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Google Urged to Drop Images
Nqdiddles writes "News.com.au is reporting that the head of Australia's nuclear energy agency has called on Google to censor images of the country's only nuclear reactor. While Dr. Smith admits the image is about two years out of date, he also says he doesn't 'want to provide any easy assistance to anyone who wants to interfere with the site.'
Citing the precedent of the blocks of colour over the White House and Treasury buildings, he's critical of their own security, adding 'there's a small area near the middle of the site which is quite secure, but the bulk of our site isn't all that secure' and is easily visible from the road and commercial airline flights. Google has defended the technology, noting the images were six to 18 months old and not detailed enough to zoom in on people."
Wow, this is right up there with Sadam using CNN to get info on our movements in the Gulf wars.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein
Way to RTFA.
The minister is complaining about maps.google.com and satellite imagery. Google has already acquiesced to the US government, regarding satellite imagery of the White House and Treasury Buildings.
I was under the impression that the images Google used were not copyrighted. Even if Google were to block them or blur them out, what would stop a terrorist from just finding the photo somewhere else?
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Google is just licensing the satellite image data from DigitalGlobe and other vendors. It's the same data that Microsoft, TerraServer, NASA, etc. have and is publicly available for everyone with a stamp. My library even has CDs full of (outdated) full-res satellite images of the world.
Asking Google to censor it just means that the "terrorists" will just go to Microsoft's new beta map.
Alright, all there was was a old blocky picture, and now everyone knows that "the bulk of [the] site isn't all that secure" ... great move Mr head of ANSTO :)
I think the world should get used to the fact that restricting the flow of information is going to be more difficult with every passing year. This isn't strategically-important data. If Google was transmitting a real-time high-resolution image, maybe I would agree with the AU gov't, but censoring 2-year-old satellite photos is simply unnecessary. Actually, we should rejoice that this information is available publicly, because in an age where governments can use information to attack the rights of their citizens, it is somewhat comforting to know that their secrets may not be safe from public scrutiny.
Becasue I am sure attacking google and having the story posted to Slashdot will give them the low profile they are looking for.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Google aren't the only ones.
Just today I read about this Australian company that plans to provide **live** satellite feeds (Google Earth in real time).
And of course there's Virtual Earth and a bunch of other sources.
But, if the cops one day find Google Earth printouts in some terrorist's bag, well... that won't be good for their PR.
Actually I'd be surprised if the government already didn't have Google Earth backdoor with alerts set on sensitive locations worldwide.
So, at first I thought that someone wanted Google to shut down its images service. Then, I read a little bit of the story and thought that Google was being asked to remove images of Australia's reactor. Then, I finally figured out that they were only being asked to censor those images. Now, I have a headache.
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If he doesn't want to "provide any easy assistance to anyone who wants to interfere with the site", then why is he publically pointing out the weak spots of their security?
The blocks over the Whitehouse and surrounding buildings is to stop people spotting Secret Service positions etc rather than building layouts.
If Google is willing to cooperate with China on their "Great Firewall"--an attempt to suppress democracy-related information and control the Chinese people--they can hardly object to this. Google has already demonstrated its willingness to cooperate with totalitarian governments in suppressing peaceful, pro-democracy information. Hard to see how they can draw a line now. If anything, Google's "Don't be evil" motto requires them to actively try to subvert Chinese censorship.
Australia is making a reasonable request that Google voluntarily censor a very small number of images of a nuclear reactor--images that could clearly be used for violent and dangerous terrorist activity. Aside from satisfying idle curiosity, there aren't many important, legitimate uses for those images.
Since Google has long since slid down the slippery slope, why stop now?
I predict that this is the first of many to come. As resolution increases and this technology becomes more mainstream, we're going to see real-time or near real time images and most likely an archive.org style site where you can shift backward in forward in time whilest looking at a site.
Governments are going to just love that...
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
Here's the HIFAR reactor's website, with information:
http://www.ansto.gov.au/natfac/hifar.html
They have a convenient "how to get to ANSTO" page here (so terrorists can just side step the whole Google earth lookup thing):
http://www.ansto.gov.au/ansto/dir.html
Now that we can all communicate with email, the Web, digital images, and other comm tech quickly, cheaply, and easily, lots of fake "security" that we've all paid $billions (A$2billions ;) is starting to look like complete crap. So instead of admitting "we're finally busted", officials of high-risk systems like Dr. Smith, Oracle's Security Chief, and a cavalcade of American Homeland Security / Defense Department / National Security Administration (isn't that all redundant?) bureaucrats are screaming for us to "stop looking". Every country and big (and small) corporation has their counterparts. Their emperors wear no clothes, so we should just avert our eyes, and keep handing over all that cash and power. Someone get these frauds out of the way before someone gets really, seriously hurt.
--
make install -not war
Then, you find out they're being asked to censor their maps service, which has nothing at all to do with Google Images. Off the top of my head, I can come up with 5 headlines that explain this better.
So now a nuclear reactor that most people neither new or cared about and that probably had very few searches will now be looked at by 1000's of slashdotters, blog readers and surfers and probably cached and saved on a million different machines never ever to be lost. Nice job.
I bet this was one of those lame PR stunts where they say 'oh no you have to censor this' so everyone looks at it and in fact gives them more publicity - they were probably just frustrated that no-one had ever tried anything!
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Don't ever even start censoring - it always becomes unstoppable.
Yay for security by obscurity. Like some terrorist couldn't get that information anyway if they really wanted it.
Not sure though...
Link to satellite images of ANSTO I _think_ that is where it is. I could be wrong, but that looks more like a nuclear facility than anything else in the area. Thanks to ANSTO for providing a map. :)
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Bit of a contradictory position here.
If you read all the other replies, it appears that the same information could be obtained from other sources. So, the request doesn't make much sense.
However, Google IS censoring pictures of important buildings in America, and Google's arguments in this case relate to these buildings just as well. So, while they have no obligations whatsoever, Google seems to be aplying double standards: either drop the bulls**t and stop censoring any images, or start accepting and implementing requests to remove material. What they're doing now just makes them look bad.
Besides, I don't know how 18 months old pictures of secret service positions could be useful to a terrorist.
Build 10 or 20 more nuclear power plants so you won't have to worry about having a "most sensitive" site.
Google IS censoring pictures of important buildings in America, and Google's arguments in this case relate to these buildings just as well.
The thing is, it probably isn't Google that is censoring the pictures, but someone who is providing the images to Google. And in many cases, the images are being provided by the US government itself.
Ridiculous as it is, there'll always be someone more, just as paranoid for the perceived "protection by hiding something", crying "you have to hide my house, too" - so in the long run, anyone who's ever censored anything ends up having to censor pretty much everything.
In other words, the textbook example of a slippery slope...
Actually, the images of the whitehouse that Google has are not supplied by DigitalGlobe, they are USGS images, which were censored by the USGS themselves, not Google. You can see this by using NASA WorldWind, which uses the same image source as Google does for Washington DC.
Let's review some notably successful attacks and see if we can learn something...
There is an awful lot of effort being expended protecting us from complex high-tech attacks, when the demonstrated pattern has been for Al Qaeda to use relatively low-tech methods and strike at targets that are easy to hit and achieve significant headlines. If we should learn anything from this, it is that Al Qaeda spends its terrorist money well, getting maximum effect for a minimum of resource.
What we need is more thought and less hasty action, so that we too, might be capable of effective action in return. Pointless blustering actions like this, intended to reassure the public and sustain existing administrations' terms in office, do more to aide and abet the enemy than to frustrate them. We need reason and logic as our allies, instead of keeping them locked in the basement.
Not to say that we shouldn't adopt reasonable means of securing high-impact targets, but we are ignoring medium and low-impact targets in favor of protecting the high-impact targets against exceedingly improbable attacks.
And of course the Real Problem is that it is impossible to protect everything. We must work on improving our intelligence operations against them, and surgically taking out Al Qaeda FROM THE TOP DOWN, if we are ever to achieve any sort of victory over them.
Why surgically? Because when you use a hammer to smite a fire ant, you wind up dealing with many more fire ants than you can handle. Flashy methods (e.g., large-scale military invasions) play right into the hands of Al Qaeda, becoming free recruiting tools and bringing millions of new budding terrorists into the fray.
Use covert assassinations instead, and spend more effort on attacking them in this way than on elaborate schemes to defend that which cannot be defended against every possible attack.
"When in Danger, or in Doubt, Run in Circles, Scream and Shout" -- Laurence J. Peter.
I believe that the Aussies use Vegemite to cool their reactor.
We Australians feel left out. Every time there is a "terror" scare in, say, the US or UK, our forces switch to Super-Ultra-Crazy-High-Look-At-Us-We're-Targets-To o-No-Really-We-Are alert.
The boys get to play in our Blackhawk helicopters over Sydney and Melbourne, sliding down ropes with slung MP5s, wearing their best Matrix gear, and impressing the hell out of the news chicks.
It's all part of the great Australian national inferiority complex: we're ashamed of our "Convict Heritage" while desperately trying to convince the rest of the world that we're a 'significant first-world player', and not some minor nation hidden away downunder.
Really, the lack of terrorist attacks on Australia is so embarrassing to us that we now actually have to point out the insecure targets to the terrorists.
Someone on IRC noticed a blur on google maps, a single house in Florida.
By tracing the map to figure out the city and street, and googling on that, I was able to figure that it was probably a Senatorial candidates house.
I can't imagine why they would blur it out, it just induces curiosity, and I can't imagine what use anything they blurred out could have been, unless Bush's daughter was nude sunbathing at the time or something.
The Lucas Heights reactor is in the middle of a middle-class suburb. It's about 30 minutes drive from where I live. It's clearly marked on all road maps of Sydney.
You can drive by it, stop and look through the wire mesh fence. You can take photos and the guards will never see you. It is just not possible to conceal the installation form observation formt he road or nearby scrubland. If you call yourself a high school teacher, ANSTO will mail you brochures that would let you work out the floor plan. You can join a tour group or ask for a tour for your own group.
Lucas Heights used to be a desolate piece of bushland next to a military firing range, but then developers were allowed to build the suburbs of Lucas Heights and Barden Ridge there. Two schools a golf course and several sporting fields are only a few hundred metres from the reactor.
They ask for 2 year old images to be removed because they're paranoid about a terrorist attack, but meanwhile they advertise their own security and tell the world that their access points can be seen clearly from the ground or any aircraft.
These people are morons.
From http://www.google.com/remove.html
To remove your site from Google only and prevent just Googlebot from crawling your site in the future, place the following robots.txt file in your server root:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
-David
What did you expect the terrorists to say? (You thought they were guards? :)
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Just in case anyone out there was interested its at -34.051675, 150.98044 as far as i can tell. you can see the new reactor being built on left. If you want directions by road try here
I couldnt find an official location on google. And i really dont care about any terrorists getting their hands anywhere near it. the reactor is about the size of a washing machine and doesnt hold all that much material. It supplies mainly medical isotopes and some physics research. Doubt there is enough material for a bomb, and for a dirty (and effective-in terms of death) bomb i would be much more afraid of any caesium containing X-ray machines...
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It's redundant in a global scale. It may be the first post in this article, but it's certainly not the first time it's ever been posted.
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