Planet Labs, one of the world’s leading commercial satellite imaging companies, said Friday it is placing a hold on releasing imagery of some parts of the Middle East as a regional war enters its second week.
Planet wants to prevent “adversarial actors” from using images for “Battle Damage Assessment” purposes.
The losses on the American/Israeli side are so low they need to censor any publicly available information. Truly nothing to see here. In fact, they’re doing you a favour by saving the time you would have wasted looking for damage done by Iran that clearly doesn’t exist!
The military censor in Israel does the exact same thing: ostensibly to prevent enemies from using the data to improve their systems, in reality as an attempt to keep domestic morale high (it only ever manages to slow down the inevitable fall, though).
Plenty of other places to supply Iran with satellite imagery.
Stating the obvious: Preventing US citizens and news agencies from easily accessing timely info that would contradict trump’s lies.
Calling it a regional war proves they’re bought
“Regional war” my ass…
As if China and Russia didn’t have satellites. They just don’t want to admit they’ve stepped into deep doodoo, so the general public must not find out.
Israel has made it illegal to post photos and videos of damage caused by Iranian missiles in Israel. They have an agenda.
They have an agenda.
Whaaaa? No way!
I think it’s the common practice under the war. Not saying this war is totally shit.
I guess it depends… sometimes you just want to anger your populace with how inhumane your enemy is.
In isntreal case, i think they try to sell the idea that they are invencible, more intelligent, better prepared and that resistance is futile.
I think they are lying about the casualty counts as well. Pete looks extra scared in his most recent broadcasts, he’s masking like a mfer. The bottle is his only safety.
I heard 200 dead the first day.
The US 5ft fleet base (second largest in the region) was hit multiple times in the first few HOURS of the war. there was a billion dollar radar system there and a large wide building that I saw with a large hole in its roof. Since then it has been hit repeatedly and from what I heard, is basically gone. There were like 9000 troops stationed there.
Ol Petey has been sucking his own farts for too long.
The United States Military undeniably has a technological and financial lead compared to basically every other nation.
He forgot that it doesn’t matter if you have a lead when you don’t have a plan to use any of that shit. You could put a chimpanzee in the cockpit of an F35, that doesn’t mean it can do anything productive with it. That’s Pete Hegseth.
That’s Pete Hegseth
The chimpanzee, or the f-35? One is an intelligent hominid, the other a quintessential example of a military industrial complex boondoggle underperforming for decades
I find it very unlikely the US could keep a lid on 200 deaths and saying it’s six. Not for more than a week or so. People’s families are going to wonder where their loved ones are. Hospital workers, morgue workers, life insurance companies, flight crews, people are going to talk, and share pictures.
The US is lucky to have escaped with their aircraft carrier boat-thing
Little bitch boy should be.
hope that bitch finds how deep the bottom of that bottle is and drowns in it.
Just do what he does to others. Slip it in when he’s not looking.
That takes years, decades.
with the right leverage and a well placed bottle it could be minutes.
I’m sure he’ll fugu it out.
Imagine a world where only one country had the monopoly of information
To me this translates to, “America’s military is being led incompetently and we don’t want anyone to see the real damage being done to it.”
Jesus fucking Christ, this is the stupidest possible way to start WWIII.
I mean, you could have that opinion I guess. But the stated reasoning is perfectly valid. After you launch a long distance attack, it is in fact important to know how effective it was. This is a very strategically useful ability. Leaving your adversary in the dark has always worked to your advantage in war.
Look, we all know this war is stupid, there aren’t many who would deny that. But to be perfectly honest, despite the political leadership at the very top, the US military and it’s leadership are actually pretty good at what they do. I doubt they’re trying to cover up a failing war. To me, this looks more like operational security than a cover up.
Iran will have access to Chinese and Russian satellite images, as well as their own “on the ground” intelligence assessments. This move is more likely meant to control public perception in the US.
Well that’s actually a really good point. We already know that Russia is sharing intel with them and even if China wasn’t doing the same, I’m sure they have no problem with “sharing” that intel at a price.
With this perspective I’m actually somewhat convinced that the move could have more to do with outside perception (be it for Americans or for the rest of the world).
Still, there’s no telling what the quality or timelines of the imagery they’re currently getting is like. The difference between having 10 second old images and 4 hour old images is huge, and we really don’t know what they’re getting from Russia. So with that in mind, they don’t need one more avenue to get that data, especially one that could be more immediate imagery.
Edit: As another user points out, these images aren’t being blacked out entirely, they’re just being held back on a 72 hour delay. This does indicate that the company isn’t trying to prevent their images from being seen, they will be seen. But they can’t be used for tactical advantage on the battlefield, 3 day old information is not very useful for that.
So, make of all that what you will.
The stated reasoning sounds okay in isolation, but:
- Why didn’t they start the blackout when the conflict began, as opposed to waiting like this?
- Why is it just a delay, instead of a real blackout?
While I don’t have an answer for your first question, there is a really good answer to the second.
A delay is a perfect solution for eliminating the tactical advantage that its imagery could offer, while still maintaining an eye on the region, not letting war crimes go unnoticed.
The delay rather than a blackout actually reinforces the idea that this is really about not providing intel to Iran. Three day old troop positions are totally useless, those troops are somewhere else now. A delay is totally sufficient to make their imagery non threatening. But if they were trying to hide the actions of either side, a delay wouldn’t be enough, they’d need to hold those images back forever. Meaning, they aren’t trying to hide the truth.
I don’t believe the current us military is any good at all. The ones that were have quit. The rest are dick sucking psychopathic “god Trump” bitch boys.
That’s completely detached from reality. You could confirm that by talking to anyone in the military.
Probably half of our service members joined up just to pay for college. They’re not in the military because they’re psychopaths… it’s just a viable option for moving up in life. Many Americans hope to pursue advanced careers, but they can’t afford college and don’t have many job opportunities in their home town. Well regardless of what your town is like, the military is always hiring; and the recruiters are convincing. If you’re 20 years old and stalled out in your career, it sounds like a real good deal. Again, that does not make you a psychopath. AND regardless of what you think of service members, the effectiveness of the US military is exceedingly evident, they hardly need me to speak for them.
To be fair, wars have never started smartly, there is usually stupidity involved.
There are lots of ways to start a war but they all end the same: everyone sitting down to discuss peace. For some reason, no one thinks to try discussing peace first.
How are you supposed to make peace with a pedophile rapist who has staffed his office with racist Warhawk morons who are convinced they can do whatever they want with complete impunity, and they start bombing you while you are under diplomatic negotiations (twice!)?
This isn’t new behavior. This is regular western shenanigans. I mean, western propaganda is incredibly effective. The indoctrination process starts shortly after birth, but there’s plenty of information out there to see the west has been evil for hundreds of years, and probably longer.
The US has been involved in some form of war for roughly 230 out of it’s 250 years of existence. It’s what it do. War.
Europe’s record really isn’t very different, but maybe they got it out of their system after
WW2,India (Britain),Vietnam (France),Argentina (France & Britain)Bosnia,most of Africa, Kosovo.It’s all evil. All of humanity. You can’t possibly tell me forcing women under blankets and not educating them is okay. The genocide in China.
Fuck humans. Fuck the religions that humans made up. Fuck us all.
After Justice.
Which, the longer this goes, the more Justice will need to be served to get there.
Oh I think it’s even standard practice to do just that. But when the bully swings their dick and says there’ll be war if the don’t get their will, what’s the target supposed to do? Just bend over without at least trying something first?
There’s no motivation for the bully to see any reason there, their stance is that if they wanted, they can just take all they want, they are more powerful. Any “peace talks” before actually testing the merits of that assessment in real battle consist entirely of them demanding whatever they want and only path to “peace” is the smaller one just accepting to get fucked.
So, then when the bully comes around, it’s only sensible that the one in the right there defends their rights to exist and their right for sovereignty and all.
Just reflecting on Russia vs Ukraine here, but I suppose the same is true for Iran vs Israel/US too.
Satellite services are pretty amenable to hiding sensitive parts of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data?wprov=sfla1
It seems totally on-brand for the US government to request that bits of the war zone be hidden, and it’s entirely on brand for satellite companies to hide them.
Yeah it’s normal to ask for a warzone - but this isn’t a war of course.
The US government: “It’s just a special military operation, absolutely not a war. Hmmm? Department of War, no no it’s always been Department of Defense”.
Meanwhile, Trump: “The war…”
Are they really using the same terminology as Putin?
“This is a limited operation”
😂
Congress voted it’s not war, doesn’t require war powers, so yeah anyone or private business treating this as a warzone is in the wrong. Except now after they decided that, we’re still seeing wartime excuses for gop behavior. Schrodinger’s conflict starting world war epstein, staying on brand for 2026.
Yep, it is funny how many images of this shitshow are not showing up on like reddit. Full on censorship
Expect to see uptick in posts/comments critical of lemmy/fediverse because it’s critical of the USA.
Generally it’s framed as something else like UI, grammar, content, or people but with the goal of trying to dissuade people from using it.
The imperialists censorship works in multiple ways, by censoring content in their own platforms and also sowing distrust and reservation in platforms they don’t control.
Still better than the sandwich from WWI
Probably because the New York times article that came out Thursday proved they bombed the school on purpose and refused to do more research and intelligence to confirm their targets.
The administration hates when evidence of their crimes come out, so they most likely threatened every GPS company they could to stop updated images.
For oldies like me, this is like watching the Iraq military operations ‘leak’, like the time they targeted a civilian van with high imapct artillery. That image is burnt in my mind. A white van, two men collecting their things around, than the vehicle is bombed as it is going down a dusty road.
We cannot be willing to fight for any such power. We have freedom to be after all.
The article says images over Iran are still available without delay. It’s the regions around around that are affected. I assume it is to hide the effectiveness of Iran retaliation to Iran or to public opinion.
A rather pointless move, since Russia is providing Iran with satellite intelligence. Not to mention, I highly doubt the feeds are encrypted, and if not than anyone with the will to download them and a couple hundred dollars could build a receiver. There’s tutorials on how to do so on YouTube.
Not completely pointless until Russia starts providing the intel to news organizations.
This isn’t about keeping Iran from seeing the damage, it’s to keep the public from seeing it.
Not completely pointless until Russia starts providing the intel to news organizations.
none of the mainstream media would report on that anyway, so it’s still pretty pointless. western media has shown that it’s pretty invested in not covering things that make western nations look bad.
Any of our news orgs simply won’t publish them.
China can easily use this situation to become the new beacon of freedom.
Not saying that’s what they are, but with usa destroying soft power there is an opportunity here for other countries.
The western nations will go along with it. Don’t trust Europe, but the east? I half expect them to come in and shove the dagger in.
Hope it was worth it for… that shitty country i won’t name any longer? Fucking joke.
Is this what winning feels like?
Honey pots. Highly monitored.
Stupid is as stupid does.
what are you implying? the youtube videos are honeypots? do you think Iran cares about that? I really don’t think Iran cares about that.
I can neither confirm nor deny that.
deleted by creator
The incredibly selective quote makes it sound like the imagery is being held indefinitely, but according to the article it is only being held for 4 days before becoming publicly available as normal. Furthermore, the hold does not apply to imagery inside Iran.
To quote more from the article:
“In response to the conflict in the Middle East, Planet is implementing temporary restrictions on data access within specific areas of the affected region,” Planet said in a statement emailed to Ars. “Effective immediately, all new imagery collected over the Gulf States, Iraq, Kuwait, and adjacent conflict zones will be subject to a mandatory 96-hour delay before it is made available in our archive.”
Imagery over Iran will remain available as soon as it is acquired, the company said. “This change applies to all users except authorized government users who maintain immediate access for mission-critical operations.”
“Oops, the observable truth! Our bad.”
Russia is sharing these images with Iran anyway.
Yes, the Russian government is probably happy to share these images with the Iranian government, but my understanding is that the military units who are firing missiles are acting independently after our decapitation strike took out the Supreme Leader, which was the one to whom they had pledged their allegiance. (There is a moral here: taking out the leader does not necessarily get rid of the organization, it just means you no longer have a single person you can negotiate with to in order to get it to back down.) Thus, the people firing missiles might not actually be able to benefit from images provided by the Russian government.
It feels reeeeallll fucking weird to have just started watching Pluto this week, having previously had no idea what it was about
