US Military Blocks Data On Incoming Meteors 172
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CmdrTaco
from the summon-bruce-willis dept.
from the summon-bruce-willis dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Nature reports that the US military has abruptly ended an informal arrangement that allowed scientists access to data on incoming meteors from classified surveillance satellites, dealing a blow to the astronomers and planetary scientists who used the information to track space rocks. 'These systems are extremely useful,' says astronomer Peter Brown, at the University of Western Ontario. 'I think the scientific community benefited enormously.' Meteor data came from the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite network consisting of infrared satellites in geosynchronous orbit to monitor the globe for missile launches or atmospheric nuclear blasts, forming the principal component of the United States' ballistic missile early-warning system. The satellites' effectiveness was demonstrated during Desert Storm, when DSP detected the launch of Iraqi Scud missiles and provided warning to civilian populations and coalition forces in Israel and Saudi Arabia. As a side benefit, the satellites could also precisely detect the time, position, altitude and brightness of meteors as they entered Earth's atmosphere, information the military didn't consider particularly useful, or classified. 'It was being dropped on the floor,' says former Air Force captain Brian Weeden. Although the reason for ending the arrangement remains unclear, Weeden notes that it coincides with the launch of a new generation of surveillance satellites and speculates that the Pentagon may not want details of the new satellites' capabilities to be made public, or it may simply lack the expensive software needed to handle classified and declassified data simultaneously. 'The decision may have been made that it was perhaps too difficult to disclose just these data.'"
Re:"Blocks"? (Score:4, Informative)
In all fairness, the article's subheading is "Satellite information on incoming meteors is blocked."
-l
Re:Expensive software? (Score:5, Informative)
Your failure in design just cost your company a million dollars and several man-years of effort.
Re:I have a solution (Score:4, Informative)
That's not the point. The point is if we can tell you what meteors are landing and where, it doesn't take an extensive amount of data for you to be able to pinpoint where those military satellites are in the sky. It doesn't take a lot for you to then calculate when you can be doing shit outside, and when you need to be under cover.
The data they may be collecting may end up being unclassified, but the means they're using to collect it are likely classified fairly highly. Usually this information is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States#Sensitive_Compartmented_Information_.28SCI.29_and_Special_Access_Programs_.28SAP.29 [wikipedia.org]
It makes sense. If it were possible to determine the capabilities of your sensors (whether we're talking from a satellite or a human informant) by putting together the bits and pieces of their unclassified information, you've effectively leaked highly classified information to well funded and highly motivated foreign entities.
[opinion]At the end of the day, somebody is going to find out about your sensor and it's capabilities. You just do everything you can to make sure it's well past the usefulness of said sensor, so far beyond that the understanding of this information nets the "opponent" nothing[/opinion].
As for writing software that would obfuscate this information enough that it wouldn't give away the methods of gathering it - sure, it sounds simple, and on a case by case basis, I'm sure you could do it. But can you do it for every single scenario even remotely conceivably imagined under the sun, for potentially large quantities of information, with guaranteed 0% failure rate?
If so, I'm sure someone would like to hire you!
Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
This is technically made clear by the use of the word meteor, as opposed to asteroid, but I only remembered that as I type this so I expect I am not the only one that could have used a clarifying sentence in the summary.
Re:"Blocks"? (Score:3, Informative)
Oversight? Hardly. It's damned expensive to produce unclassified content from a classified source.
By default, it is assumed ALL data generated by a classified source is classified. To unclassify any of that information requires a highly-tested, bulletproof-design of software that can be shown that in the process of declassifying any part of the data, it is impossible that something classified accidently got in there.
It's much cheaper to just leave everything classified at the same level as the piece of hardware/algorithms that produced it.
Re:Not really (Score:2, Informative)
Once touched by a classified process, the non-classified data becomes classified, until you painstakingly prove that it is not.
Re:"Blocks"? (Score:2, Informative)
Your post is clear and lucid, except for the fact that it is wholly and completely wrong. The satellites in question look for infrared signatures on the Earth. They only detect meteors when they've already hit the atmosphere, by which time it's a bit late to do anything about them.