Satellite imagery: The ethics of a new technology

In the bygone days of U-2 spy planes and Sputnik, the only ethical issues attached to satellites seemed to involve military secrecy and national boundaries. Now, with high-powered lenses, infrared senso ry devices, ubiquitous sateIEites, and instan,t high-resolution image transmission, the communication ethics issues-like the powers of global observation-have greatly magnified. Possibly, conventional warfare has become obsolete because television networks have access to a worldwide satellite images that show troops, fleets, and fighter squadrons forming prior to attack. Civilian privacy has changed drastically as well because backyard sunbathers, naturalists, couples, speeding vehicles, and naked paramours seen through bedroom windows can all be identified, photographed, and publicized without their awareness or permission. Because the power, range, fuequency, and commercialism of such space photography will increase, ethicists must survey the surveillance. Vendors in many countries now routinely sell spa...