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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?
Google Maps gets the Massachusetts aerial photos from MassGIS http://www.mass.gov/mgis
I believe you will find they are the blurring culprits if you download the latest aerial photos done by a 2005 fly by.
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.
It is *not* an editing artifact; Fuzzy Blob Bacteria (Fuziblobicia Bacterius) has been eating structures all over the world. I think it was even what ruined a banana and avacado that I had on the shelf. It even ate parts of my house. Termites, my ass.
Table-ized A.I.
Curious, I attempted to view the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It too was pixelated.
Have you ever been there? That's how it looks! I think they built it out of Lego.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Taking a look at another nuclear power plant, the one in Byron, IL its nice and unblured according to Google http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=byron,+il& ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=42.073969,-89.280159&spn=0.012153, 0.029526&t=h&om=1&iwloc=addr so I dunno whats with the guys out in Taxachusetts, err rather Massachusetts but Illinois seems just fine with having their power plants on display throughout the whole world. Heck even this little patch of desert is nice and unblurred http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=area+51&ie =UTF8&z=14&ll=37.228688,-115.804482&spn=0.052144,0 .118103&t=h&om=1 so bugger all I dunno. Both are from Google and both are nicely unblurred. - XSS
In Japan, just about anything "sensitive" gets pixelated.
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.
... the Maps.
U TF8&z=17&ll=43.197081,-77.628826&spn=0.006695,0.01 6909&t=h&om=1
9 897,-77.009375&spn=0.001787,0.003347&t=h&om=1
The original maps were bought from Keyhole, a company that Kodak used to own. In the past they only offered LandSat imagery of all Kodak buildings (15 meter), but now they've just gone to the original 1 meter and simply kerneled it. It's EXTREMELY easy to see here- check out the parking lots.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=14616&ie=
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.
And why would Kodak care about providing high resolution targetting information of their infrastructure to competitors, not including the 10,000 gallon tanks of various hydrocarbon solvents that are stored near the center of the complex so that, should an explosion occurr, the buildings themselves will buffer 80% of the immediate damage and pressure wave to prevent wanton death and destruction?
For 'sensitive' areas it's not much to ask.
Oh, and btw- No problem seeing 1m resolution here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&z=19&ll=38.88
My point? It's not that tough to get high resolution CQQs from your local state bureau. The county mosaics are high resolution and flown 2x per year by the USDA.
Hey, can I drop a line to the Google Maps service asking them to fat-pixel my house? I have an epiphany toilet on the roof and I got to be sure I avoid awkward situations...
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
When I'm laying in my backyard I want to be sure Google well pixelate my sensitive areas too ;)
Privacy is terrorism.
We all know thats just the cover up Area 51, built afterwards in order to remove attention.
...CONNECTION TERMINATED...
The real one is several miles away and uses an active camouflage bubble to hide itself.
Crap, am I posting from an unsecured lo
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.
Of course governments are plotting to blow up nuclear facilities. What do you think they do in their war departments? What do you think we do in ours about their facilities?
As for corporations, and governments, blowing them up isn't the only thing they'd like to do. They'd like to copy them, or just learn about security, construction or science techniques. That's what espionage, corporate or government, is mainly used for. Every day. For which those orgs already use a lot better resources than Google maps.
And what kind of defense is "who needs this public info"? Aerial images are not on a "need to know" basis. Nor does obscuring them protect them. It does protect them from investigations by journalists and members of the public, who don't have budgets or even knowledge of the alternative sources. But who do pose the real, documented threat to facilities owners, as I pointed to in my original post.
Yeah, reality. Not like that Unabomber, because it's not as exciting to the oversimplistic imagination. But it does have the advantage of being real.
--
make install -not war
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.
This thing probably got caught up in a general order to obscure ALL nuclear plants.
a services/north_campus/pinanski_hall.htmli d=988778
It's a really lame little plant, with barely any fuel. The white thing is a metal containment dome, attached to a 3-story or 4-story research building. It's about 4 stories tall. They give tours; you can look down into a pool of water to see the glowing blue core. It's called the Pinanski Energy Center.
Attacking this plant would do nothing of any real interest, though some idiots would surely freak out. The radiation source is deep below ground and really weak.
Most of the obscured area is just a parking lot. The research building extends to the northwest of the white reactor; they are attached. The area to the southwest is a parking lot for that building and the adjacent ones. The area to the northeast is a parking lot for the gym, which you can see with the white rectangle on the roof. The farthest west obscured area is a pedestrian overpass at the 3rd-floor level that runs between two unrelated buildings, the physics building (north) and engineering building (south). Most everything in the area is 4-story.
There are far more interesting things on campus that a person could attack, starting with the dorms!
You can find pictures on the web, including a lame attack by ABC news.
http://www.uml.edu/maps/pinanski.htm
http://www.uml.edu/student-services/disability/ad
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/LooseNukes/story?
Curiously enough, the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant near Minneapolis is unblurred.
2 1647,-92.636139&spn=0.007361,0.014591&t=k
5 +(S),+Monticello,+MN+55362&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=45.3324 63,-93.847833&spn=0.007271,0.021629&t=h&om=1
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&om=1&z=16&ll=44.6
To the lower left, you can even see the waste storage containers. If you look closely, you can even see the machine gun nests. Incidentally, I visited this facility as part of a physics trip back in my undergrad years, before 9-11. I don't know if they allow visitors anymore.
Also, the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant unblurred.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=1899+CR-7
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 Wikipedia does not mention media caused American deaths but it does tell us that of the 147 American deaths, 41 (28%) were killed by either friendly-fire or allied munitions. The Wikipedia does report: It seems to me that the lack of troop movement information caused more American deaths than any CNN news reports. It also appears that you've been taken in by anti-free-press FUD that was used as an excuse to even further curtail objective reporting in the current Gulf War. But if you have credible evidence to the contrary, please share it with us.
On the other hand, I agree with you that it is probably a good idea for Google Earth to be blurry around nuke plants.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Oddly enough, the area in Google Maps around the Catawba Nuclear Power Plant (see: http://www.nukeworker.com/) is at a higher resolution than the surrounding area (I grew up nearby) and obviously taken during a different season. At least, as of a week ago...
Or how about this one? It's not just blurred out, it is completely blacked out up in Alaska.
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.
I wonder which one the critical server is? I don't suppose it could be the one with a big sign on it saying, "Don't look at this one"?
KFG
I just went to the Google map for the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge where I used to work many years ago. Beautiful close up photos of the several hundred buildings in the Complex, amazing detail of the parking lots and the roofs and the fences. At max zoom, I scrolled to the building housing my first office there...my second office there....the cafeteria...the security booth where I went into the Exclusion Area (the highest secured area where the bomb grade uranium is)...down the road...huh. When you get to the building where the enriched uranium is (was?) machined and the scrap uranium reprocessed, you get a notice saying no zoom data for this area. You've got to back up into the sky a few hundred feet. Somebody knows what they're doing. They're only blocking the zoom on SPECIFIC CRITICAL BUILDINGS at Y-12 instead of all of them.
> 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?
Don't worry! Everyone knows Osama only use Google Earth. He's still boycotting Sovinformsputnik over of the Soviet Invasion of Aghanistan (Go Taliban!), and said he wouldn't be caught dead using SPOT.
I don't really mind the use of blurred out images for some things, but I think to use the mantra "better safe than sorry" too loosely is wrong. Torture a potential terrorist? Hey, "better safe than sorry". Tap the communications of innocent citizens? Hey, "better safe than sorry". Bomb a random middle easter country back to the stone age? Hey, "better safe than sorry". Ban all liquid on flights (you do know that whole London liquid terror thing didn't pan out, right)? Hey, "better safe than sorry"? I could go on, but you see the point. "Better safe than sorry" has been used way too much unnecessarily, and sometimes in a very counter-productive manner. The analogy with the firewall/server security is deeply flawed. A company has certain rights to do what is necessary within the law to protect itself from hackers. The government does NOT have really have any grounds to do some of the things it has done in the name of security. "Better safe than sorry" in that realm is a sorry excuse to take away the rights of ordinary citizens. Before I get flamed by those who think they are more patriotic should consider Ben Franklin's words when he said that those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.
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.
This makes no sense whatsoever. Why would you blur "sensitive information" in this way? I understand that this is not Google doing this, nor have I said that it is, I direct this to whoever the culprit(s) may be .If you have a single building blurred then there is absolutely no advantage to that. You have the building around it well within 100 yards to use as landmarks if you wanted to find the building, you can get a general view of the surroundings of the building from the map, and then the actual building itself I'm sure you could find pictures of elsewhere or just survey it personally as it's on a college campus.
Semper Fi
For instance, their sample page World Trade Center. "These twin towers dominate the skyline by their height and the clearness of their lines. Currently it is the center for nearly every phase of international business...."
So not really a real-time database.
Also, while you make some decent points, it's obvious that you've never actually seen the full Ben Franklin quote, otherwise you wouldn't be referring to him while making your claims. So, for your benefit, I shall now reproduce the full quote, with the parts that you're missing highlighted for ease of understanding.
Also, I should note that this quote is falsely attributed to Franklin. While he was the first to publish this statement, he was not in fact the author of the publication in which it was contained.
Thanks, but I did read the same wiki page you did before posting: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin. And since I didn't put quotes around the statement, I will NOT be accused of incorrectly quoting when all I was doing was paraphrasing. Also, I'm aware that the attribution to Franklin is an oversimplification. Now that that's out of the way, you have failed to change my opinion that the quote is relevant. Were you trying to make some SPECIFIC point about the words you highlighted or do you want to play the guessing game? Since the rest of your post comes along as pontification, I'm surprised you leave your actual point so vague.
Frankly, I don't think government should always be to blame everytime a tragedy occurs. As to the point of blurred out images, the better safe than sorry argument seems overkill. And yes, there is a COST to being "better safe". Not everyone thinks, as you do, that the cost should be paid every time with our ESSENTIAL liberties. Have you listened to the news lately about how our attorney general doesn't think habeus corpus is explicitly implied in the constitution? Well, technically, neither are free speech, press, religion or assembly. Don't be fooled into thinking that some liberties are less essential than others -- you won't have any left to give away after a while.
Well, in the example I was talking about, you can look at Yahoo's and decide for yourself. It looks suspiciously intentional to me, because it's a blob right in the middle of a lot of high-rez imagery that's suddenly pixellated, centered right over the bridge, but I suppose there could be less nefarious (but seemingly less likely) reasons.
i ne&trf=0&mvt=s&lon=-70.22285&lat=44.097109&mag=4 (I hope this link brings it up correctly)
+ maine&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=14&ll=44.10127,-70.22727&spn= 0.045795,0.107288&t=k&iwloc=addr
Here's Yahoo's (apparently censored) version:
http://maps.yahoo.com/index.php#q1=lewiston%2C+ma
And here's Google's, as close as I can match it:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=lewiston,
It's interesting to note that Google's source for the images is the Maine Office of GIS. Yahoo's doesn't list a source that I can see, but the photos look dramatically different (they look like they were taken during the summer or late spring -- hence, green -- instead of the winter or early spring / mud season of Google's).
The "censoring" in Yahoo's takes out not only the bridge and the Maine Hydro plant at Great Falls, which is the only even halfway "strategic" target in that area, but also a whole lot of the industrial buildings on the Lewiston (east) side, which if memory serves are mostly abandoned, with one shoe factory. On the Auburn (west, left) side, most of a city park is obscured. They're applying the blur tool rather liberally, if that's what they're doing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
At least their censorship doesn't include blurring out anything based on obscenity.
Seriously. HAM operators have already launched radio relay satellites in the past; and there's nothing preventing us from doing something similar as a grassroots movement. We may even be able to read some imagery in real-time. By licensing the image stream and database similarly to Wikipedia (cc-by-sa, gfdl, ...) we'd stay true to our open source credo and spirit. Much better than the crippleware commercial offerings of Google and others anyway! Competition and verifiability will keep them honest as well.
Let's just make sure to have the main satellite operation center and a few relays in countries that don't promote censorship; perhaps on a pacific island, in a desert etc... Oh, and a few reflecting surfaces and other defensive means to protect against chinese killer satellites would be a good idea too.
Financing this is would also be quite easy, I suppose. How about selling news agencies and TV networks priority slots to cover a regional crisis, wars and other events in near-real time; something they won't get from commercial operators even for big bucks?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
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.
....In the old Soviet Union, road maps (yeah, like the kind you get at the 7-11) were considered classified documents.
There is a difference in degree, but not much else.
Welcome to the Brave New World, kids, and the best part about it is that we did it all to ourselves.
Regards;