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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."
Time for Indians to use Area 51 techniques, put things under the ground, problem fixed.
While I understand the concerns of the Indian government, I question the viability of this in the long run. Security through obscurity is at best a short term fix. If their sites can be attacked simply by knowing the above ground layout, one has to question the overall security of those installations. What's to stop a terrorist from simply getting the photos from another source? Perhaps through aerial photography? If Google agrees to help, I hope the Indian government will take the time to implement some genuine security that's not so vulnerable. Perhaps it's time for security people to experiment with the idea of peer-review?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Google wouldn't put the same pics of US installations would it? So it should treat the Indians with the same amount of respect and consideration.
Considering all the ridiculous things the Shrub administration has done in its so-called "war on terruh", you'd think they'd at least strategically blur satellite photos of our military installations. Lord knows, they'd like to blur that porn you were jerking off to last night. But we all know they would never ask an American business to stop distributing its products in the name of stopping terruh. Regulating capitalism is unamerican! It's just more evidence to me that they are not really interested in protecting our troops and citizens... unless it somehow profits them or increases their control.
Anything that a satellite way up there in orbit can take a picture of, a remote-controlled plane with camera attached can take a photo of. Trying to stop terrorists having this information is insanity. India need to come up with security that assumes the terrorists already have this information.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
In 20 years, airplanes will need to seal their windows to prevent security breaches. No more looking outside.
Sad really.
Outsourcing brings the jobs that the people in USA don't want to do. You will realize that in the address above that it belong to one of the Economic zones. Besides why don't you allow access to Connecticut on google Maps. If the indian subcontinent is volatile why the fuck would you give another tool to the Terrorists.
Not that I could see Pakistan starting a nuclear exchange with India. If such an exchange were to occur and, say, 100 million were lost on both sides, India's remaining population would be .9 billion or so while Pakistan's would be in the negative numbers (IIRC, can't be bothered to look it up in the CIA world factbook.) And I'm stealing that quote more or less directly from an Indian government official who said the same thing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Go to Google Maps. Try to look at the White House and the surrounding area. You'll see that a great deal of detail has been obscured, precisely because of the security concerns.
Damn. Now if I want to do evil there, I'll have to wait forty seconds for one of the Discovery channels to do a documentary that includes way closer-up pictures.
But these are public photos. Google just bought them, and so can anybody else. I don't understand why Google Earth is considered a security risk when the source of the images isn't. Do they think that terrorists don't use money in exchange for goods and services?
So now, governments want privacy, yet they take privacy away from their citizens.
Something is very, very wrong with this paradigm.
This is a flawed argument. It's, essentially, that if something isn't 100% secure, it's the same as being 100% insecure.
Google Earth makes it about a billion (well, some large amount) times easier to discover and access the data. It's also much harder to track down who is accessing the data (well, for India, I suppose it doesn't really apply, but if the satellite images are from an American company, at least in the US the government could subpoena who accessed them and maybe track down the fact that some known Bad Guy has been looking at some vulnerable Secret Place.
So the point being, the data is more readily available, which is not good for people who want to keep the data hidden. This sucks for those who want to keep the secrets, but I agree with the sentiment you are trying to defend, which is, "too bad for them".
To be fair, how many countries get attacked on a daily basis with rockets? They also have to worry about news reports that inadvertently tell the bad guys how to adjust their fire. Britain had a similar problem during World War II with German rockets.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This whole thing is blown waaaay out of proportion, which plays great in Google's court. Nobody seems to want to understand that Google put online images that were already publicly available elsewhere. Get it? Google didn't take the photos. Google didn't declassify them. Google just repackaged them and reposted them. If only I could generate this much controversy by republishing others' information...
However you can buy images from France and Russia so that's no real protection.
Do you think that a potential terrorist really cares how easy to use Google is, or that they make the information more readily available? In a world without Google Earth, would he fire up his browser, learn that the information is not readily available, and give up, saying, "Well, I couldn't possibly just go out and buy this stuff from the source, so I think I just won't bomb Parliament!"
Exactly! Those terrorists have millions of dollars in funding, access to all sorts of cold war technology, have managed to orchastrate an intricate plot involving the simultanious hijacking of several American airliners, have managed to destroy the World Trade Center and damage the Pentagon, but they absolutely depend on Google *fricking* Earth for their maps! Please!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Good. Now go download Google Earth and see what you are missing.
Anyone that wants to find such a building doesn't have to resort to Google Maps. Google Maps will just print out a pretty online picuture.
I mean, the address of the White House was been well known for the past 100 years, and no city map of Washington D.C. fails to list it. It's been featured in song, the title of a film, and a trivial pursuit question for decades. I imagine that any Indian seat of power (residence or professional building) is equally as well known within the city's limits (and possibly nationwide).
Google Maps is only going to help the people that need a top-down photograph of the building and surrounding area. The only organizations which could easily profit from such information already have spy planes, satellite photography, survey maps, and other such tools. Other people just need a few dollars to buy the best street map of the city.
It's worth noting that the NSA isn't obscured in Google Maps. Why not? Because they have actual security, and understand that if a mere aerial photograph is enough to in any way increase a terrorist's chances of success, it means your security is completely inadequate.
Similarly, you'll note that there are nice high resolution maps of Area 51 available to anyone who's interested. Try using the map to get to anywhere it shows, and you'll find out why nobody has needed to try and ban the maps.
The way I see it, India has just telegraphed to the world "Hey, the security of our Parliament is completely inadequate!" They should be hoping no terrorist is reading the story.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak