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Google Terror Threat
bogd wrote to mention a CNN article wherein Indian President Abdul Kalam stated his concerns that Google Maps could be used to aid terrorists. From the article: "The Google site contains clear aerial photos of India's parliament building, the president's house and surrounding government offices in New Delhi. There are also some clear shots of Indian defense establishments. Debbie Frost, spokewoman for Mountain View, California-based Google, noted that the software uses information already available from public sources and the images displayed are about one to two years old, not shown in real time."
The Register's competition based on this fact, spawned by the Australian government's worry over the security of their nuclear facility.
Many organisations and governments around the world have expressed these sorts of fears about GE.
/. crowd is one that's all for open-ness (and the public availability of imagery tends to favour this), but politics is not known for making logical decisions. It will probably take one major criminal incident (aka terrorist attack) to occur where there's proof of GE being used, at that point perhaps google will cave.
Not long ago, the operators of Australia's only nuclear reactor expressed concern about GE.
Korea (both north and south) have expressed their concerns about it.
The Dutch have expressed concern.
Even in Russia they are nervous.
So far google has resisted censoring imagery, but how much longer can they hold out?
The
Personally I hope this never happens, but you can never tell what will happen...
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
The Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of the President of India.
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http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=28.614345,77.19947
WorldWind does have higher resolution maps of certain areas on earth. I can see my and my parents' house quite distinctly, while on GoogleEarth I see at best a dark pixel.
Don't worry folks, GoogleEarth won't change anything soon.
So anyways the moral of the story is I love living in a "free" continent where security can overtake my freedoms, but me must continue to use the word "freedom" even more fervently as if it is true.
In India, our presidents are rarely career-politicians, mostly because they have very little oversight on policy matters; they are usually eminent statesmen who "guide" the Prime Minister and his cabinet in formulating policy. The PM can, naturally, disregard the President's advice.
More than mere navel gazing.
Terrorism is the spread of fear among people for political control. The fear can be ignited by sabotage or murder, like planebombing the World Trade Center or "ethnic cleansing". The scary act itself is not the terrorism per se - the spread of the fear, and its use for political control is the actual terrorism. President Kalam has harnessed Google's act of publishing easily used satellite photos of India to spread fear, to achieve political ends. Both simply passing laws to censor Google, and any other "extra" items that get packaged in those laws, and all the international political clout he accumulates along the way. His campaign is terrorism, and Kalam is a terrorist. Terrorism is InfoWar, fought in the media, in our minds, and by ourselves against each other.
President Kalam knows all about terrorism - he was a rocket scientist who developed missile technology that puts fear of India's nuclear force into everyone in Asia, and therefore everyone in the world. Nuclear "deterrence" is fear harnessed for geopolitical ends, and therefore terrorism. All militarism is terrorism when used for political control, as it always is.
Terrorism is awful, unacceptable. So is the barbaric destruction terrorists harness, nearly always directed at civilians, either in "total war" or even the orwellian "collateral damage". We're so swamped with terrorism and the rhetoric about it that makes it work that we have to grow up and learn what it really is. The only cure for fear is to dispel the ignorance that lets the fear spread so widely, that lets fear of one threat contribute to control over management of another unrelated one. We have to develop the reactions to people selling fear so we can drop it. That wisdom is the only deterrence to terrorism, which makes it less successful, therefore less likely to be used. As long as terrorists get high ratings, we're doing most of their work for them, and they'll keep pumping out new products, winning, and destroying us. The more we learn to recognize them, the more we'll win. That's how we win "the war on terrorism". It's an infowar that can only be won by winning in our own minds.
I give media execs I'd like to innoculate against terrorism copies of War and Peace in the Global Village. Marshall McLuhan wrote this peppy little book about how every tech innovation in history was followed by a "new kind of warfare", including global telecommunications. Martin Fiore revised it for _Wired_ to republish, with marginal quotes from James Joyce, updating it for the Internet age. Learning its lessons is like taking a dose of terrorism vaccine. If only _Wired_ were more than tech marketing, they'd rerelease it as a Flash movie, and it would virus its way around the Net, spreading immunity as it went. When we're sophisticated enough to see that happen "spontaneously", we might show signs that we'll win the InfoWar against terrorism.
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make install -not war
-- ac at home
You think these companies run their data centers in India? All they have are some programmers and some call centers. If India dissapears, these companies can easily re-hire Americans at a higher cost to write code and answer phones. Or, outsource to a different country.
Even if you blow up the offices, as long as there are geeks, there will be IT. We can work from home even.
Fool.
Blar.
If you are not an US citizen, but live in a country that falls within the bounds of the visa waiver programme, then "Are you a terrorist?" is indeed one of the questions you have to answer on the little green form they issue you on the plane.
I believe the actual question is "Are you, or have you ever been a member of a terrorist organisation?", of course with a helpful footnote informing you that if you answer yes, you may be denied entry to the USA.
1) The US has not outsourced all, or even most important functions. Banks keep financial records in the US. Really, I've seen the computers on which they do it. No point in sending them over to India, legal problems aside, you aren't going to save any money. Most outsourcing is lower-level stuff, call centres and the like. R&D is still largely US based.
Lots of companies (for example Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, GE) have outsourced their R&D to India. Cisco's R&D center is 2nd biggest in the world. Don't fool yourself. We cannot stop this outsourcing shit.
2) India is a real, no shit, well-armed nation. If Al-Queda started trying to pull off attacks in India, they'd work to stop them, and by and large succede. Also note that India doesn't have a bill of rights, the authorities get more latitude when dealing with criminals over there, and many things considered cruel and unusual in the US are normal there. What's more, in a matter that was national security related, they'd have even less restrictions.
India does have bill of rights. It is called Fundamental Rights. If you dont know, it was actually based on US's Bill of Rights when it was written.
3) Al Queda NEVER had the resources to pull of an attack like that.
You got this ont right.