THIS SUNDAY, “60 MINUTES” LOOKS AT A NEW FRONTIER IN SATELLITE DATA COLLECTION
Hundreds of Small Private Satellites Dramatically Increase the Amount of Data Formerly Only Available to Governments
David Martin reports on a new, uncharted frontier in the collection of data created by hundreds of privately produced satellites, whose millions of images are available to the public and not just the government. His story will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Dec. 2 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Planet Labs, the satellite company, has launched hundreds of small satellites for commercial use, such as monitoring the health of crops. They get over a million photos from them each day. “I’m always astonished that almost every picture we get down, we compare it to the picture from yesterday and something has changed,” says one of the company’s founders, Will Marshall.
Planet Lab has 200 customers, none more important than the U.S. government. Martin was given rare access to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s operations center, where data from U.S. government satellites and Planet Lab is secretly analyzed. NGA Director Robert Cardillo now has access to millions more images than in the past, when the U.S. government had a monopoly on the collection of satellite data. “I’m quite excited about capabilities such as what Planet is putting up in space,” he tells Martin.
The NGA’s analysis of satellite imagery is used extensively by the military and can monitor the movements of foreign militaries, such as the Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. The raid on the compound of Osama bin Laden was made possible through satellite imagery.
Now the rest of the world has access to this technology, those working for the good and those who may be working for the bad. The NGA does not have the authority to declare secret any of the millions of images Planet Lab has collected so far and to come. It’s a new frontier with a multitude of possibilities that Marshall of Planet Labs says he is worried about, but nonetheless must explore. “I worry a lot, and we wouldn’t have started Planet if we didn’t have a very strong conviction that the vast majority of the use cases are very, very positive.”
“60 MINUTES” LISTINGS FOR SUNDAY, DEC. 2
TBD – Authorities are using a rapid DNA identification process to recover remains of the victims of the Camp Fire, many of whom were incinerated in the deadliest, most destructive fire in California history. Bill Whitaker reports. Marc Lieberman and Ali Rawaf are the producers.
TBD – David Martin reports on America’s spy satellites and a new wave of smaller ones launched by the hundreds that have dramatically increased the amount of data collected, challenging the U.S. agency that analyzes it. Mary Walsh and Tadd Lascari are the producers.
RYAN SPEEDO GREEN – Saved from delinquency by a few caring people who listened, Ryan Speedo Green is now heard by many as an international opera star. Scott Pelley reports. Robert G. Anderson and Aaron Weisz are the producers.
ON “60 MINUTES”: SAVED FROM DELINQUENCY BY A FEW CARING PEOPLE WHO LISTENED, RYAN SPEEDO GREEN IS NOW HEARD BY MANY, AS AN INTERNATIONAL OPERA STAR
His life could be an opera. Ryan Speedo Green once screamed his lungs out in a juvenile lock-up, put there because he was so angry and violent that he was deemed a danger to his family. But a few caring people held onto him long enough for him to find himself. Today, the former juvenile delinquent’s lungs belt out the most demanding and famous bass-baritone roles in opera houses around the world. Scott Pelley profiles the young and unlikely opera star on the next edition of 60 MINUTES, Sunday, Dec. 2 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
“Being in this cell was the lowest point of my entire life,” Green tells Pelley of that time in solitary. “When I got out of here, that was my motivation – to never end up in a place like this.”
The first critical influence on him was a caring teacher who took an interest in him and tamed the anger he brought from his abusive home. He wound up in the detention center after pulling a knife on his mother and brother. He was 12. The teacher called him at the lock-up. “‘Don’t let this moment define you,’” he said the teacher, Elizabeth Hughes, told him. “‘You can be better. You can do better.’”
Priscilla Piñeiro-Jenkins made an impression on Green, too. The caseworker experienced his anger first-hand at the detention center, bearing the brunt of his verbal assaults. But instead of deflecting him, she listened. “He’s a child. He’s not [mad] at me,” she remembers thinking. “You can’t just say no to someone and shut them out when you know they’re desperate to figure out…Who will love me? Who will care for me? Will you stand by me even if I’m cussing you out?” she says.
“I had a lot of issues and a lot of anger problems,” Green says of the youth who once threw his school desk at Hughes. “A lot of explosions of anger, frustration, that was going on at the time,” says Green. But when he got the concern he wasn’t always getting at home from Hughes, Piñeiro-Jenkins, and a psychiatrist provided by the state of Virginia, he began to change.
The seeds planted in him by these caring adults took root when he entered a new school in another town soon after getting out of juvenile detention. It was a clean break, and he made new friends. After-school activities including football, Latin club, and chorus changed his life, especially chorus. He could sing. When a class trip to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City found the 15-year-old Green marveling at the African-American opera star Denyce Graves, a new star was born.
“The title role was a person who looked like me, was a person of color. It completely just shattered all my preconceptions of what I thought opera was,” he tells Pelley. “I fell in love with opera that day.”
Several academic degrees and singing contests later, the 32-year-old Green is now a member of the Vienna State Opera and sings in many languages to audiences around the world.
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