Google's Satellite. Are we subsidizing our own insecurity?

Yes. No kidding. The General Dynamics rocket that blasted off last week placed the super HiTech satellite named GeoEye1 in orbit. This satellite can take pictures of the earth at very high resolution. i.e at 41 centimeter per pixel.

The pictures are taken for U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as part of the NextView project of the agency. But the interesting thing is Google has exclusive commercial license to buy the satellite pictures for the civilian use. As per the agencies licensing scheme, pictures at resolution of 50 cm will be given to Google. According to the CNET article the original NextView contract between the US agency and GeoEye was worth 500$ million.

It is not clear how much Google will pay for its exclusive use of those satellite photos. Considering there will be huge interest from MS/Yahoo and other Map2.0 vendors, I am sure it will be a huge portion, so much so that Google got it's logo pasted in the rocket itself.



Now the thing is, the satellite is going to picture not only USA, but also the entire world, that means countries like India too. So the high resolution intelligence pictures of foreign countries are in turn paid by Google. If we extrapolate it we can say that Google is paying it's government to spy on other countries.

Well...the thing is we can not complain much about that if Google is just a US company. But, Google is a multinational, and part of the profit they are going to make from those Map 2.0 is going to come from people who are searching Google maps from countries like India.

In addition, it looks like, before the pictures are given to Google, any security risk pictures will be manipulated by the US agencies. But what about the security-risks of other countries. For example, do Indian agencies have a say in what get's shown and what not? of course not(I think and I am pretty sure).

It's a double blow and it just does not sound right.