Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
SEARCH OR SURVEILLANCE:
WHAT CAN WE DO WITH WHAT WE SEE THERE NOW?
Boston, 1998 —
“Space reconnaissance is traditionally divided into categories,” we
learn in the “Corona Program Profile” published by Lockheed Martin after the pro -
gram's existence had been revealed in 1995. “One is called 'Search,' and is dedicated
to answering the question, 'Is there something there?' Corona was designed to
photograph large contiguous areas in a single frame of film in order to answer that
question. A second observation function is 'Surveillance.' Surveillance is required
after one has decided that 'There is something of interest there,' and says 'I want
to continue to watch that something, learn more about it, identify it and classify
it.' In most cases, bona fide surveillance was beyond Corona's capability.”
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An American KH-4B satellite passed over the southwestern tip of Africa on
November 11, 1968, leaving a trail of imagery behind for us to examine. Hundreds
of miles above Cape Town, it exposed something political, opening up a landscape
of data and of history in the image. Search, or surveillance? What can we do with
what we see there now?
The privilege of seeing closely from great distances has until very recently been
reserved for governments, spies, and militaries. It was only with President Clinton's
1995 release of, as they were described, “certain scientifically or environmentally
useful imagery acquired by space-based national intelligence reconnaissance sys -
tems” that examples of high-resolution imagery became easily available. Most of
the images declassified with that order were from the so-called Corona missions,
the first American reconnaissance satellites, which orbited the earth on “top secret”
missions from 1960 through 1972. Now hundreds of thousands of these photographs
from space are in the public domain, many providing detailed imagery at a ground
resolution of 5 to 7 feet, or 2 meters.
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Compared with the best satellite images pre-
viously available to the public, from Landsat and SPOT, it seems that we—or at
least some of us—are getting closer and closer from farther and farther away.
Corona's images, it is said, were designed for searching, not for surveillance.
Today, the distinction between search and surveillance has become somewhat less
sharp. To inquire about the existence of something and to investigate and watch over
it can now happen simultaneously and from enormous distances in striking detail.
Increasing the resolution implies erasing the distinction between existence and iden-
tity—“high resolution” means that looking for things and looking after them, search-
ing and “bona fide surveillance,” can increasingly take place in the same gesture.
Military satellites now regularly download digital imagery in the range of
50-centimeter to even 10-centimeter resolution to a few privileged eyes, and
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