WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government and private industry are squaring off in a pitched battle over who can get access to high-resolution pictures taken from space by commercial satellites. It's a new twist in an old debate: national security versus the public's right to know.

By the year 2003 at least 11 companies in five countries will have high-resolution, remote-sensing cameras in orbit that are of spy-satellite quality, according to an estimate by the Carnegie Endowment, a non-profit think tank in Washington.

These "eyes in the sky" will be able to produce pictures of objects on Earth as small as a few feet across. This so-called "1-meter resolution" (3.2-foot resolution) technology once was available only to intelligence agencies through their own spy satellites.

But now "there are several others coming that will have the 1-meter resolution," said Mark Brender, director of Washington operations at Space Imaging. The Denver, Colorado company last September launched such a satellite called IKONOS, the ancient Greek word for image.

That sort of commercial technology in space worries government officials because they believe such detailed imagery could encourage industrial espionage, terrorism or more cross-border military attacks in the developing world.

U.S. government officials and others raised such concerns Thursday at a technology conference sponsored by the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit organization in Arlington, Virginia dedicated to free press and free speech.

"We are happy to enhance the commercialization of remote-sensing imagery as long as it supports our national security interests," said Mark Berkowitz, a space policy director at the U.S. Department of Defense.

But advocates for the remote-sensing industry complained there still are too many federal restrictions on what a company can or cannot do with the pictures from commercial satellites.

"An eye in the sky is no different than a camera anywhere on Earth," said Dan Dubno, a producer at CBS News. The broadcast television network has added satellite imagery to its reporting of such stories as the crisis in Kosovo and the tracking of hurricanes.

"The U.S. government is restricting our right to tell stories that Americans can hear about," he said.

Dubno and CBS are not alone. Two broadcast industry groups -- The Radio, Television News Directors Association and the National Association of Broadcasters -- have filed an objection with the U.S. government, saying that federal rules violate the First Amendment.

Industry advocates argued that these restrictions were too vague and failed to define the conditions under which the U.S. government could exercise so-called "shutter control."

"The U.S. government is restricting our right to tell stories that Americans can hear about."
     

"These words of the policy directive enables our government to shut [satellite firms] down under any pretext," said Kathy Kirby, of Wiley, Rein & Fielding, a Washington communications law firm.

"Is this a perfect approach?" argued Gil Klinger, director of policy at the CIA's National Reconnaissance Office. "Far from it. But it is not the job of the agencies to bolster the ability of the media to do their job."

Klinger said the government has taken steps to keep an "innate openness" in its policy. Because there is no clear way to define either the nature or the timing of potential security risks, it’s difficult to script specific rules for shutter control, he said.

The debate over this new age of space transparency is expected to get even more complicated as foreign companies in France, India, Israel and the British Cayman Islands prepare to launch their own "eyes in the sky."

Still unclear, for example, is whether the U.S. government would restrict remote-sensing technology that is sold to U.S. firms by foreign companies.

"I am not sure I know the answer to that," Berkowitz said.