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Google to Blur Sensitive India Sites
theodp writes "Citing unnamed officials, the Times of India is reporting that Google Earth has agreed to blur and distort Indian locations identified by the government after security concerns were voiced by the country's president. This includes total blurring of locations like government buildings, as well as the outlines/building plans of key facilities. This came about after a recent meeting between Google technicians and Indian officials."
Huh ? Do they realize these satellite and aerial photos (high-res areas are actually photographed from planes not satellites) can be freely and relatively anonymously purchased by anyone from companies such as NAVTEQ ? Blurring sensitive areas in Google Earth/Maps is not going to stop "evil" people from getting access to unedited photos...
India frequently deals with domestic terrorism, especially around the Kashmir area.
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Hate to tell you this, but anything that can be be seen by the human eye by legally flying small aircraft is considered public. Certain large cites in the have busted people growing pot in their backyard using low flying aircraft.
If you read the article, it actually says that the images would be carefully camaflouged, not just blurred. So, you see low res pics or you see buildings etc that are not actually there. This has been done to various US military installations already (and even the white house)... so it's nothing new really.
:-)
Quoting from the article
" Official sources said Google Earth would distort building plans by adding structures where none existed or masking certain aspects of a facility. This could be done without attracting attention to such establishments, which range from laboratories, mines, military sites, space and atomic centres and residences of high-profile VVIPs. "
The main reason why this was done was because India's President (a highly respected man and very intelligent) was worried that such high resolution imagery could pose security implications.
I personally think that this will help reduce access to terrorists that may be planning attacks. It is nothing against major governments that already have all the satellite information that they need. A bit too much info actually.. as the US found out when India blasted their nuclear device right under everyone's noses
Mod me down if you like, but he's right. You only consider them terrorists because of what is fed you by governments and news corporations. Good book for this topic: Dining With Terrorists - Phil Rees (ISBN 0-330-43305-9)
Even without censorship, not all locations on Google Earth have the same amount of resolution. Urban areas in 'non-third-world nations', in general, have the highest resolution. So blurring (or obscuring) per se isn't an issue, unless there are complete blanks for certain areas. Which is not the case here, presumably.
More than mere navel gazing.
So now, not only Google but also the terrorists would know which key Indian establishments are located where:
Key establishment is a blurred spot!
Who knows how complete is the list of key establishments provided to google?
Also, there are techniques to get information about the real image out of blurred images. This link http://dheera.net/projects/blur.php is only about numbers but I'm sure there are other ways to get more information out of blurred images.