![]() "It's possible now to order through my Web browser a new image over pretty much anywhere in the world in 12 hours. "We've gone from essentially having nothing in 15 years to having just a fantastic constellation to pick from, so indeed, the prices have come down, the restrictions are almost nonexistent," says Joshua Lyons, satellite imagery analyst for the group. Human Rights Watch said the Syrian government carried out the demolitions because the areas were opposition strongholds. In fact, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch has used satellite images to show what's happening in conflict zones like South Sudan, Syria and the Central African Republic.Įarlier this year, the group published a report with before-and-after satellite shots showing how entire neighborhoods had been systematically demolished. "You can write your hearts out on a secret site in Iran, but if you show an image of it and it's news, it'll spread throughout the word where the written word hardly went anywhere." "You can use the imagery in a positive way to increase transparency that makes it harder for governments to lie." "You can highlight problems that maybe the intelligence community knows well, but the public doesn't know," Albright says. ![]() But in some cases, it's not hard to find sites that have been described, if only in interviews. Albright also points out it's still very hard to find secret nuclear sites simply because his group and others don't know where to look. Google Earth doesn't show current images, so you do have to pay for those, though it is cheaper now. Last summer, they simply used satellite images from Google Earth to show how Iran was expanding at the site of an old laser uranium enrichment plant. Albright's group bought the satellite images of the Japanese plant. "We were able to use the imagery to show the damage that had been done at the time when Japan was really downplaying it," he says. Albright points to his group's analysis of satellite images that were taken right after the explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in March 2011. "We've done satellite imagery analysis since the late '90s, and when we started, the only imagery you could get was archived Russian spy satellite imagery with 2-meter resolution, and it was incredibly expensive, and so you couldn't do wide area searches," Albright says. Part of his group's work involves analyzing satellite images to tell people what's happening with nuclear weapons in countries like Iran and North Korea. "Īccess to better technology has transformed the work of David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "Having this kind of information means that experts, but also citizens, can make informed opinions about things rather than just taking the word of. Lewis claims these developments are changing international relations. He relied heavily on YouTube videos, among other sources. ![]() To cite another example, Lewis points to the Brown Moses blog, the effort of a formerly unemployed man in Britain who became a leading expert on weapons in Syria, including chemical weapons. This isn't exactly new, but today it's much easier with social media tools and cheap or even free satellite images within the reach of nonprofits, researchers and ordinary people. And our point is that really, in a lot of cases, you don't need those things," Lewis says. "There are functions that we imagine require either secret information, or spying, or specialized skills. He says that with time and a little training, any persistent person with an Internet connection could have done this. Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies based in Monterey, Calif., recently published his team's account of locating the buildings. One of two suspected North Korean missile launcher assembly sites, as seen from Google Earth.
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