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."

Blurry, no; pixelated hell yes

[FlyByPC]

Check out the Naval Observatory [google.com] 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!

Re:Rye Playland

[lpaul55]

better link:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=rye+new+york&ie=UTF8&ll=40.965803,-73.673158&spn=0.013999,0.020449&t=h&z=16 [google.com]

Re:So what about the other 45 locations?

[Chrismith]

I only looked at the first few locations on the list, but several of them were obviously blurred or pixelated -- the Naval Observatory in DC is a perfect blurry circle amid high-res imagery, and the Air Force Base listed as #4 looks like someone inserted a mosaic art piece over the image.

Did this guy really not look at these locations? Those were in the top five, and there are links to the Google Maps locations in question, for crying out loud.

Re:Fact Checking Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Google Maps uses the same image database as Google Earth, so yes. It's just presented differently, and in some cases with added data (i.e. terrain). Go and look for yourself: zoom into any city street with both services and compare, the cars are identical on both.

Re:Blurry, no; pixelated hell yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Per se [wikipedia.org].

Re:Fact Checking Failure

[maeka]

All the higher-res images are airplane shots, not satellite. Why does this need constant reminding?

Ramstein airbase is whited out

[ChrisCampbell47]

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. [google.com]

Re:Ramstein airbase is whited out

[NeilTheStupidHead]

Actually, I think someone just used a magic wand type tool and then maxed out the saturation.

Re:Rye Playland

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a fairly loose definition of "Rye, New York".

Re:Ramstein airbase is whited out

[Anonymous Coward]

"Flugplatz" is German for "airport" -- those roads are all unnamed roads which are part of the airport. This also explains while some of them don't match up perfectly between the map and the photos. Private roads are rarely mapped perfectly (although really, I think they match up pretty well for the most part).

Here are some known censorings...

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Propaganda piece of an article

[jonfr]

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 [google.com]
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 [google.com]

Re:Rye Playland

[Kindgott]

For some reason, the Kohl's Shopping Center in nearby Port Chester is also blurred a bit, though I can't fathom why.

I've been thinking about starting a blog containing pictures of places that are obscured on Google Maps for no apparent reason.

http://tinyurl.com/4ysydq [tinyurl.com] is the shopping center's view.

Re:Cite a source...

[stephanruby]

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?

I wonder how many russian satellites have good coverage of the United States. Geostationary [wikipedia.org] satellites wouldn't have good coverage (at least for map-making of the United States, since they're following the equator and would view the United States at an angle). The russian satellites on the Molnya orbit wouldn't have very good coverage either (at least for anything Naval in the United States, scroll down to see their coverage map [wikipedia.org], besides they're very high and probably wouldn't get good detailed pictures)

Now, I don't doubt that the russians have many low altitudes geosynchronous satellites that are designed especially to have good coverage of the United States, but I wouldn't be surprised if those satellites are mostly military spy satellites (of Russia, France, or wherever), and that due to the military purpose of those satellites, that their images don't get sold on the public open market yet.

In any case, here is a newsletter from google talking about their sources for imagery.

[...]

Most people are surprised to learn that we have more than one source for our imagery. We collect it via airplane and satellite, but also just about any way you can imagine getting a camera above the Earth's surface: hot air balloons, model airplanes - even kites. The traditional aerial survey involves mounting a special gyroscopic, stabilized camera in the belly of an airplane and flying it at an elevation of between 15,000 feet and 30,000 feet, depending on the resolution of imagery you're interested in. As the plane takes a predefined route over the desired area, it forms a series of parallel lines with about 40 percent overlap between lines and 60 percent overlap in the direction of flight. This overlap of images is what provides us with enough detail to remove distortions caused by the varying shape of the Earth's surface.

The next step is processing the imagery. We scan the film using scanners capable of over 1800 DPI (dots per inch) or 14 microns. Then we take the digital imagery through a series of stages such as color balancing and warping to produce the final mosaic for the entire area.

We update the imagery as quickly as we can collect and process it, then add layers of information - things like country and state borders and the names of roads, schools, and parks -- to make it more useful. This information comes from multiple sources: commercial providers, local government agencies, public domain collections, private individuals, national and even international governments. Right now, Google Earth has hundreds of terabytes of geographic data, and it's growing larger every day. And that's not counting the extraordinary "open source" projects people have built to enhance it.

Yes, some parts of the world are still blurry. But in the ten years since the idea for the project was planted, the momentum behind it has only grown exponentially.

http://www.google.com/librariancenter/articles/0604_01.html [google.com]

Re:Propaganda piece of an article

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't replaced with green fields, they are blurred by applying a polygon filter, so there are hints of the underlying image. The first one is applied to 2 neighborhoods, the second one to an airport, both in the Netherlands.

What is so special about these two locations is a legitimate question.

The second one is easily understandable. It is a small airport just to the NW of Leeuwarden that doesn't appear on the map view either, and that corresponds to Leeuwarden Air Base [wikipedia.org] -- i.e., it's military.

The first one is not so obvious. The two "blurred" areas don't look much different from other built-up areas in the neighborhood. But click on the "More" button in Google Maps and the Wikipedia button and you'll discover that the NE area is the site of the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency [wikipedia.org]. I expect the area to the SW is related.

The article is indeed nonsense. There are plenty of areas that are obfuscated in Google Earth for reasons that are fairly clear.

What would be interesting is to catalog all of them in Google Earth as "places 'they' don't want you to see", and try to find the places that can't be easily accounted for.

Re:Rye Playland

[fr175]

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 [google.com]

Cannot imagine why!

I don't know why this was modded as +5 Informative - the link doesn't even go to Rye, NY. Unless Rye, NY is now in Europe...

Zoom out at the location that is linked to and it is in Holland.