this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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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.

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[–] LoafedBurrito@lemmy.world 12 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.

[–] nlgranger@lemmy.world 9 points 52 minutes ago* (last edited 51 minutes ago)

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.

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.”

[–] amorangi@lemmy.nz 5 points 59 minutes ago

Russia is sharing these images with Iran anyway.

[–] kescusay@lemmy.world 75 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] avg@lemmy.zip 26 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

To be fair, wars have never started smartly, there is usually stupidity involved.

[–] aquovie@lemmy.cafe 13 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Satellite services are pretty amenable to hiding sensitive parts of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data?wprov=sfla1

It seems totally on-brand for the US government to request that bits of the war zone be hidden, and it's entirely on brand for satellite companies to hide them.

[–] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah it's normal to ask for a warzone - but this isn't a war of course.

[–] NeilNuggetstrong@lemmy.world 9 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

The US government: "It's just a special military operation, absolutely not a war. Hmmm? Department of War, no no it's always been Department of Defense".

Meanwhile, Trump: "The war..."

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago

Are they really using the same terminology as Putin?

[–] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Congress voted it's not war, doesn't require war powers, so yeah anyone or private business treating this as a warzone is in the wrong. Except now after they decided that, we're still seeing wartime excuses for gop behavior. Schrodinger's conflict starting world war epstein, staying on brand for 2026.

[–] Akh@lemmy.world 7 points 2 hours ago

Yep, it is funny how many images of this shitshow are not showing up on like reddit. Full on censorship

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 18 points 2 hours ago

“Oops, the observable truth! Our bad.”