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Comment by krustyburger | Hacker News Reader

It’s a real marvel to be able to take such detailed photographs from that kind of distance.

As unhappy as I am out of principle with the undisciplined sharing of the photo, I have to admit it’s really neat to see this kind of technology, as an ordinary citizen.

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"undisciplined sharing of the photo"...How do you know this was the case? Let's think about this for a second...This wasn't a picture of a picture. This was the image in the brief. This image would have needed to be shared onto a different network that has access to Twitter or a phone with twitter access. That image would have needed to be removed from the brief, shared onto that system and then tweeted. You think this wasn't planned? The President isn't going to go through so many steps just to tweet a photo himself. This was done with staff who knows the classification.

Probably not a "plan". As President one can usually legally "release" classified info on a whim, and if T is allowed to do something on a whim, he typically will.

One aspect of the clarity that an NPR article [0] mentioned yesterday was the sensor design and software required to take non-blurry and non-distorted images. The size of the satellite is impressive, but I didn't think about the challenges due to orbiting speed and light refraction in the stratosphere.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/02/756673481/amateurs-identify-u...

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