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

Area 51

[k00110]

Time for Indians to use Area 51 techniques, put things under the ground, problem fixed.

Re:Area 51

[balster neb]

The building in questions aren't exactly the type that can be hidden underground. The buildings they want obscured include residences of the Prime Minister, the President, as well as various nuclear and military facilities. The concern is, among other things, that the satellite images will reveal the location and nature of the defences around these buildings.

Similar blocking is done for the White House and the Capitol building in the US (at least for Google Maps, I haven't checked Google Earth).

Could Learn From Computer Security People

[Comatose51]

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?

Google should fix this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The only surprising thing...

[Max Threshold]

...is that other governments haven't expressed concern about this. A few months ago, I checked out the photos of my last duty station, NAS Atlanta. The resolution was good enough that you could make out rows of tiny green dots criscrossing the flight line -- Marines on their morning FOD walkdown.

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.

Misplaced attention

[Bogtha]

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.

So...

[Greyfox]

Rather than being able to see the super-secret installation, they'll see a big black box there? Indicating to them that there's either a super-secret installation there or a giant penis statue? So rather than seeing more buildings and having to decide if they're interesting or not, they'll know that there IS in fact something interesting at that site? And the guys who'd really be interested (Pakistan) don't need to know what's there, they can just lob a nuke in and level the whole area.

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.

Re:Security Through Obscurity

[Guspaz]

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?

Re:Security Through Obscurity

[node 3]

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".

Re:Security Through Obscurity

[Stiletto]

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!"

Re:Too dumb for words.

[be-fan]

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!