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Debunking the Google Earth Censorship Myth
waderoush writes "There's a persistent Web meme to the effect that Google obscures sensitive or top-secret locations in Google Maps and Google Earth at the insistence of national governments. A July IT Security article promoted on Digg, 'Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps,' revived this notion. But the article has been widely criticized, and I did some fact-checking this week on the six Boston-area locations mentioned in the IT Security list. As it turns out, not one of the allegedly blurred locations has degraded imagery in Google Maps, as my screen shots demonstrate. My post looks into the sources of the misleading IT Security piece, and of other mistaken rumors about Google Maps."
Playland, the amusement park in Rye, New York, also shows up as blurred compared to the surrounding suburbs:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=52.248722,4.43965&spn=0.3,0.3&t=k&q=52.248722,4.43965
Cannot imagine why!
... now back to the bit mines.
Maybe it is still blanked by something more plausible?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Google Street View steers clear of Obama's neighborhood
I find it odd how the Perry nuclear power facility in Lake County, Ohio was sensitive enough to be blurred for the longest time but Davis-Besse and Fermi just up the coast of Lake Erie were not.
The game.
I suspect that most of these had been obscured at some point in the past, such as these natural gas tanks in Boston. IIRC, they were quite pixelated a mere 6 months ago, but are no longer due to change in policy or whatnot. I remember noticing just a few of these (around Boston, of course), so I can't speak much against the others. But with that in mind, I think it's pretty unfair to discredit the 'Blurred Out' article; it may be outdated, but it's not necessarily a myth.
I work at one of those facilities and know damn well that LAST YEAR a coarse resample was laid over the campus where I work. Google has recently [last two or 3 weeks i think] updated the imagery for eastern massachusetts. I know because my new neighbors house suddenly appeared in google satellite view and it went from winter imagery to summer...which is a huge drop in information, btw because of tree canopy. The newer images do not blur the facility I work at but then neither did the old ones when they first came out. Just give 'em time.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
The Naval Observatory is the location of the residence of the Vice President of the United States.
Read my blog.
Excellent points all. Further consideration: Regardless of what is produced by the application (Google Earth)there is no easy way to determine its legitimacy or accuracy. Just because an area isn't blurred doesn't mean what you're seeing is accurate. Oh, and I just checked the Chernobyl (Chornobyl) NPP, and the actual power plant and surrounding Zone of Alienation is still blurred.
> I wonder how many russian satellites have good coverage of the United States.
Since 1992 it has been possible to purchase Resurs and Kometa imagery of the US through the state company Soyuzkarta. This required the declassification of the military Kometa's cameras - a 10-metre resolution topo and a 2-metre resolution mapping camera.
One of the first customers, and one which has been a reliable repeat customer, was the USAF. They used imagery of Washington to plan General Dolittle's cortege.
Exactly.
I like to check out through google maps places I used to be stationed at while in the US Army over a decade ago, and I can clearly see how most roofs are showed as white rectangles, and antenna pads are whited out so you can't see in which direction they point. This is on both training facilities and in active duty stations.
In the case of a medevac heliport all you can see is whited out taxi areas and pads, while at the same level of detail in a civilian facility you can easily follow the lines painted on the surface.
This has been going on for years, nothing new.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Did you really not read the article?
"As Google has acknowledged in the past, there are spots, such as the U.S. Naval Observatoryâ"home for another 116 days to Vice President Dick Cheneyâ"that have been deliberately blurred or pixelated by the companies that sell aerial imagery to Google. (See image at left. You can click on this image and all of the images in this article to see larger versions.)"
So Google didn't censor it, the company selling them the images did, that's what the article says.
Some of the newer bases, like the US CENTCOM complex in Qatar was designed to be low-observable from recce, electro-magnetic and optical. There are some good photos from back in '02 on globalsecurity's site under public eye.