Imaging satellite builder Maxar signs contract with Umbra to use its radar satellites

Maxar, which operates a constellation of high resolution optical imaging satellites for commercial and military use, has now signed a contract with Umbra, which operates a constellation of high resolution radar satellites for commercial and military use.

The partnership will allow Maxar to directly task Umbra’s satellites and integrate synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data into its portfolio of Earth intelligence products and services, Tony Frazier, head of Maxar’s public sector Earth intelligence, told SpaceNews.

SAR is a specialized form of remote sensing that has been in growing demand since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. SAR satellites can capture images at night, through cloud cover, smoke and rain — conditions that impair traditional optical satellites like those operated by Maxar.

The contract will give Maxar “assured access” to the soon-to-be launched six and seven satellites in Umbra’s constellation.

Essentially, this deal enhances Maxar’s value. Its main customer is the U.S. military, and it can now offer that military a more enhanced observation capability. Umbra meanwhile gets a major customer quickly, rather than having to pitch its product to multiple potential buyers. Its radar product is also enhanced, because it will now come automatically partnered with optical imagery.

Spire offers way to track ships even when they are trying to hide

The smallsat company Spire is now offering what it calls its ‘Dark Shipping’ and ‘Spoofing’ Detection” option, using its 100-satellite constellation to track ships even when they are trying to hide.

Spire says the new dark shipping detection solution taps into the company’s constellation of more than 100 satellites to provide near real-time global AIS [Automatic Identification System] message position validation to uncover suspicious activity and pinpoint a vessel without the need for an approximate location.

“For a long time, having the tools to accurately identify and track ships that are attempting to hide their activities or location has been the missing key to preventing sanctions evasion, illegal fishing, human trafficking and many more pressing societal issues,” said Peter Mabson, CEO, Spire Maritime.

Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas, who emailed me this press release and noted that this was “just one example of how lower launch costs are driving new things most would not guess.”

To me, this is both good and bad. Spire’s tracking capability gets it another way to make money as well as to track illegal activity. It also allows governments another way to track everyone to keep them from doing anything the authorities dislike.

When we had a government that saw itself as the servant to the people, I would not be so worried about the latter. With our present corrupt government, misuse of this information by those in power is now a real concern.

Ukraine War energizes commercial orbital remote sensing industry

Capitalism in space: It appears that the Ukraine War has had a positive effect on the emerging commercial remote-sensing satellite industry.

This industry is made up of a number of new private companies launching satellites to take high resolution images across a range of wavelengths, as well as do surveillance of communications. These companies have in the past decade slowly taken over this market from government satellites, which were becoming too expensive and launching too slowly to meet the military’s needs.

The war is illustrating their success, and firming up their businesses as other customers, such as news organizations, utilize their capabilities.

Electric cars routinely transmit info to Chinese government

The Big Green government: Manufacturers of electric cars design the cars so that they routinely transmit information about the car’s status and position to the Chinese government.

More than 200 manufacturers, including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Mitsubishi and U.S.-listed electric vehicle start-up NIO, transmit position information and dozens of other data points to government-backed [Chinese] monitoring centers, The Associated Press has found. Generally, it happens without car owners’ knowledge.

The automakers say they are merely complying with local laws, which apply only to alternative energy vehicles. Chinese officials say the data is used for analytics to improve public safety, facilitate industrial development and infrastructure planning, and to prevent fraud in subsidy programs.

Outside of China the information is also gathered, but by private companies. Car owners can opt out, but that seems to me to be the unethical way to arrange this. Owners should instead be asked if they want to opt in.

In fact, the gathering of this data, privately or by governments, without the permission of the car owner, is entirely unethical and immoral. That these companies and their managers see nothing wrong with this is another illustration of the abandonment of morality in modern culture. It is also another reason why I want my hi-tech equipment to be as dumb as possible. Above all, I do not want it linked electronically beyond itself.

The city of the future will watch you all the time

New computer software is making it possible for computers to quickly analyze the data provided by surveillance cameras, which in turn will allow businesses and government to track and identify city dwellers all the time.

Through partner businesses, Nvidia’s technology is set to take things even further, enabling autonomous aerial systems streaming video back from the sky, security robots driving themselves around looking for trouble spots, and ultra high resolution, super-wide panoramic cameras that capture a whole scene instead of needing to track and follow objects.

And instead of just recording and storing footage, every camera’s output would be constantly analyzed and crunched into useful data points. We’re talking facial recognition, vehicle recognition, and pattern tracking in road and pedestrian traffic.

Clearly this will be useful in a law enforcement and security sense, and several Nvidia partners are working along these lines. BriefCam, for example, is demonstrating technology that tracks individuals and vehicles through security footage, then produces super-quick review videos in which all events in a given time frame can be made to happen in a condensed format where a bunch of them are on screen at once.

It seems to me that this new technology fits very well with the urban leftist culture that runs most American cities these days. These fascist communities, run almost exclusively by Democrats, will cheer this surveillance as a way to protect themselves from bad things, including people with opinions they don’t like. Consider how useful this would have been to Berkeley, for instance, during its recent struggle to keep conservative speakers out of town.

The whistleblower who leaked the NSA surveillance program to the press has gone public.

The whistleblower who leaked the NSA surveillance program to the press has gone public and is talking. Key quote:

Q: Does your family know you are planning this?

A: “No. My family does not know what is happening … My primary fear is that they will come after my family, my friends, my partner. Anyone I have a relationship with

I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. I am not going to be able to communicate with them. They [the authorities] will act aggressively against anyone who has known me. That keeps me up at night.” [emphasis mine]

It tells us how far the United States has fallen if this man fears our government so much he thinks that government will go after his family.

Read the whole interview. It is quite horrifying, especially now that we know there are federal agents willing to use their power to target specific people solely because of their politics.

The abandoned calibration targets used by surveillance satellites of the 1960s.

The abandoned calibration targets used by surveillance satellites of the 1960s.

“There are dozens of aerial photo calibration targets across the USA,” the Center for Land Use Interpretation reports, “curious land-based two-dimensional optical artifacts used for the development of aerial photography and aircraft. They were made mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, though some apparently later than that, and many are still in use, though their history is obscure.”

A federal judge has approved the installation of surveillance cameras by the police — on private property without a warrant.

Big Brother arrives: A federal judge has approved the installation of surveillance cameras by the police — on private property without a warrant.

Let me repeat that: The judge said that the police have the right to enter private property, without a warrant, in order to secretly install surveillance cameras so that they can record whatever happens on that property.

Doesn’t that make you feel safe?

The Obama administration has been caught tracking the emails of a group of scientists critical of certain FDA actions.

George Orwell would be proud! The Obama administration has been caught reading the emails and personal files of a group of scientists who were critics of the FDA.

The agency, using so-called spy software designed to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at work or at home. The software tracked their keystrokes, intercepted their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being drafted, the documents show.

Six former and current employees have sued the FDA agency under the Obama administration over its secret surveillance of their private emails.

How Obama encourages transparency: Six former and current employees have sued the FDA agency under the Obama administration over its secret surveillance of their private emails.

According to a release by the law firm representing the group, the FDA targeted the employees with a “covert spying campaign” that lasted for two years after it learned they had written a letter to President-Elect Obama in early 2009. … The plaintiffs allege the agency used spyware to read the their personal emails and take screenshots while they used government computers. But whether such reconnaissance is illegal is not quite clear. According to the Washington Post, “the startup screen on FDA computers warns employees, ‘you have no reasonable expectation of privacy,’ ” including any communication accessed or sent from the machine.”

According to the law firm representing the current and former FDA employees, the monitoring continued even after the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General “denied the FDA’s request to take any criminal and/or administrative action against the whistleblowers” and noted the whistleblowers’ communications with Congress were protected under law.

Homeland Security is monitoring journalists

Gotta have my KGB: Under an initiative that came out in November, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has begun monitoring journalists.

Specifically, the DHS announced the NCO and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) can collect personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s own definition of personal identifiable information, or PII, such data could consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.” Previously established guidelines within the administration say that data could only be collected under authorization set forth by written code, but the new provisions in the NOC’s write-up means that any reporter, whether someone along the lines of Walter Cronkite or a budding blogger, can be victimized by the agency.