Mapping Service Blurs Out Military Bases, But Accidentally Locates Secret Ones

schwit1 shares a report from Popular Mechanics: A Russian online mapping company was trying to obscure foreign military bases. But in doing so, it accidentally confirmed their locations -- many of which were secret. Yandex Maps, Russia's leading online map service, blurred the precise locations of Turkish and Israeli military bases, pinpointing their location. The bases host sensitive surface-to-air missile sites and facilities housing nuclear weapons. The Federation of American Scientists reports that Yandex Maps blurred out "over 300 distinct buildings, airfields, ports, bunkers, storage sites, bases, barracks, nuclear facilities, and random buildings" in the two countries. Some of these facilities were well known, but some of them were not. Not only has Yandex confirmed their locations, the scope of blurring reveals their exact size and shape.

Comments

Re:They were not secret

[Misagon]

BTW, it is not only military installations that get blurred out. Critical infrastructure installations often also gets blurred out on maps. For example power grid stations, nuclear power plants and radar installations used by commercial air traffic.

Re:They were not secret

[Vanyle]

The funny thing is, Google is not blurring anything about this base, but Yandex is.

Here is the base on google maps: https://www.google.com/maps/se...