The data, of use to a wide range of customers, has been made available via the Internet for several years, passed on from the U.S. Space Command to NASA. Before that, NASA ran a bulletin board for the delivery of data on satellites and other space objects that was restricted to authorized users, but access was granted fairly freely, according to government sources.
Effective March 1, however, tracking data for all U.S. military satellites, classified and unclassified, can no longer be accessed via the NASA Orbital Information Group website.
"We have always kept certain satellites from public exposure," says Cmdr. Dave Knox, spokesman for the U.S. Space Command's Space Control Center, which compiles a "space catalog" of more than 8,000 objects orbiting the Earth. "We have now extended this policy to all military satellites."
Data on satellite locations and orbits will be made available only to selected parties evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with national security the foremost criteria for release.
"Since the World Wide Web system offers no control over personnel who have access to this information, it is incumbent on us to ensure space assets essential to our nation's defense are protected from potential adversaries," said Maj. Gen. Rodney Kelly, director of operations at the U.S. Space Command, in a Feb. 19 memo obtained by Inside the Air Force.
Accordingly, SPACECOM has enacted "new measures of [operational security] for space systems deemed vital to military support," including the removal of satellite tracking information from the publicly available NASA database, the memo states.
The new policy, derived in consultation with others in the military space community, including the Pentagon and the National Reconnaissance Office, was enacted without any warning or explanation on the NASA site, and word began to trickle out only because users began to ask questions about the paucity of new data for military satellites, including Global Positioning System and Defense Meteorological Support Program satellites.
Reaction, however, was swift and critical. Users of the data and other critics believe the new policy does not serve its stated goal -- security -- and unnecessarily keeps unclassified data from worthy users.
According to government and industry experts, the data in question can be ascertained relatively easily without government release; any adversary with a modicum of knowledge and equipment could track even classified, unacknowledged military satellites, they say.
"I doubt anyone seriously wanting to know the positions of these satellites would need more than a day to dig out the references, buy the hardware and software and write some simple code to pull this data out," said an Air Force official who opposes the new policy.
"We can only hope that they are withholding these data due to an actual threat," the source added. "Otherwise, all they are doing is encouraging our adversaries -- aided by the community that needs access to the data -- to figure out a way around these limitations."
Steve Aftergood, the director of the government secrecy project at the Federation of American Scientists, concurs, noting what he says is the "irony" of withholding data on GPS satellites. "There's a particular absurdity on withholding data on the GPS satellites, because they are designed to constantly broadcast their location," Aftergood says. "It's a peculiar contradiction, and it suggests that this policy has not been well-thought out."
Space Command, however, believes it is not in the United States' interest to "just tell the world where these things are," even if the location of satellites can be determined through other means, spokesman Knox says. "It is a prudent national security measure not to advertise where our national security assets are," he adds.
"More and more people are looking at space control," he says, referring to other countries' increasing use of and interest in space. Accordingly, the United States has become more sensitive to what space information it provides to the public.
But Aftergood sees the Space Command move as part of a trend toward secrecy in recent months. Specifically, he notes, the military is becoming increasingly concerned about the Internet as a potential intelligence-gathering tool for adversaries.
"For me, this latest move is part of a larger trend of removing unclassified information from the public domain," says Aftergood, who campaigns for less overall secrecy and tighter controls on the most sensitive information.
Late last year, the Defense Department issued a new policy for its publicly available Internet sites that established a higher sensitivity threshold for information available electronically. The policy directed the removal of unclassified information that could be used in coordination with other data by adversaries of the United States.
But for Aftergood and other critics, that policy suggested the creation of a new level of secrecy, and the latest Space Command directive seems to go hand-in-hand with the Pentagon Web guidance, they say.