Balancing Privacy Rights and the Production of High-Quality Satellite Imagery

摘要

The use of satellite imagery, first inspired by the need for weather monitoring and defense intelligence, has led to some of society's most influential discoveries. Technological advances continue to provide data with increasing detail, or spatial resolution. Between 1980 and 2016, average spatial resolution improved nearly 20-fold, from pixel sizes of roughly 500 to 25 m (Figure 1). Higher spatial resolution has offered improvements in fields such as image classification and water quality monitoring. The 2019 launch of the Indian Space Research Organization Cartosat-3 satellite put into orbit the finest-resolution commercial imagery to date. Cartosat-3 collects panchromatic, essentially black and white, imagery at 0.28 m and multispectral imagery at 1.14 m, or about eight times the screen size of a modern smartphone. Advances in spatial resolution have been coupled with advances in image processing, as the analysis of large amounts of data becomes more feasible through improved data infrastructure and automated analysis techniques. Although high-resolution data provide exciting new research possibilities, serious privacy concerns have also been raised. The dilemma moving forward is to balance both technological advancements to support scientific research and individuals' legal and ethical rights to privacy.