Global Land Survey (GLS) is part of a collection I discovered at: 12 Sources to Download FREE Land Cover and Land Use Data. To use that collection you have to wade through pages of ads.
I am covering the sources separately and including their original descriptions.
From the GLS webpage:
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) collaborated from 2009 to 2011 to create the Global Land Surveys (GLS) datasets. Each of these collections were created using the primary Landsat sensor in use at the time for each collection epoch. The scenes used were a pre-collection format that met strict quality and cloud cover standards at the time the GLS files were created.
Additional details about the Global Land Survey collection can be found at http://landsat.usgs.gov/global-land-surveys-gls.
The Global Land Survey collection consists of images acquired from 1972 to 2012 combined into one dataset.
All Global Land Survey datasets contain the standard Landsat bands designated for each sensor. Band Designations can be found at http://landsat.usgs.gov/what-are-band-designations-landsat-satellites.
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[data notes]
Global Land Survey data are available to search and download through EarthExplorer and GloVis. The collection can be found under the Global Land Survey category in EarthExplorer.
Users can download the full resolution LandsatLook jpg images http://landsat.usgs.gov/landsatlook-images, and the Level 1 Data Products http://landsat.usgs.gov/landsat-data-access.
Fifteen meter resolution in the panchromatic band. Nearly as accurate as someone stepping across a compound to establish target coordinates.
Which do you find more amazing: 1) Free access to data to weaponize or, 2) Lack of use of data as a weapon by NGOs?