In the great database race, opening the big eye in the sky to the Web's denizens is not, as former Cold War diehards might suggest, a new destabilizing fact to contend with. Freely available imagery provided by the veritable traffic jam of spy satellites takes the very element of surprise out of war games.

For the average Joe, such sites are mere novelty. A fun place to click for a few visits, maybe a screen capture for your PC's wallpaper. Last spring (1999) images were released of Area 51 and Groom Lake, supposedly top-secret military/research installations: "secret" is a dated term these days.

In 1957, Sputnik launched the West into a frenzy of technological innovation. Consider this new paradigm in quantum theory terms. Anyone with Internet access, as well as anyone with the dough to pay for the images provided, can participate in Big Brother Spying Company's Big Sky Mall - the expanding marketplace of services provided by Terraserver.com or Space Imaging: your neighbor, strangers in other lands, and even the so-called enemies of democracy. And their enemies, too.

Just no place to hide.

"It's like a virtual truth serum," said Space Imaging Vice President Mar Bender.

This U.S. intelligence satellite operators, once sole proprietor of such power, hopping mad. Many of these companies, based in the U.S. (especially Colorado, as in the NORAD community), often lack patriotic selectivity. The game has changed: with superpower garrison of security clearances sufficiently raided and depleted, more time must be spent on spinning contradictory information to disorient you from what's sensory apparent.

Truth is, after all, a liability if too much is allowed to leave home without a leash.

"Who are you going to believe - me or your own lying eyes?" states the Public Eye Initiative's Web site, maintained by the Federation of American Scientists, that posts a gallery of international military bases and supposedly secret installations such as Area 51.

"Information is power, and government intelligence agencies have created sophisticated means of acquiring and analyzing information," states the FAS statement by the site's operator, John Pike. "But today many types of information systems once the sole domain of the intelligence community are becoming available to the public. Public Eye's initiative is dedicated to advancing non-governmental organizations and private citizens applications of these new and emerging information systems to the public interest."

A WorldNetDaily investigative report pointed out that the data can be accessed by Iraq's Saddam Hussein or North Korea's Kim Jong-il.

Quoting a "senior intelligence official" anonymously, the report makes the very good point that "you can know readily where U.S. satellites are at any time means that if you're India or North Korea, it's much easier to hide what you are doing."

Since client states (and enemies of the month) were already well provided with such information by the superpowers, the senior official can also refer to this: Keep information from you.

Griped Paul Harvey, middle America's syndicated radio stalwart, "The potential for Internet mischief seems limitless. John Pike has been using his employer's equipment to take his own satellite photographs of the world's most secret military bases and making them public on the Internet."

When people learn Earth has no actual geographical lines for borders when viewed from above, one can see how so much gets lost when national security tops the priorities list.