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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
“Regional war” my ass…
“Oops, the observable truth! Our bad.”
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.”
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).
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!
Imagine a world where only one country had the monopoly of information
Sure buddy. I believe your lying ass.
