Even industry leaders recognize the possibility that terrorists or rogue regimes could acquire sensitive imagery. John Copple, CEO of Space Imaging, posited that even though Space Imaging is prohibited from selling imagery to various countries and terrorist groups, and even though it implements software that checks e-commerce orders against the State Department's prohibited purchaser list every hour, such precautions are "never going to prevent somebody from creating some fictitious organization" or from going through a third party to purchase imagery. Shutter control addresses this contingency by never allowing such imagery to get to market. Even those in the commercial satellite market have "supported the reasonable U.S. policy on "shutter control,'" as these industry leaders are, in the words of the CEO of Orbital Imaging Corporation, "good Americans too" and "don't want [their] imagery in the hands of the "bad guys' ... to be used against U.S. troops."

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Prober, Raphael. "Shutter Control: Confronting Tomorrow's Technology with Yesterday's Regulations." Journal of Law and Politics. Vol. 19 (Spring 2003): 203-251. [ 5 quotes ] [ page 215 ]