And a company called EarthNow says it will offer “continuous real-time” monitoring “with a delay as short as about one second,” though some think it is overstating its abilities.

As early as 2014, a Silicon Valley startup called SkyBox (later renamed Terra Bella and purchased by Google and then Planet) began touting HD video clips up to 90 seconds long. Some companies are even offering live video from space. That might not be enough to track an individual’s every move, but it would show what times of day someone’s car is typically in the driveway, for instance. BlackSky Global promises to revisit most major cities up to 70 times a day. Maxar, formerly DigitalGlobe, which launched the first commercial Earth observation satellite in 1997, is building a constellation that will be able to revisit spots 15 times a day. The imaging company Planet Labs currently maintains 140 satellites, enough to pass over every place on Earth once a day. Human rights organizations have tracked the flows of refugees from Myanmar and Syria.īut satellite imagery is improving in a way that investors and businesses will inevitably want to exploit. Farmers can monitor flooding to protect their crops. Investors can predict oil supply from the shadows cast inside oil storage tanks. Which would mean that at any given moment, anyone could be watching anyone else.Įver since 2014, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) relaxed the limit from 50 to 25 cm, that resolution has been fine enough to satisfy most customers.

Unless we impose stricter limits now, they say, one day everyone from ad companies to suspicious spouses to terrorist organizations will have access to tools previously reserved for government spy agencies. Privacy advocates warn that innovation in satellite imagery is outpacing the US government’s (to say nothing of the rest of the world’s) ability to regulate the technology.

Satellite companies don’t offer 24-hour real-time surveillance, but if the hype is to be believed, they’re getting close. In 2008, there were 150 Earth observation satellites in orbit by now there are 768. Chinese government officials have denied or downplayed the existence of Uighur reeducation camps in Xinjiang province, portraying them as “vocational schools.” But human rights activists have used satellite imagery to show that many of the “schools” are surrounded by watchtowers and razor wire.Įvery year, commercially available satellite images are becoming sharper and taken more frequently.

Real time satellite imagery of my house