The EarthNow promise

Live video surveillance will raise more privacy concerns

An unusual venture, EarthNow, can boast of mega-investors such as Bill Gates, Masayoshi Son, Nathan Myhrvold and Airbus. This 2017 Washington-state startup is setting up a network of satellites to offer services based on the availability of real-time, live video footage from around the world, accessible on demand by anybody with a smartphone and an internet connection. As users know, Google Earth offers all sorts of details, using satellite images taken from many angles and perspectives, at various times of day and night. Apart from the sheer pleasure of rubbernecking, Google Earth is used for a wide range of location-based services. Its images have been used to assess forest cover, track animal populations, flag illegal mining, and even help municipalities match tax records to actual buildings. It is also used by security forces to prevent crime and mount anti-terrorist operations. 

However, there have been multiple concerns about privacy issues since Google Earth images are often available with details that impinge on the privacy of private citizens. If somebody knows your home address, stalking you via Google Earth is a possibility. Many nations also insist on sensitive installations being blurred out to prevent terrorist strikes. But, Google Earth uses old images; pictures may be up to three years old. Faces are also deliberately blurred. That reduces the danger of privacy breaches even though it comes at the cost of reducing the utility of the images. 

And that’s where EarthNow will be different. It will offer real-time images with expected latency of a few seconds. And this would be a game-changer in multiple ways. For one, it would vastly enhance the potential utility of the images even though privacy concerns would mount by orders of magnitude. EarthNow will use versions of satellites that Airbus has developed for the OneWeb network, which is also supported by Softbank and Nathan Myhrvold’s company, Intellectual Ventures. OneWeb satellite network will offer global high-speed internet access. 

EarthNow will, in fact, take things one step further by offering real-time video coverage. It claims “each satellite is equipped with an unprecedented amount of onboard processing power, including more CPU cores than all other commercial satellites combined”. Video processing requires a lot of power while satellites generally operate on minimal solar energy. So this will be a major technical feat. 

Not surprisingly, the company has listed several potential uses. Using EarthNow it may be possible to catch illegal fishing ships in the act, to watch storms and other weather formations evolve, quickly detect forest fires and volcanic action, track whale and wildebeest migrations, improve policing efficiency and security in urban areas, assess crop health, monitor conflict zones and disaster areas, and enable immediate emergency responses, while, of course, providing real-time footage in breaking news events.

The service will be initially aimed at “high-value enterprise and government” customers, and it’s likely to offer expensive high-end subscription services like Google Earth’s paid schemes. There will also be mass-market footage available for ordinary consumers. EarthNow will have competitors — SpaceX is one of several companies looking to deliver real-time satellite footage. 

The footage will be unfiltered — indeed, it would be impossible to filter and still deliver real-time. That brings privacy concerns to the fore, as well as posing ticklish problems when it comes to uncensored graphic footage taken from disaster zones or crime scenes. It may, for example, be possible to follow somebody around 24x7 using this service. 

Obviously, there are many ways in which it can be used and be a powerful force for good. But it changes the privacy paradigm because it could enable pinpointed surveillance of an unimaginable order. It will certainly require a rapid review and rewriting of privacy laws across the world. In India, of course, such laws do not exist as of now.