Slashdot Mirror
Nicaragua Raids Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps
Garabito writes "An error on Google Maps has caused an international conflict in Central America. A Nicaraguan military commander, relying on Google Maps, moved troops into an area near San Juan Lake along the border between his country and Costa Rica (Google translation of Spanish original). The troops are accused of setting up camp there, taking down a Costa Rican flag and raising the Nicaraguan flag, doing work to clean up a nearby river, and dumping the sediment in Costa Rican territory."
My understanding is that minor-but-with-alarming-possibilities-of-escalation operational cartography fuckups have been occurring since approximately the invention of boundary stones, well back in the BCs...
The main amusement here is that A)Google gets mentioned by name and B)the ease of use of a mass-market civilian product leads a military user(who presumably has access to better information, from some sort of national mapping/geospatial intelligence/GIS wonk service; but probably with a lousier interface) to rely on it.
"taking down a Costa Rican flag", should have been another big clue
Who is commanding this chicken-shit outfit? Simons? How could they not know something was wrong when they find the wrong flag on the flagpole? "Hey! Those bastards snuck over and put up their flag on our land! This land here...that we never had before..." This sounds like a land grab, and if someone notices, blame Google for a "map error."
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Which suggests that the "Google Maps" explanation is probably a BS excuse for accidentally-on-purpose dumping stuff in Costa Rica.
I am officially gone from