Apple Maps Accidentally Reveals Secret Military Base In Taiwan

redletterdave writes "After one Taiwanese newspaper snapped and printed a satellite photo of a top-secret military base from the new Maps application running on an iPhone 5, the defense ministry of Taiwan on Tuesday publicly requested Apple blur the sensitive images of the country's classified military installations. The top-secret radar base, located in the northern county of Hsinchu, contains a highly-advanced ultra-high-frequency long-range radar that military officials say can detect missiles launched as far away as the city of Xinjiang, which is located in northwest China. The radar system was obtained via U.S.-based defense group Raytheon in 2003, and is still being constructed with hopes to be completed by the end of this year. 'Regarding images taken by commercial satellites, legally we can do nothing about it,' said David Lo, the spokesman of Taiwan's defense ministry, in a statement to reporters. 'But we'll ask Apple to lower the resolution of satellite images of some confidential military establishments the way we've asked Google in the past.'"

Comments

Streisand Effect

[Roogna]

Is it me, or is blurring/removing something from these maps the absolute ideal way to tell the entire world: "There's something really important to someone here."

I can see the conversation now. "How do I get to the Secret Base?" -- "Take a left and follow the road until it disappears on your map, then you're there."

Re:Uh, maybe...

[drinkypoo]

The images of a base showed up, so they gave everyone the specs and capabilities of the radar system in their request to hide the base again? That doesn't seem very clever.

You know, there may be at least a very small chance that they were not entirely forthcoming when they disclosed the capabilities and purpose of the facility in question...