Slashdot Mirror
Google Blurring Sensitive Map Information
Cyphoid writes "While viewing my school (the University of Massachusetts Lowell) with Google Maps, I noticed that a select portion of the campus was pixelated: the operational nuclear research facility on campus. Curious, I attempted to view the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It too was pixelated. What or who is compelling Google to smudge out these images selectively? Will all satellite images of facilities that the government deems 'sensitive' soon be subject to censoring?" Not surprisingly, the same areas are blurred in Google Earth. But how about images from satellites operated by other nations, such as SPOT or Sovinformsputnik?
Now it's even easier to pick out nice fat targets.
Deleted
C'mon! Now if you didn't know what you were looking at before, now you know there's a target of interest there.
Yeah, cos the unabomber had his own lear jet and imaging equipment. Don't discount the threats from the general public. There's a lot more of them. And some of them are more crazy than the average terrorist.
These blurred images are just Google caving into various narrow interests with either something negligent to hide from an enquiring public or its reporters [prisonplanet.com], or just pretending to secure facilities with meaningless handwaving, or both.
Or buying images from a third-party that has already blurred them out, which is very likely the actual case.
Yeah, because the security threats to facilities come from the general public which gets its aerial imagery free from these years-old databases, not from corporate, governement or international orgs with budgets for the plentiful (even cheap) aerial/satellite products with recent updates, higher resolution, GIS overlays, even realtime observations. Or their own aircraft/satellites to generate their own custom data.
So you're saying we should pay no attention to the simplest and easiest of security measures because a potential adversary could take more agressive action. That's like saying it's okay to have a sticky note with the root password on a critical server as long as you keep the firewall updated.
"Years-old databases"? It's not like the design of a nuclear power plant changes on a day-to-day basis.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
It's like a terrorist's shopping list. Grab Google and zoom around the map. Mark blurred areas on map. Bomb area.
So they know that there is 'something' under that blur that might be vulnerable. How to attack? No idea. The thing is.."terrorists" are not much good at bombing at any distance. Even a couple hundred yards is problematic. That requires more equipment than can be hidden under a coat.
So...deny them easily accessible photo intel (Google Earth), and force them to actually come to the location to recon. Where they might be noticed and hopefully stopped.
I have found it to be a bit annoying as I use features around the airport for identification for my work, and it was always nice to have an outside 'reference' which might or might not agree with the GPS solution.
For every "terrorist use" there are thousands or more productive uses like yours. Blurring it out only serves to make people's jobs harder and is thus a drag on the economy.
That's terrorism. Miminal threats that cause out of proportion reactions that themselves cause more damage than than any direct terrorist action.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I am just curious how many terrorist attacs are done with the help of Google Earth. And even IF it would work as stated, it would only divert the attack to a different place. Just like a good lock on your door will prevent a burgelary in your house, yet is does not prevent the robber going to your neighbours house.
I wonder what will happen if somebody still blows up the place. Will it be obvious that blurring does not work, or will the blurring be extended to schools in general to protect the children because of terrorism? Well, not so much wonder as be afraid of the answer.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in Waterford, CT - my hometown - is not blurred at all. See it here.
Another problem is that terrorists tend to attack people, not assets. At most they'll attack symbols like the WTC, but even then it was calculated to kill the most people they could. This map blurring would be better spent on the Mall of American and sports stadiums, but if you follow that logic you'd eventually blur the entire map and burn all paper maps, because all of the maps could be used to help a terrorist. I'm not saying that anyone would explicitly advocate blurring the entire map (or burning the paper ones) but that isn't how it transpires. When someone comes to you and says "I want to blur X, so I don't help the terrorists," which ones do you deny? Because the way they've structured the question, to deny any request is to implicitly help the terrorists. That's the way the Bush administration got everything they wanted--they just appended "so we don't help the terrorists" to the end of every request, and it went like butter. And we end up with warrantless surveillance, torture, and watered-down habeus corpus. When the slope really is slippery, then the "slippery slope" fallacy doesn't apply all that much.
Yeah its like saying, "Look here guys! There must be something really neat here"
That kind of paranoid thinking leads to real problems. A simple rule should be, that if it is visible from a public space, such as the publics' airspace, then it shouldn't be censored. Simple, direct and legal. Otherwise, what you often get is a population of citizens that is more ignorant than your enemy is.
Classified and need to know are very important when it comes to operational details of the military, such as tactics and capabilities, but when it comes to fixed buildings and locations, it is a good rule that if it is visible from an unprotected especially a public area then you shouldn't assume that you are fooling your enemy simply by censoring public discourse. In fact, it is a dangerous assumption to make.
As for whether it is a violation of my rights to keep this information away from me, no it wouldn't, but it would be a violation of freedom of expression to prevent someone from taking a picture in public. Such as from a bridge in New York or any number of other public places that supposedly do not allow pictures to be taken. I understand walking into a secure facility the need to leave your camera phone at the door, but on a public right of way (land or air) or from a public park preventing people from recording something that is visible (without any penetrating radar or otherwise intrusive detection) is a clear violation of the first amendment of the US Constitution.