over well if James Cameron broadcasted from directly under an American aircraft carrier, or next to a nuclear submarine
SpaceX put a camera up in orbit against the law. I suspect that NOAA was willing to look the other way when they did something borderline (2nd stage cameras), but now that they've pushed it too far they're not willing to cut them as much slack
This license is probably in place to cover situations where high resolution cameras in commercial satellites could compete with military surveillance ones.
This kindof puts that law requiring a copyright license for taking photos of the Eiffel tower into perspective. You now need a license for taking photos of... the Earth?
So SpaceX either knew about the regulation and ignored it (without clarifying with the regulatory body if it applied to them), or didn't know about the regulation. I'm not sure which is worse but both are bad.
I think SpaceX is doing cool, groundbreaking stuff, but they should be following the rules.
It's such a nonsense application of the rule that the people doing the regulation didn't even think about it for at least 8 years (https://youtu.be/fshVNOJ-Wtg?t=296) so it's hard to fault SpaceX.
Unless there's a licensing process that makes the agency money or shows up in the numbers they show their bosses (like in this case), no regulatory agency in my experience is ever willing to clarify if something is legal or not. Their only response is to hire legal advice, and they'll take legal action against you if you're wrong. It's stupid that just knowing if the government will let you do something often requires paying money to a private business licensed by that same government for an educated prediction that you could very well still end up being responsible for if it's wrong.
It's impossible to keep track of all the laws and regulations one must follow. More gets printed every week than anyone could glance through, let alone read. The archives are even more impossible.
With an effort, a large organization can be maybe probably mostly in the clear, but no amount of budget and perfectionism can get anyone definitely in the clear who is actually doing something.
SpaceX applied for these licenses in the past, so someone knew about them. Either they lost some institutional knowledge due to attrition or miscommunication, they didn't think the law applied to these particular cameras, or someone thought they could get away with it.
The definition in the law even specifically excludes "Small, hand-held cameras shall not be considered remote sensing space system," i guess so that astronauts don't have to get a license 12 months before every mission. SpaceX cameras providing the video for the webcasts are certainly small and could be "handheld," so it seems to come down to the fact that no human is up there with them.
Remote sensing systems are a thing, and there are good reasons to regulate them. Tiny cameras stuck to the side of SpaceX rockets should not be classified as "remote sensing systems." When I think of remote sensing satellites, Landsat series and friends come to mind, not an off the shelf camera stuck on the side of a rocket.