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Comment by bufferoverflow | Hacker News Reader

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.

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They’re not under the jurisdiction of a US agency.

Which makes it even more dumb, the people we don't want taking pictures do so at will while the people we don't mind taking pictures are banned.

It's also dumb because it gives them incentive to just move to another country that doesn't care.

Welcome to most laws.

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.

Speak for yourself - i dont want companies taking pictures.

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.

That wasnt the main idea of my statement.

I contend that my desire differs from parent comments claim

What gives that agency jurisdiction over things in orbit? This whole thing seems really strange.

They have jurisdiction over the SpaceX as a US company, thus the power to force them to adhere to regs

The US Government has granted NOAA that authority over American companies and the things they put into orbit.

They don’t have that authority over things OTHER countries and their companies put into orbit.

They better as fuck not be : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Arms_Limitation_Talk... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty

Those have all either expired or weren't ratified, and the current treaty (New START) explicitly allows satellite monitoring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_START

depends on the type of monitoring

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?

depends on the camera, IR is pretty well forbidden

Just as US military satellites take pictures of Russian and Chinese facilities as well. Both can play this game

I don't think anyone contested that...?

So it would be pretty silly for Russia to ban similar cameras for fear of state secrets being uncovered, right?

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.

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