Question

Research a contemporary moral dilemma within a news area. Apply moral thinking to your case study. In particular, apply the formula intent/means/circumstances. (You could think or immigration policy, an armed conflict with North Korea, or a host of other issues.)

Answer 1

The US government has lifted restrictions on the use of high quality satellite imagery, which is welcomed by the industry but could have serious privacy implications for the man or woman on the street. The sale of high quality satellite imagery has long been dictated by an informal agreement between France and the United States. Previously, companies were not allowed to use images with features smaller than 50 cm. As a result, details that make people personally identifiable are hard to come by in services like Google Earth.

Video surveillance in real time :

What if Google Earth gave you real-time images instead of a snapshot of 1-3 years? Companies like Planet Labs, Skybox Imaging (recently bought by Google), and Digital Globe launched dozens of satellites last year to capture the status of the entire earth in real time (or near real-time). The satellites themselves are getting cheaper, smaller and more demanding (with resolutions of up to 1 foot). Commercial satellite companies provide this information to businesses (or possibly private individuals with enough cash) so that customers can see useful images of areas with natural disasters and humanitarian crises, as well as data on the comings and goings of individuals. How do we decide what to monitor and how often? Should we use this data to solve crime? What is the potential for abuse by corporations, governments, police, individuals or terrorists and other "bad actors"?

To achieve this, the company needs a fleet of sophisticated satellites built by Airbus that will have enough CPU power to transmit a video signal in real time. "Each satellite has an unparalleled amount of processing power, including more CPU cores than any other commercial satellite combined," the company said in its press release. In the past 15 years, pioneering technological advances have been made in satellite imagery, but politicians have repeatedly failed to address the problem.

Governments have focused on how these developments can create opportunities for business, and the United Nations Peace-Building Committee has also done nothing. Data protection issues have been dealt with in courts, but they usually find that these types of images do not interfere with privacy. It's great that satellites can see more, but this also means that legislators will soon face a challenge to formulate answers to privacy concerns before technological progress leads them.