[0] http://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-statement-on-todays-b...
Pretty easy for a nation-state to launch a surveillance satellite with much better optics, I imagine.
This is a list of nations that have managed to put something in orbit. It contains 10 nations, and the ESA. The vast majority of nations do not have the capability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite#First_satellites_of_...
Non-space-capable countries do routinely put their payload on the rockets of countries with launch capability (though I guess then it can't be an obvious spy satellite).
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/CRSRA/licenseHome.html
I'm guessing:
* They don't want the satellite taking and selling photos of secret US government stuff (or Israel or other areas that would cause the US government grief). * They want to make sure the satellite doesn't crash or otherwise cause problems for which the US would be liable.
Meters per pixel. If it's >20, just give it blanket permission.
From what I understand the trouble point is when they hit orbit, and by then they're plenty far away to meet the cutoff.
If the license is required to sense remotely, the issuing agency can do some research, then tell the licensee "you cannot broadcast, transmit, or record for later transmission images taken from T+5:53:11 to T+5:56:43". And then they check the flight path, and that's when the vehicle will be directly over one of the Aleutian islands. The engineers shrug their shoulders, and program a 4-minute blackout into the cameras.
And the crew in Alaska can then go around throwing camouflage netting over everything, and inflate the decoys, and not do any work outside, during any times that an object known or suspected to have imaging devices on it passes overhead.
It's a temporary measure, as the superpowers continue to move their most important secret facilities to camouflaged, submarine, or underground facilities. But it won't be long before someone's cubesat with commercial-grade camera unwittingly images something it shouldn't, and the Men in Black visit the owner with a DoD order to classify all their electronic equipment as "Top Secret", with a "no-foreign" endorsement. It would all be confiscated, examined, scrubbed, declassified, and returned after a few months.
The license is likely so that the keepers of the secrets can know the imaging capabilities of some of the objects they track in orbit, and maybe get some cooperation from the owners.