Govt. withholds photos taken by expensive satellites, citing security reasonsより転載
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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a H-IIA rocket carrying an Information Gathering Satellite (IGS) from its Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture at around 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 23.(Mainichi)
The cost-benefit performance of Information Gathering Satellites (IGSs), which the government has launched at a cost of some 800 billion yen in taxpayers money, remains unclear because the photos they have taken and the details of their operations have been withheld.
The government has said that the satellites, which are aimed primarily at monitoring military facilities in North Korea and other countries, also play an important role in gathering information in the event of a massive natural disaster.
Following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the Cabinet secretariat that operates the satellites compiled maps showing the situation at disaster-hit areas with images from the satellites. They distributed copies to the Prime Minister's Office, police, the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry, and other bodies.
The maps show damage from the tsunami such as where roads were cut, according to an explanation by the Cabinet secretariat and according to the government's reply to questions by Hidekatsu Yoshii, a Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Representatives.
The Cabinet secretariat had compiled four such maps by the end of March. Copies of at least one were provided to private companies and are said to have helped them grasp the details of the damage caused by the disaster.
However, the Cabinet secretariat has withheld releasing the satellite images themselves on the grounds that it could adversely affect the security of Japan. Because of this, government bodies were forced to buy photos of the tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant taken by a U.S. commercial satellite for approximately 36 million yen.
The Cabinet secretariat justifies its refusal to release images from the IGSs by saying, "If experts analyzed the images, they could identify the course of the satellites and when they pass which areas, allowing (other countries subject to reconnaissance by the satellites) to cover up secret facilities at those times."
It also fears that if images from the satellites are released, it could reveal the resolution of the photos that they can take and the scope of areas they can photograph in a single shot.
Even so, the Cabinet secretariat has released very little information from or about the satellites, and its explanation that they are useful in the event of a major natural disaster could easily be seen as an attempt to shift attention away from their reconnaissance use.
As long as the government maintains that the satellites are useful in case of a major natural disaster, it should pursue ways to disclose as much information from them as possible. (By Takeshi Noda, Tokyo Science and Environment News Department)
Click here for the original Japanese story
(Mainichi Japan) September 24, 2011