[Zak]

I was surprised to read this. Surely many countries allied with the US would prefer more of the publicly-available satellite imagery of sensitive parts of their territory to be low-resolution, but the US government gave special treatment to Israel alone.

[azernik]

Most countries only want this for specific places: https://fas.org/blogs/security/2018/12/widespread-blurring-o...

Letting Israel have something more extreme was a concession that cost the US very little, and came at a period of exceptionally good US-Israeli relations. Specifically, the US wanted to reward Israel for successive handovers of bits of the Territories to the Palestinian Authority, and staying out of the Gulf War.

[Zak]

It seems to me like it infringes on the first amendment rights of anyone who wants to make and distribute such imagery, though I imagine a court has found otherwise at some point. Limits on freedom of expression are no small thing from my perspective.

[azernik]

Space is... special. And national security is even more special. Regulating Earth observation is a standard bureaucratized function [1], and checks lots of boxes for getting leniency from the courts

[1] https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/CRSRA/