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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."
Nice work on Boston, champ.
you had me at #!
Well their #1, the White House worked, so I call shennanigans! GRAB YOUR BROOMS!!!
Who should I believe? You, or my lying eyes?
Error establishing a database connection
They sure blurred him out fast.
Google Earth = Google Maps? I think not. Also, the debunking photos link is dead.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
You mean an article that was inaccurate or just flat out wrong was massively promoted on DIGG? No, I simply can't believe it.
Digg: It's like Slashdot if concussed monkeys took over.
Check out the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. Definitely pixelated -- but the cars just outside the circle are quite visible.
...Not that Mr. Cheney is the secretive sort. Perish the thought!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
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.
The Whitehouses roof used to be blanked out with matte tan. Now it isn't. The pentagon also used to be blanked out. I looked at these locations myself a long time ago. More recently I was surprised to see them unblanked.
I doubt Google censors things unless they have to. While I rather have nothing censored I suspect they're, unfortunately, forced to censor some areas.
Unfortunately people are too thick to realise that terrorists would probably visit the area they want to bomb to scope it out rather than visit google maps.
Post removed for being in violation of Patriot Act
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.
the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, is most def degraded both on Google Maps and Google Earth. Dunno about the others, Dick's house is my test case for these image obscuration issues.
Do we have any filtering process here at all? its not just wrong summary, its completely wrong.
Maybe you should do some filtering yourself; not all of the items are linked to Google Maps.
This one for Boston is linked to Google, but I can't find a blurry area anywhere near the coordinates, though I'll admit I have no clue wtf a natural gas terminal looks like. FTA:
Liquid Natural Gas Terminal in Chelsea, Mass. and a Large Portion of an Industrial Port Area in Boston: Both of these areas are blurry on Google Maps.
I discovered today that Ramstein airbase in Germany (hugely important to US) is "whited out". At first I just thought it was a really big building, then I thought white concrete surfacing. Finally I realized that it was blacked out, but they tried to make it look like it wasn't. They even threw in a a few fake aircraft and shadows, but didn't quite make it past the uncanny valley. It's just a matter of time until they perfect the fabrication of imagery for those locations.
See for yourself; that ain't real.
One simple rule for its versus it's
I tried reading the Google cache of your post, but it was blurry.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's not all due to nefarious Google-Corporate-Conspiracy. I know you guys like to think it's all one big giant conspiracy to keep nerds from ruling the Earth, but it's not true. Close up Google views are from airplane photos, not satellite photos. If airplanes can't fly over an area then you don't get good pictures of it. If the airplane photos belong to the government and they don't include them in the database, you don't get good pictures of it. It's as simple as that for most things. If something is deliberately obscured you can tell.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I tried a couple toward the bottom of the list. The train station in White Plains, NY is indeed blurred, as is the GE campus in Schenectady.
Some locations in the vicinity of Goonhilly Downs in England used to be blurred, but they aren't any more. You might expect this from countries with different ideas on security and privacy, but places like Buckingham Palace and Vauxhall Cross show up just fine, and you can count how many subs are moored in Polyarnyy.
...laura
New York State blurs tank farms, but you can see the blurring on their imagery, so no, it's not Google.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
NEVERZ!
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I work at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY. Kodak Park is blurred in Google maps satellite view and I assume in Google Earth. Check out 1999 Lake Avenue Rochester, NY.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Has anyone checked to see if all the good pubs are blurry? Maybe with a touch of double-vision and a few pink elephants? Also, if blurry images are proof of national security concerns, the sheep in New Zealand must be Above Top Secret to produce some of the limitations there.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
From http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/business/yourmoney/15techno.html?ex=1124164800&en=cc2fc070fabda25b&ei=5070&oref=login
"NOW, a promised final word about Google's aerial views. Last month, I mentioned that one small part of the American land mass was obscured in an unusual way. It's not the headquarters of the C.I.A., which is there in such detail you that can tell the color of cars in the parking lots. Nor is the mystery zone a dam or a power plant. Some are clearer than others, but the differences result from varying quality of satellite photographs from place to place.
True, the roofs of the White House and two neighboring buildings have been Photoshopped, to conceal whatever protective systems may be up there. And the view of the United States Capitol grounds is blurry, though the contours of the main buildings are distinct. But to see what real camouflage looks like, zoom in on the satellite view of 1 Observatory Circle in Washington. That's where Dick Cheney lives."
chemical weapons factory. I hope that the hidden area on the map doesn't drawn anyone's attention. And therein lies the problem with obscuring secret locations on maps. The mere act of obscuring it announces it.
The Niagara Falls power station and reservoir DID used to be blurred out. After seeing this article, I checked again and it is clear as day. Some corporate/government drone probably just adjusted the rules of what needs to be censored and what doesn't.
If censorship of google maps images is a myth, then so are evolution, global warming, and the round earth "theory".
There is a Sydney harbor bridge crash in earth just zoom in and try to go up it.
This article is BS. As anyone how bothers to see there are places on google earth that are blurred or cut out and replaced with green fields.
Here are two examples.
http://maps.google.com/maps?t=k&q=52.109911,4.326597&ie=UTF8&ll=52.109912,4.326596&spn=0.00456,0.009549&z=17&iwloc=addr
http://maps.google.com/maps?t=k&q=53.2232,5.754861&ie=UTF8&ll=53.223199,5.754862&spn=0.01778,0.038195&z=15&iwloc=addr
You're going to have to cite sources on the 'requirement' and 'federal law' claims. Many companies buy satellite imagery from Russian companies, so what exactly is this law and who is the burden on?
Who says they havn't obscured the actual secret locations with a generic terrain type overlay...
I dont know if it is censored by Google or by those taking the images. But the pictures of Urbana Illinois have never been updated. Do a search see and for yourself. Why? Probably because the University of Illinois has a significant percentage of DARPA research money. Or not. Seriously. Look for yourself. Notice the neighboring town of Champaign does have updated imagery.
This article is part of a government conspiracy!
Must be new here.
...considering his uid is HALF that of yours...
please tag the article as "damagecontrol". I already did.
They are all taken from planes no matter what service you use.
Was clear a couple years ago, then got pixelated, but now it's half-and-half:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lake+wylie,+sc&ie=UTF8&ll=35.051649,-81.070637&spn=0.004479,0.006759&t=h&z=17&iwloc=addr
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.
As some people report, some of the places are blurred and pixelated.
Debunking would need a full around inspection, on as well lesser known censored locations. So in other words this Debunking article is *FUD* and by far an incomplete investigation to the matter.
Furthermore, it is in google's best interest that censorship is considered a myth / urban legend.
I've myself seen even in Finland a censored location.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Yes, it is also a sin for anyone to bad mouth Linux.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Of secure sites?
I'm a military historian, I do alot of stuff about Israel/PA/Iraq/Afghanistan. I'm found it interesting that in say Iraq, the cities will be of a medium resolution, but large American bases will be at the highest resolution. So if one wants to see where the SOCOM copters generally park or where the barracks areas are laid out at Balad, there you go.
What about Barbara Streisands home in California, is that blurred?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
For a nice date: Call strftime(3C)!
The Miami "Nap of the Americas" is a rather large building in downtown Miami which houses a LOT of interconnects which are quite important for global connectivity (netwrok, internet, telephony). It also houses one of the root servers. One of the floors belongs in its entirety to some combination of NSA/CIA/FBI and is offlimits unless you have some high authorization clearance.
The whole building is rather impressive in its capabilities, redundancy, etc...
Of visual interest, perfectly visible from the ground (though you have to be a distance away), are three very large "ping pong balls" each of somewhere between 8-15m in diameter which house three large parabolica antennas (sat-dishes), lovingly referred to as the BFD's (Big F Dishes).
Out of curiosity, from a few years back, I thought I'd use GMaps and/or GEarth to see what they looked at from above, as the Miami area was quite high-res. I was surprised to find that they were not there... In fact, I thought that I had the wrong address and spent a long while searching. When I finally came to the conculsion that it was the CORRECT place, and had a more detailed look at it, it was clear that the whole roof had been "cut 'n paste" from a boring part of it. It wasn't due to an old image which had been taken prior to the dishes, as there was no AC equipment either, and it was quite obvious that certain features were repeating (from the cut'n paste), in addition to lacks of continuity.
Every now and then I'd go back to the image with a smile on my face to confirm it was blanked out. At the same time, I think it was the competing imagery system from Microsoft was showing the balls.
Seeing this article, I thought "aha", clear proof, so I pulled it up again... However, now the balls show completely, and the roof is no longer "faked".
So, what's up then? Change of heart at Google? The decided that censorship was no longer the thing to do? Found that some requirements were ridiculous?
This one certainly was, because with the NAP itself showing a lovely sky image of itself on its homepage:
http://www.terremark.com/technology-platform/nap-of-the-americas.aspx
it's a bit silly to blank out a less revealing sat-image...
To find it on GMaps/Earth, just type in "Nap of the Americas" and you'll get it.
Thoughts?
That doesn't mean everyone needs access to aerial or satellite photographs that show centimetre-level detail of military institutions. What public interest is served by this?
How else are we supposed to locate the secret alien technology?
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:http://www.xconomy.com/national/2008/09/26/boston-unblurred-debunking-the-google-maps-censorship-myth/
That case was obvious censorship. Street view was up less than a year ago in Hyde Park, and then it just disappeared once Obama started to look more serious and once the secret service started to ramp up their efforts. Seems like if they are going to destroy an hour or two of work done by an actual person, they would have no problem blurring the work of a quick satellite passover.
Another one: "Move along, nothing to say here."
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Naval Operations Base Norfolk, VA
Does anyone believe that the Truman, Enterprise, and Roosevelt have been in the same place for the last 3 years? Yet the are tied up at piers 11 & 12 with the Big E in a serious upkeep.
Pier 22
Same 4 Submarines
Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock
2 more Nimitz class carriers, one in drydock (overhaul/new construction) and one tied to the pier fitting out after launching/overhaul.
Google has not changed these pictures since google maps added the satellite view.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Congratulations! The poster was he *first* person ever to fact-check that article! Nobody ever thought of looking the actual places on Google Maps before!
Of course, the photos on Google Maps are *never* updated, so the facts he has "fact-checked" couldn't have changed.
And most important of all that: he has found false information on the Internet! That's a huge discovery! This is a so rare event.
Meh.
The whole Google Earth and Street View thing is all a bit patchy anyway. For instance, I'm delighted to be able to report that my own address in Perth, Western Australia appears to be in an SEP field. The view from above is a totally amorphous blur, while other properties are rendered quite well. And the newly-rolled-out Street View managed to almost totally miss the street out altogether. The van driver obviously decided that turning around in my little cul-de-sac was too hard, so they just drove past it, leaving the camera pointed in that general direction. I'm not complaining.
I also have noticed military installations being blurred while nearby areas are higher-res. Take, for example, the Fort Knox National Gold Vault. It's barely recognizable as a squarish pixelated gray blob, yet most of the rest of the fort is perfectly visible. I'm not really surprised, after all, there are thousands of tons of solid gold inside that building, so keeping it under wraps makes sense. But the idea that decent resolution satellite images of high-security military installations would be available to the public is blatantly absurd. Ten years ago, the only people with access to satellite images like the ones in Google Maps were government agencies and possibly a few others. Who really thinks that the government is going to hand over aerial pictures without covering its bases first? (pun intended) I don't.
rj
Perhaps for him its all blurry....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Terrorists would probably do both if possible. An initial 'map' recon via the net, followed up by going there in person, probably multiple times. So, censoring Google images could sometimes make sense. For example, let's postulate a particularly sensitive target in the middle of a larger, secured complex. If the terrorists (or whomever) can't figure out where it is, what roads lead to it, what other buildings might provide good working sites, etc. from Google, their job becomes exaustively probing the entire complex until they know, instead of physically probing only selected parts, which could be much easier or less likely to result in them being caught during the recon phase.
Of course, some of these images being censored don't make much sense in that light. Uncleared random civilians pass within good observational range of the naval observatory grounds every day, so what would be the point of obscuring some features of number 0, Observatory drive, if those are still physically visible from the roads and public buildings?
Who is John Cabal?
In tab 1, go to Google maps and type in 3800 Steelhead way, the dalles, Oregon.
In tab 2, do the same in mapquest.
In both views turn on the Aerial/satellite view.
Note: in mapquest, the Google facilities are CLEARLY visible. In Google, they are not. In fact, in the google view, it's nothing but open fields...
In Google, click on street view, and go northwest along Steelhead until your about midway. Use the mapquest map to check your position relative to the buildings.
Then turn the google street view camera north, and BINGO - you can see the Google facilities in the distance a couple blocks north, even though they are not visible in the google satellite view.
Nothing like using Google's surveillance systems against itself. In less fraternal moments, I would call them a bunch of Paranoid Morons, but then I remember - "never attribute evil to a situation where incompetence or stupidity are simpler explanations..."
Nah - they're paranoid morons... thank god for mapquest...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Who the hell modded this troll? It's still pixelated, just less so. ffs...
It's not really censorship in this case. It's security.
For years, google earth obscured the two identical buildings next to the white house.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I have a friend who recently got back from a tour of duty in Iraq. He had not heard of Google Earth, so I showed it to him and he wanted to look up some of the bases he was stationed at. He found them, and they were not blurred, but they were empty. There were no vehicles, aircraft or people anywhere. He pointed out what was armored motor pool and said, "That should be full of tanks, there's usually a line of aircraft at either end of the runway." He pointed out the parking lot at the mess hall and rec center that was completely devoid of any cars or people. So, while the image wasn't blurred, it was definitely edited.
That's why we... er... THEY blur out so many harmless and strategically useless locations. It poisons the data pool when looking for actual 'stuff' that might be important.
It's almost insulting that the place I work ISN'T blurred out.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
As a historian, you might want to stick to history. The Google images for Balad have been incorrect since about 6 months into the war. I've been there several times and planning any kind of attack based on the Google pics would get you no where. There aren't barracks areas; housing is distributed all around the base. SOCOM forces have lots of C-130's, not helicopters.
Balad airbase is a lot bigger than those Google pics make it out to be. Oh and for the record, those helicopters you see on the southeast runway approach are most likely taxiing towards the runway- they wouldn't be parked that far from cover (it's a 200 yard run to that HAS right next to them).
There are entire sections of flightline and taxiways that don't show up on Google. Huge buildings (super-walmart-size) that are newer than the google pics. All of those tents and trailers have been moved several times since these photos.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that these pics really are ancient history as far as the war is concerned.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
I would consider nuclear power plants sensitive, but there's no problem zooming in on Darlington.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
I mean, what's the right thing for Google to do here? For one, a ton of people are unhappy in the first place about their imagery appearing on Maps. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Secondly, it's their data, they can do whatever the hell they want with it, surely? They're under no obligation to provide us with an uncensored view of the entire world. If you can't walk into a place as a pedestrian without official documentation etc, then you probably don't need to see it in detail from the air either.
Well, I'm a historian, not an image analyst :) Anything high res on a facility of Balad's importance made me wonder.
Its good to know
Sometimes bad data is a form of watermarking whose data is being used. Especially the crystal effect.
At least, so I've heard from a friend who worked for Google. Traditional paper mapmakers have intentional errors (misspellings, paths, etc) as well for the same reasons, so it makes sense.
I looked into Groom "Area 51" Lake a little while back. Comparison of then present and previous pics showed they'd installed a high flow jet fuel system designed for the SR-71, after the SR-71 had been retired. A few other planes could use the system, but none of them made use of cryogenics such as was being installed on the same site. I don't hold with the speculation generated, but it was a damn interesting use of non-censored imagery. The resolution was good enough that you could tell trucks from cars on the roads nearbby.
OTOH, if I were going to bamboozle unfriendlies who might use such imagery for nefarious reason, I'd simply have Google replace the shot with a photoshopped shot replacing the real version with half turned around and half falsified data. Anyone using Google stuff to infiltrate would find themselves lost and confused and either forced to leave or be very visible wandering around clueless. I know how often they moved around the gutted shell of a B-52 at a SAC base I was at to give spysats the impression there were more planes operational than there were. Don't assume similar trickery stopped with the end of the USSR or that Google wouldn't participate given sufficient nudge nudge incentive.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
http://maps.google.de/maps?hl=de&q=maps+geilenkirchen&ie=UTF8&ll=50.960427,6.044025&spn=0.027031,0.06815&t=h&z=14&iwloc=addr you see? the NATO airbase is obscured! TFA is BULLSHIT!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Oh my, lots to see here! 1. Google Earth maps are not real time and could go back many years. My own town is still caught in 2003. 2. The only reason to obscure anything is to hide a clue on the exterior of the facility, such as military equipment, antennas, planes, etc. We all know where everything is. What we don't know is what they're up to! 3. The highest resolution photo's are satellite and high altitude aircraft. Need I remind you all who owns these. Even the mighty Google Gods cannot attain this level of omniscience.
If you're interested in Balad, here are the pictures I took the first time around. Nothing too revealing, but you get the general lay of the land.
http://homepage.mac.com/hylic/vacation/index.html
Take it easy-
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
PS I'm joking
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
is obviously blurred
Zoom in a bit from there, and it's totally obvious.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
it's important to distinguish between what is censored by Google and what is censored by the map provider. But that would be hard to know. I've seen blurred areas in Amsterdam - not sure why. And the roof of the Whitehouse is obviously greyed out the detail. Who do you blame, google or the map maker? There would be a whole chain of links between taking the photo from space and getting to your monitor. And yes, it would make sense to assume they get their maps from more than one source wouldn't it? It looks like a patchwork so I'd be very surprised if it wasn't. I would imagine google would be pretty quick to blur something because otherwise someone might start a trend of suing them or otherwise stop them from doing so well with what is essentially something that doesn't really belong to them (global maps) Perhaps in time more adventurous sites like wikileaks might host the uncensored versions that might exist between updates or from various sources.
Stupidity is its own reward.
A god way to find important buildings
Being able to spin the earth around with just a mouse and peer down on the world certainly is a very god way of finding important buildings.
Since Google doesn't own its own fleet of satellites, its only recourse in these cases of deliberate pixelation is to buy more imagery from other sources, which it sometimes does.
YET! Since Google doesn't own its own fleet of satellites YET.
Now here's something I don't get:
- If Google pixelates some sensitive government sites, people start yelling that it's censorship and it's bad and how dare they trample on our democratic rights
- If they drive around with their Street-View mobile, shooting pics of numberplates, front gardens, underpants and men walking into seedy shops, all newspapers are yelling it's a disgraceful intrusion in people's privacy.
So they can't protect sensitive government information, but they have to make sure they don't embarrass a guy going to his favorite video shop?
Clearly a member of the Anti-MS army. I was only saying that the EFFECT OF THE PIXELATION was more noticeable because of the higher resolution of the map I linked to. I can't help that none of the other mapping services offer this type of imagery (the so-called "birds' eye view"), nor should I have to. MS have a superior service here, get over it.
This place is falling apart.