VLEO and the Art of Kissing Your Privacy Goodbye

We’re all too aware that our privacy is being eroded by the power of technology coupled with the insistence of people who want us to buy things. I personally thought that IoT (Internet of Things) was probably going to be disassembling of our last vestige of solitude. By 2030, there’ll be almost 30 million machines linked to each other, all discussing you and your lifestyle with a view to lighten your wallet.

But then I came across a company called Albedo Space. It’s a company that’s synced itself to VLEO (Very Low Earth Orbit) satellites which China had promised to launch for the first time last December, but have still yet to do so. Albedo Space was founded by two kids and they’ve raised enough money to build and put a satellite into VLEO next year.

Very cool. You should check out their website. Their satellites will have the capability to photograph stuff on the ground with mush higher definition than ever before. The site invites you to repurpose the satellite for your own needs. They even list the sectors which could most benefit. There’s energy, agriculture, investment, supply chain and sustainability data.

But Wait, There’s More

So far, still very cool. But then you get to the sector called ‘Defense & Intelligence’. And suddenly, it’s not cool at all. If they’d called it ‘Offense & Surveillance’ at least they would have been more honest. The New York Times recently ran an article on article about Albedo Space and earmarked the surveillance issue. But in typical New York Times style it was a polite sort of earmarking, a suggestion of possible ill-intent.

But we don’t have that luxury at Inside Telecom. Our job is to question the answer, not the other way around. So when one of the co-founders states that they’re “acutely aware of the privacy implications” and then in a very Trumpesque dismissal, attempts to talk about saving lives with this technology, well. That’s like saying the good outweighs the bad so live with the bad. It’s also inferring there’s a vast chasm between being acutely aware of something wrong and actually doing something about it. The ramifications of this technology go beyond military applications.

And You Thought Social Media Was Intrusive

Albedo Space is providing a tool for a more penetrative insight into people’s behaviour than social media ever could. The stage is set for commercial espionage and behavioural manipulation, once you factor in the smart city model and IoT.

No wonder the company has attracted so much investor interest.

There is one light at the end of this particular tunnel, though (and I write this only because of the negative implications of the technology). VLEO is struggling to be economically viable. The altitude involved – between 100 and 400 kilometres – induces so much aerodynamic drag that it’s still massively expensive keep the satellite orbiting. Either that, or the life span of the satellite is so limited they’ll fall out of the sky many hundreds of times quicker than a satellite in Low Earth Orbit. The military have deployed VLEO technology but obviously they’re not releasing any other details.

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