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Google Pulls Map Images At Pentagon's Request
Stony Stevenson alerts us to a little mixup in which a Google Street View crew requested and was granted access to a US military base. Images from inside the base (which was not identified in press reports) showed up online, and the Pentagon requested that they be pulled. Google complied within 24 hours. The military has now issued a blanket order to deny such photography requests in the future; for its part Google says the filming crew should never have asked.
Nobody cares, kdawson
...down to Private (or Airman shit class )for allowing it.
...how or why this is a bad thing.
Do we think there should be street level maps inside military installations on Google Street View?
Whether someone "screwed up" in the meantime, at Google, the installation, or both, is beside the point of whether the imagery should be removed.
The issue of how/why the crew was granted access, whether it was a gated or "open" installation, etc., are all unanswered.
first post uhahahaha :-)
well what did they expect? they let in a car with a deathstar-like thing on the roof. don't you think the gate guards would have asked what the heck that was? oh i don't know it could have been a camera, laser beam, bomb whatever... maybe they used the force. "move along."
google street view camera
Google Street View: Hey, we want to update Google Maps so ordinary citizens can more easily find their way around cities. Can we go into your military base with this car mounted with cameras in every direction? Seeing as so many ordinary citizens are going to and from the Starbucks next to Colonel Hapablap's quarters. Even though it's against Google policy to do this in military bases.
Military Base: I see no problem with that.
Seriously, how did this happen in the first place? Doesn't the military have security?
This obviously makes Google evil.. "Don't be evil!" "Don't be evil!" "Don't be evil!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Morocco/
Obviously Base Security thought it was an ice cream truck.
Mmm. Tasty tasty ice cream...
That would be par for the course for most base guards in the U. S.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
This is a case of a request from a big named company making a base commanders eyes like a child to candy. Every commander wants to leave a mark on the base he resides. This was an opportunity for this bases commander to be known as the great commander that has a great relationship with google. He can now stretch this at dinner parties and play the "Oh your son is into computers??? I know someone at google...maybe I can make a call for you". US military bases are not as secure as they should be.
Most anything on a military base belongs to the military. Most of the buildings, most of the vehicles, most of the people - GI stands for Government Issue... Therefore in this case it is not 'censorship' in the least.
After billions are spent on homeland security, the general public inconvenienced to hell, some of our freedom taken away in the name of security..and something like this is allowed to happen? Well, I sure do feel safe.
Is the Google crew still alive? Because i think..excuse me someone at the door..
Why can't I censor my address "for security reasons"?
I consider it a threat that anyone can scout my home for robbery (ie. the best approach and exit) without even driving by.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I lived on a military base for 4 years and was amazed that while I had to wait in line to enter the base showing proper ID (either look at my ID card or see the sticker on my car window), pizza and delivery trucks would drive on and off with no trouble. Any fool could drive a car onto the base full of explosives with a pizza sign on it and nobody would stop them. And the security itself was a joke too. During the day I used to drive on with my long hair, beard, and earring, and they would salute me as I drove past because my car had an officer sticker on it, no ID check. Only at night did they check ID's. And if you really wanted to get on base at night all you had to do was walk to one of the closed gates and climb over, or walk into the woods and find a tree that had fallen onto the fence or bloody walk down to the back bay where the fence ends at the water and walk around it. Hopefully security has improved since 9/11.
From what I gather from the article is that the film crew just pulled up to a military base and asked if they could shoot some film/pictures in there.
It sounds to me that the guys that were filming just wanted a challenge, see how far they can get waving a "google-film-crew" badge. Or just try for giggles, who knows.
Anyway, it seems to me the military is the erroneous party involved here, if you just let a citizen drive up your base and let them film, something is definatly wrong with your security
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
In support of Google's latest new product, the images have been moved to googlespy. com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPgV6-gnQaE&fmt=18
I once had a signature.
I don't see any reason why these images shouldn't be available. US military installations ought to be some of the best-defended institutions in the world; if they need to hide images "for security reasons", then there's something seriously wrong with their security.
What, does the Pentagon expect terrorists to invade a US military base if there are street-level pictures? (which I am unfamiliar with as Google is slow to provide any extras for areas outside of the USA.) Or are they worried about Google Earth people stealing stuff?
Ladies and gentleman, this is an epic point in civilization, the point at which good has triumphed.
You see, the person who let the Google truck in to do street maps did so because he thought it would be USEFUL to him.
You all might not know this, but Google is very useful for military people!! You can google lots of stuff that is classified, but to actually see it, you have to have clearance.
No, Google doesn't get to index classified materials -- their indexing is just THAT GOOD.
And this is the same reason that you don't have to fear about Google's logs of every citizens internet access will be opened up to the authorities. Every Senator, Congressman, CIA and FBI agent uses Google just as much as you do.
Folks, today Good has triumphed over petty national rivalries. Useful is more important even than national security. And Google brings you it.
You want peace on Earth? Try Google.
All your base are belong to Google
by clicking here GNAA on slashdot, successes with the
What do you know, the hippies had it right after all.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
with the U.S. at war.. the pentagon is completely right on this one.. and at the same time should have never allowed them to take the pictures originally.
...from no place other than their own bloody website.
This is more than mere censorship; its also a display of utter stupidity and ignorance on such a grand scale only the US army could portrait in my not too humble opinion.
There is simply no reason to have detailed street level photos of military bases online. It won't help citizens ferret out any wrongdoings on the government's part, and it may help someone plan an attack. Google should never have asked, and they did the right thing by removing them.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Perhaps it wasn't the best choice to start off at Area-51. That place doesn't exist after all....
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
If they had planned this out they could have had low security installations with signs saying "nuclear arsenal this way". High security installations could have been made to look like training camps. Alternatively they could have laid traps, with signs saying "would the last one out of the missile store please turn off the light", then had a heavy armed presence at all times.
Given that the streetview cameras have been seen recently in South Texas I'ld guess that this is the big army base in San Antonio, which I drove through almost by accident my last trip up there while trying to avoid some congestion on the expressway. It's basically a public street with no barriers. It's entirely reasonable for the Streetview cameras to want to shoot it as it's a major route through town. It's no more a security risk than allowing satellite photographs to be published, or allowing people to use the base as a public thoroughfare in the first place.
http://tinyurl.com/398nft
Google should have asked for a court order. What if the next time it's just street view on a street with a recruiting office on it? Or the van happens to go by a protest in front of a US monument? Where is the line drawn? Maybe this specific request was reasonable. But what about future requests?
In a democracy, everything paid for by taxpayer dollars should be open
While I agree with that statement, it implies that in non-democracies things should be something other than open.
But your last paragraph is really bad logic. You say that every scandal in the last 7 years of exposure to incompetence, corruption, or illegality has been decried as giving aid and comfort, which is largely true. That's because exposure of bad things does give aid and comfort to our enemies. The argument for exposing them anyway is that it's worth the price. It is incorrect and self-deluding to claim that there is no price to be paid.
But it is not "obvious" that covering for the people who made the mistakes is the real desire for secrecy, since that lumps all three of your categories together. The real desire for secrecy is in fact to hide our inner workings from our foes. Hiding them from ourselves is just a bad side effect that secrecy proponents are willing to accept, while you are not. And it's not the case that all revelations are met with equal cries of disdain from the Right nor glee from the Left. Lumping them all together is useful for creation of a bogeyman, but it's not an accurate picture.
sigs, as if you care.
I'm the only who thought about, why not change the pictures of the base, to be wholly incorrect, or swap them around. In this way, your average civilian Joe can enjoy zooming around the military base at home, and your average terrorist Bob cannot effectively plan an assault.
Just a thought..
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
. . . at a Navy or Air Force base where nuclear weapons are stored.
The Google Map crew would quickly learn concrete and asphalt do not taste good at all.
What?
Just because a location is afforded the terms military and base does not, in itself, mean than that location has any secrets, which might compromise national security if disclosed. We are, perhaps, getting too hung up on words rather than facts here. It seems to me that those granting permission to Google were simply using their best judgment, based on their first hand understanding of the actual situation. We should also not assume that military bases are necessarily more of a target to terrorists, etc. than other locations. Indeed, the enemies of the free world are more likely to choose soft targets, such as, for example, the Madrid and London transportation systems and Bagdad markets. Censorship should only occur when it is absolutely necessary and can be shown to be justified, otherwise this incident could be the thin end of the wedge. First military bases are excluded from mapping, then government buildings, then, hey what about schools we must protect the kids eh? Maybe the only solution is to move underground (remember Logans run?)
Why shouldn't they have asked? That's not illegal yet, is it?
Interesting to see how many IT people are angry about these pictures being available on Google, while at the same time criticizing security by obscurity as being ineffective.
I'm not from the USA, but I'd be glad to be allowed to see what is in these "super secret bases" that I as a citizen paid for.
I don't care if "terrorists" see them either, because the security of these "super secret bases" shouldn't rely on people not knowing what's in there.
Do you really think that a small group of determined people with a map of the place could attack such a base on land without being defeated in minutes ? If people can go at will in and out of your military bases, as one poster reported, then of course you've got other problems to solve... As for an attack coming from the sky, provided your plane contains sufficient bombing capabilities, there's no need for a map or pictures : just bomb everything (ask the people at Hiroshima for an example).
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hereby pronounce you SANE.
Hahahhaha
:)
And don't forget to have the obligatory sign stating, "Sekret stuffs - stay out"
The
Just provide us with a list of all Defense Department properties you'd like deleted from Google maps, along with their coordinates, and we'd be more than happy to comply.
Funny. The e-mail requesting clarification seems to have a .cn return address.
Have gnu, will travel.
that enemies wishing to do harm to the US would do so at a *military* base. It's much better to keep info about *military* targets to be sealed up, so that terrorists and other assorted bad guys will be forced to look at high-profile civilian structures instead. How is this *any* better than Saddam's use of "human shields", aside from the inconvenience of having a tank parked in your garage? At the end of the day the bombs are still pointed at your head. If anything, I would say the most logical and reasonable thing to do is put as much information as possible about these bases out into the public. Anyone who could use this information to really damage national security already knows that info anyway.
Google again publicly kisses up to the US industrial military complex. Of course privately and from the their news feed selection it is clear to me that they probably work or have worked with the US security services. Are they partly owned by the NSA or another agency? If I was running an acronym agency I would at least try. Especially since US laws allow for this very evil non democratic type of covert activity.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
It certainly is censorship, by any definition. It's just that it may be justifiable censorship, as you go on to explain that what the government is censoring, is information about "their stuff." Likewise, if a soldier writes a letter to his sweetie, and says, "We're bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We're coming in from the north, below their radar," the person who cuts that out of the letter is called a "censor."
Don't try to redefine the word; that just confuses things. It's ok to judge the act of censorship and say, "well, I guess that was ok."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Hey, where the hell am I? Where are all the "all your base" jokes? Isn't this Slashdot? I must've gotten turned around and gotten into BoingBoing or something.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
You left out a few details. Especially the part about the spot light reflecting off the pizza guy's glasses. The guard mistook this for the glowing eyes of a Goa'uld. When the SGC is under attack you shoot first and ask questions later. So they thought the pizza guy was a Goa'uld and locked him up. The NID was all set to take that Domino's guy off to area51 for study. Fortunately Carter got back from off-world before the NID could arrange transportation. Carter was able to verify that the pizza guy was not Goa'uld so they let him go.
Need to send that google car over to Area 51.... see what they "capture" there.
love the taste, hate the texture
they are street-level images of.....THE ENEMY...
"skate the web"
thnx
Why ? simply put, USA is a country of immigrants
Apart from this little glitch, there are plenty of US's overstepping their rights in pretty much every other country in the world :
- USA has coaxed most of the world's countries into signing a treaty (sorry, dont remember the name, if it has one), barring them from bringing US citizens to Den Haag Tribunal, for whatever they have done (remember CIA's actions in the 1950-1980, and both bushes's actions afterwards
...)
- USA is consistently using its economic power to stomp on the so-called poor countries around the world (look at South America's economic history
...)
- When USA fancies something, USA takes
... quite frequently at the expense of the original owner ... look at Iraq's Oil for one of the most recent exemple ... and most of the natural resources of the world, for the biggest one ...
- USA's pathological need to be seen as the good guy : so many Military operations (that, for a reminder, results firstly in thousands of exploded women, children, and more generally, innocent bystanders) have a name lexically close to free/freedom
...
- USA's frequent supporting of terrorism and dictatorships : look at the history of the following countries, and especially the role played by the CIA, military aid, or simply US military in those countries : Iran (Shah, 1953-1978) - Indonesia (Suharto, 1965) - Chile (Pinochet, 1973) - Iraq (Saddam Hussein, 1963-1985) - Uzbekhistan (US Army, 1998-2005)
... and the longest commitment, Israel (Palestinians fate, 1950 to present)
There's much more, but I'll stop here, or I might be considered a terrorist... Whose current meaning is : someone who doesnt bless W's actions every morning--
Disclaimer : Dear W (or his planned successor), I'm a lone individual, please act reasonably, and don't hurt the 60 million persons who happen to live in the same country as myself
PS : The United States of America used to be a democracy
Check out this bloggers list of Google Street Views:
http://streetviewgallery.corank.com/