Private Satellite Images Used to Investigate War Crimes

Something on the PBS Newshour last Thursday caught my attention. A private company, Digital Globe, has obtained satellite images that document the destruction of a village in an area of Sudan where no journalists are allowed. The images were made public online by the Satellite Sentinel Project. The celebrity George Clooney actively supports both the Satellite Sentinel and Digital Globe. The story points out that commercial satellite imaging entities can make information available that until recently was the sole province of governments. Unfortunately it does not explore the ethical implications. They imply that digital globe is just giving the information away for the good of humanity. Commercial (and government) satellite images are very expensive to produce, and a discussion of what the Satellite Sentinel Project paid for the images, or what Digital Globe typically charges their clients, would have been interesting. The piece could have brought up the issues of personal privacy (there seems to be no place on the globe now that is not being photographed), and the privileged status of the information: who is obtaining it and for whom? But maybe I ask too much. The report was particularly interesting to me because I am taking a remote-sensing class, wherein we are learning how to interpret satellite data, and a class in ethics and philosophy in geography, where we recently discussed celebrity activists.