India Forms Expert Group on Google Earth Images

Digital Inspiration writes "According to Yahoo News, the Indian Government, 'concerned over satellite images of its strategic installations being made available in the public domain by internet search engine Google, has decided to constitute an expert group to suggest ways to safeguard the country's interests.' Earlier, The President of India expressed concerns that terrorists could use Google Earth to plan assaults on the Indian parliament, the President's house and government offices in New Delhi, all of which show up clearly in Google Earth's photos. Google Earth has expressed its readiness to have discussions with the Government regarding the issue."

Comments

Who's forming the group?

[mattyohe]

Submitter, don't put something in quotes if you have paraphrased it or changed it. You completely changed what that article says. Your subject says one thing and then the content says another.

Actual Quote from Article: "Concerned over satellite images of its strategic installations being made available in the public domain by internet search engine Google, India has decided to constitute an expert group to suggest ways to safeguard the country's interests."

Re:Who's forming the group?

[ytpete]

He used single quotes, which are what you would use if you slightly paraphrased a sentence.

That's a common misconception. In fact, quotes and paraphrasing don't mix. Anything you enclose in quotes must be completely unaltered (unless you use square brackets). Single quotes are used only for nesting one quotation within another.

See Wikipedia, for example: "It is generally considered incorrect to use quotation marks for paraphrased speech" (and that is a real direct quote).

bad analogy

[penguin-collective]

The term "security through obscurity" is a technical term that refers specifically to keeping protocols and algorithms of a cryptographic system secret. Trying to extend that concept to mean "anything that is kept secret" is overextending its meaning. Even standard cryptographic systems rely on keeping things "obscure"--like the key, for example.

The question of whether satellite data of military installations needs to be kept secret is something that warrants a separate discussion. I think that eventually, there will be no way around making all defense and police installations secure against aerial photos, but for the time being, aerial and satellite photography may indeed may make them more vulnerable.

You Could Learn From Computer Security People

[AHumbleOpinion]

Security through obscurity is at best a short term fix.

Your statement suggests a superficial understanding of security. There is nothing wrong with obscurity. It is merely one of *many* tactics that should be employed *simultaneously*. Problems arise when someone relies predominately on only one tactic, whether the one tactic is obscurity or something else doesn't really matter.

Compare that to NSA's doing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the Indian Government is looking at the fact that coupled with the layout and pictures of President House, the Parliament or other such places, one of the dozens of Paki/Kashmiri terror groups may actually go ahead and try their luck with a grenade or a rocket to gain notoriety and subsequent funding. That's how many of the current outfits (banned by US as well) have gained prominence, by killing more and striking important facilities.

Even if they understand well that censoring Google Earth would not stop those who want, access to such maps, there point is to not make it easy for wannabe terror outfits.

Had it not been camera-phones, we'd have less of boyfriend-shoots-naked-pics-of-GF-circulates-them MMS-scandals. The analogy is far fetched but can be used to understand the point of Indians.

Unlike US, India is not so insulated with it's porous borders and a scattered distrubtion of religious communities.

~mukul

Re:Area 51

[jacksonj04]

It's also done in Google Earth. The White House has a 3D model as does a lot of Washington, but on photo view the roof is whited out completely.