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China Blocks Foreign Companies From Mapping Its Roads for Self-Driving Cars (thedrive.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tough-luck dept.

The Chinese government is blocking foreign companies from mapping its roads in great detail, according to a Financial Times (paywalled) report. The restrictions, which reportedly do not apply to Chinese firms, are being instituted in the name of national security. China is concerned about spying. From a report: China has restricted the recording of geographic information for more than a decade because it believes giving other countries access to that information constitutes a security risk. Geographic surveys can't be performed without permission from the government, and many digital cameras don't record GPS coordinates for geotagging, as they do in other countries, according to Fortune.

3 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Shades of Stalin by mykepredko · · Score: 4, Informative

    Reading this reminded me of Stalin ordered that the Soviet Union never published accurate maps of the country for fear of spying/invasion/bombing. This went on until the USSR's break up.

    Not surprisingly, Stalin ordered the creation of very detailed maps of the rest of the world to aid in spying/invasion/bombing: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/...

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    Mimetics Inc. Twitter
  2. Re:google maps does not even line up right in chin by dwheeler · · Score: 2, Informative

    China indeed forces geographic data to be "off" a little bit compared to the rest of the world. For more information, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in particularly the discussion on the GCJ-02 datum (colloquially Mars Coordinates).

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    - David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
  3. Re:Then the cars aren't truly self-driving by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Informative

    trump can not, nor will, make an issue out of this.
    So far, trump has shown more favortism towards china and russia than either W or O. Hell, he PROMISED to stop China's dumping and once his kids got their IP from china, he turned china into his best friends, while they are laughing at what a traitor Trump is.

    But, CHina will crack down further in a short bit and prevent any western car maker from having self-driving vehicles in CHina. They really are a danger esp. since CHina is in a cold war with the west.

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    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.