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."

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Error establishing a database connection

They sure blurred him out fast.

Digg? Inaccurate?

You mean an article that was inaccurate or just flat out wrong was massively promoted on DIGG? No, I simply can't believe it.

Digg: It's like Slashdot if concussed monkeys took over.

Re:Digg? Inaccurate?

You mean it's like Slashdot, if the concussed monkeys took up drinking.

Re:Digg? Inaccurate?

You mean it's like Slashdot, if the concussed monkeys took up drinking.

Hey! I resemble that remark.

Re:Digg? Inaccurate?

But with fewer dupes.

I'd say the main difference is that a much higher percentage of digg posters are raving morons, while Slashdot has more refined trolls.

Blurry, no; pixelated hell yes

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:Blurry, no; pixelated hell yes

FWIW the Naval Observatory is blotted out in all satellite photos. It's my understanding that this is a "national security" requirement and (besides it being a no-fly zone) satellite and areal photography are required by federal law to obscure it. Since Google still buys most of these pictures from other people, I wouldn't blame Google for this one, per-say...

Re:Blurry, no; pixelated hell yes

That's like placing a sign on an aircraft.

"No Hijacking"

Well... i guarantee that the percentage of aircraft with "No Hijacking" signs on them that don't get highjacked would have a significant number of 9's in it, so it obviously works and works well, provided you measure the outcomes correctly.

Re:Cite a source...

russians have many low altitudes geosynchronous satellites

Damn Reds and their lack of respect for physics!

Rye Playland

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 wonder...

Has anyone checked to see if all the good pubs are blurry? Maybe with a touch of double-vision and a few pink elephants? Also, if blurry images are proof of national security concerns, the sheep in New Zealand must be Above Top Secret to produce some of the limitations there.

Re:Rye Playland

Finally, we know the undisclosed location Cheney is always going to!

I've always suspected it involved a handbasket.

The Truth of it all is....

Post removed for being in violation of Patriot Act

But does Google Street View steer clear of Obama?

Google Street View steers clear of Obama's neighborhood [valleywag.com]

Ramstein airbase is whited out

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

Sorry, but that sounds like conspiracy talk. To me, the white area looks like just a big newly-constructed concrete ramp. I've been seen and been to a lot of airports, so I know what a ramp looks like.

If you look at the top and bottom, you see areas that are still under construction. Some taxiways and even portions of the runway are bright white. What possible reason reason could they have for "whiting out" the runway's threshold and blast pads? The overall white area doesn't look anything like a building and all the actual buildings are arranged around it, just like any other airport. If you scroll around a bit, you'll see other areas that are nearly white but plainly older because they have streaks of gray running through them.

Back in the day, I understand that satellite photos used infrared to generate fairly visually-accurate monochrome images of the ground. On those, thick forests and bodies of water should show up black while roofs and roads would be a lot lighter. I would take a wild guess that the satellites which capture images these days use infrared to enhance the visible light photo and brand-new concrete reflects a whole bunch of the sun's infrared back at the camera. This oversaturates that area on the picture and makes objects on the concrete difficult to see. But that's just a theory. I'd appreciate hearing from someone who knows how it really works.

I think something's wrong with my browser...

I tried reading the Google cache of your post, but it was blurry.

Propaganda piece of an article

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:So what about the other 45 locations?

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:So what about the other 45 locations?

Did this guy really not look at these locations?

Maybe google knows his IP address.

Re:So what about the other 45 locations?

I work at one of those facilities and know damn well that LAST YEAR a coarse resample was laid over the campus where I work. Google has recently [last two or 3 weeks i think] updated the imagery for eastern massachusetts. I know because my new neighbors house suddenly appeared in google satellite view and it went from winter imagery to summer...which is a huge drop in information, btw because of tree canopy. The newer images do not blur the facility I work at but then neither did the old ones when they first came out. Just give 'em time.

Re:So what about the other 45 locations?

It's a well known fact that the imagery providers have to obscure certain things. Just because a few of the images mentioned in the story turned out to be unobscured later doesn't mean they weren't at the time of the writing. The images are updated quite regularly, and once Google's satalites start working it'll be even more freqent.

Yes, it's censorship to obscure the imagery, but it's a tough balance to strike. Yes, information wants to be free. And as a taxpayer, it could be argued that you have a right to see whatever your government has been spending your money on. But people in other countries do not. Furthermore, the plans and everything for most of these buildings are located in the bottom of a filing cabinet in a dark basement room with a sign on the door that says "Beware of Leopard". That said, it sure is cool to look at government stuff, and the imagery being available makes it real easy.

For me, it's fun to find black helicopers and such, but that's basically it. It's just fun to look at stuff. I like those 'eyeball' things over at cryptome.org [cryptome.org] also. The risk is pretty low that someone would be able to plan an operation or something with just the image data. So they take away the fun to hopefully mitigate a small amount of risk.

On the flip side (again), there seems to be so many secrets these days. Too many, if you ask me. But, hopefully they know what they're doing.

Soon people will be able to upload their own photos to the view, like in that Microsoft thing, but on a 3d globe like Google Earth. People taking photos from passenger airplanes and such. More private aerial photos and satellites with small resolution and lower latency. It will happen. Google is on the right track with GIS, I think it'll be the killer app of the 2010's. Google has the power to pull everything together, it might take a while but soon there will be a nice parallel universe inside their datacentres. Unfortunately in that world, it makes extreme paranoia as actionable as extreme information gathering.

Re:Fact Checking Failure

so you think Google spent twice the amount of money to use 2 separate satellite imaging services? or that they use two disparate censorship policies, so that if the government asks them to obfuscate the VP's residence they would only comply for one service but not the other?

i don't know if the summary is correct or not, but logic would suggest that Google would use the same satellite images for both sets of aerial maps, and if they were going to blur out a location in one service it would be done to the other as well.

Re:Fact Checking Failure

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

Re:Outdated

Maybe it is still blanked by something more plausible?