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.
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.