"The higher resolution will likely raise privacy and security concerns, however, just as Google’s Street View did in its early days. Making public precise data on the locations of cell towers, nuclear power plants, or valuable antiquities, for instance, could pose obvious security risks. Albert Gidari, director of privacy at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, predicts that Planet Labs will eventually need clear mechanisms for handling complaints and requests to blur or delete images.
Planet Labs does have an internal ethics board, and while Safyan described the application process for researchers to gain access to the company’s data as “light,” he says it “tries to ensure the data is not being resold to bad actors.”"
- Date Published:02/28/2017
- Original Publication:MIT Technology Review