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My new blog with @EAMENA123 on my research and campaigning (and now victory) with Andrea Zerbini to reform the U.S. satellite imaging restrictions over #Israel and #Palestine, known commonly as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment #KBA http://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk/eamena-leads-reform-on-satellite-imagery-restrictions-in-the-levant/
The announcement from the #ACCRES #CRSRA group at the @NOAA last week that the current resolution restrictions will finally be lowered from 2m down to 0.4m, as we have clearly argued with our evidence-based research since 2017, is still sinking in.
This is a huge advance for remote-sensing research in the region, across a wide range of disciplines. It will also help improve media and #OSINT investigations, including the work of @weizman_eyal and his team at @ForensicArchi
For archaeological research in the region, it is an opportunity for remote-sensing research in the area to catch up with the wider region, and will be of value to groups such as @CBRL_news @PalExFund and others.
Now the announcement has been made, we wait to see how implementation pans out. Do @Maxar, @planetlabs and others know that the resolution for imagery of Israel and Palestine is now 0.4m GSD? And will the @NOAA really force @Maxar to downsample from 0.25m to 0.4m GSD?
It is possible that industry does not know, and it was surprising neither of the reporters following the meeting @jeff_foust @SpaceNews_Inc and @SpcPlcyOnline made any reference to the #KBA reform, a censorship law that has been in place since 1997.
I'm also wondering which of the online systems for accessing satellite and aerial imagery will be the first to update their mapping of Israel and Palestine? @googleearth, @bingmaps or @apple maps? Notably @google @googleearth has not updated any imagery in this area since 2016!
We also have to see what happens with archive commercial satellite imagery that was previously restricted, especially for @Maxar. Will they re-release old imagery closer to the new 0.4m limit? And will Hexagon and Gambit missions now be declassified via @USGS?
Thanks also to the many people have helped this work, particularly @Zena_Agha and @msmimikirk at @AlShabaka, who helped transform our work from academic research to a policy change drive, and also the team at @RoKhanna @RepRoKhanna's office for helping to push the issue.
Other quick mentions who helped- @bothness for helping put us in touch with Zena. @mokersel helped track down obscure things. Early talk of KBA with @BeccBanks and @puccioni1. @stefangeens kindly responded to Q's about his old work.
And various members of the @EAMENA123 team pitched in at one point or another. Finally I should thank @TD_NOAA and her team at @NOAASatellites for finally applying what we had been pushing for so long.
As ever, you can find my research paper with Andrea Zerbini at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spacepol.2018.03.002 or as an #openaccess preprint at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323888454_Higher_resolution_satellite_imagery_of_Israel_and_Palestine_Re-assessing_the_Kyl-Bingaman_Amendment
