Posted on 11/19/2022 7:40:30 AM PST by Eleutheria5
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on Friday formally declassified an image then-US President Donald Trump tweeted in 2019 of a highly classified satellite photograph depicting the site of a failed Iranian rocket launch.
NPR reported that the NGA declassified the image after a “grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public” in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the radio network.
Many details on the original image remain redacted – a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the US government's most prized intelligence on social media, said Steven Aftergood, specialist in secrecy and classification at the Federation of American Scientists.
"He was getting literally a bird's eye view of some of the most sensitive US intelligence on Iran," he told NPR. "And the first thing he seemed to want to do was to blurt it out over Twitter."
In August of 2019, Iran attempted to fire a rocket which exploded on its launch pad at a space center in northern Iran.
A day later, Trump wrote on Twitter that the United States was not involved with the failed rocket launch.
“The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran,” he wrote, adding, “I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.”
The tweet included a satellite image...
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
A lot of Arutz Seven content comes from wire services. This is probably elsewhere, but I’m lazy.
Poor things, did they have to have therapy sessions after?
How could a photo of a failed Iranian missile launch jeopardize national security? I get so sick of this crap.
You think that major powers don’t know where our satellites are?
This.🤔
Before tweeting he must have thought about it, which is the same as him declassifying it.
“The President decides what is and is not classified”.
That still does not make it a smart move to send the photo out in a tweet.
Our adversaries learn from things like this and anything sensitive in that photo will be more cleverly hidden next time. They also might be able to determine things like exactly when the image was taken and use that information to determine the orbit of a particular spy satellite.
Maybe. What’s done is done. I’m sure he got plenty of advise, then made a decision.6
“grueling Pentagon-wide review” = An email was sent out to a couple bureaucrats.
“formally declassified an image” = Some bureaucrats checked it off a ‘TO-DO’ list.
Yes, and the tweeted photo was a cell phone pic of the real photo...
But as the article points out, knowing the timing of the photo allowed amateur and professional sleuthers to figure out which satellite captured the photo, which tells a peer adversary which satellite needs to be taken out if you don’t want any photos in a given area at a given time. This is the real reason for the sensitivity.
“Some bureaucrats checked it off a ‘TO-DO’ list.”
Very few of them. They don’t have the clearance, the need to know, and/or it is not part of their job description. Most of the people at the Pentagon most likely never heard of any of it. And they didn’t really want to. If the less you know and the less you are expected to know match up, there’ll be a retirement in 20 years. So looking for it is very foolhardy.
God helps three sorts of people: fools, children and drunkards
Proverbs 20:3
But also,
Our Constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.
Will Rogers
wy69
Indeed.
It's amazing, but scary amazing.
You see the newest addition to the Surveillance State arsenal?
Necessity is the mother of invention.?
See 57 and the year of the article. I’m shocked.
Really overreaching aren’t they?
It looks like we already got grabbed when we weren't looking. At least I do.
Now I want to know who has this tech and how it is being used. Has it been used and if so, where?
Off to the hunt.
Ah, they have it in infrared as well!
Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Infrared (ARGUS-IR) (Archived)
Check out the lower left...under Similarly Tagged Content
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