Debunking the Google Earth Censorship Myth 294
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."
So what about the other 45 locations? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So what about the other 45 locations? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
Did this guy really not look at these locations?
Maybe google knows his IP address.
Re:So what about the other 45 locations? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So what about the other 45 locations? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:So what about the other 45 locations? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Exactly.
I like to check out through google maps places I used to be stationed at while in the US Army over a decade ago, and I can clearly see how most roofs are showed as white rectangles, and antenna pads are whited out so you can't see in which direction they point. This is on both training facilities and in active duty stations.
In the case of a medevac heliport all you can see is whited out taxi areas and pads, while at the same level of detail in a civilian facility you can easily follow the lines pa
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Did you really not read the article?
"As Google has acknowledged in the past, there are spots, such as the U.S. Naval Observatoryâ"home for another 116 days to Vice President Dick Cheneyâ"that have been deliberately blurred or pixelated by the companies that sell aerial imagery to Google. (See image at left. You can click on this image and all of the images in this article to see larger versions.)"
So Google didn't censor it, the company selling them the images did, that's what the article says.
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No they didnt mean 51 places blurred out they meant Area 51... You know where they have the Alien bodies hidden.
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I heard that the White House's roof is photoshopped to obscure the sniper positions and stuff like that.
Right on time, the NSA pays off /. to debunk this. (Score:3, Funny)
Who should I believe? You, or my lying eyes?
Error establishing a database connection (Score:5, Funny)
Error establishing a database connection
They sure blurred him out fast.
Digg? Inaccurate? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean it's like Slashdot, if the concussed monkeys took up drinking.
Re:Digg? Inaccurate? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean it's like Slashdot, if the concussed monkeys took up drinking.
Hey! I resemble that remark.
Must be new here. (Score:2)
Must be new here.
...considering his uid is HALF that of yours...
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...considering his uid is HALF that of yours...
He's getting senile.
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You mean it's like Slashdot, if the concussed monkeys took up drinking.
Ook?
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Digg: It's like Slashdot if concussed monkeys took over.
So what you're saying is it's absolutely 100% identical? ;-)
Re:Digg? Inaccurate? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I like conversing with non-concussed monkeys, thank you very much.
*flings some poo*
Blurry, no; pixelated hell yes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Blurry, no; pixelated hell yes (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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Per se [wikipedia.org].
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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.
That's like placing a sign on an aircraft.
"No Hijacking"
Re:Blurry, no; pixelated hell yes (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Afive+nines&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq= [google.com]
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They are all taken from planes no matter what service you use.
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Yes, it is also a sin for anyone to bad mouth Linux.
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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 h
Re:Cite a source... (Score:5, Funny)
russians have many low altitudes geosynchronous satellites
Damn Reds and their lack of respect for physics!
Re:Cite a source... (Score:4, Interesting)
> I wonder how many russian satellites have good coverage of the United States.
Since 1992 it has been possible to purchase Resurs and Kometa imagery of the US through the state company Soyuzkarta. This required the declassification of the military Kometa's cameras - a 10-metre resolution topo and a 2-metre resolution mapping camera.
One of the first customers, and one which has been a reliable repeat customer, was the USAF. They used imagery of Washington to plan General Dolittle's cortege.
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Maybe that is because the USNO contains primary frequency standards, so any attempt to take accurate photographs would result in a violation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
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An observatory seems a pretty odd place to censor. Why is it a secret? Is it something they're looking at? What are they doing at the Naval Observatory that they don't want us to know about?
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The Naval Observatory is the location of the residence of the Vice President of the United States [whitehouse.gov].
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Rye Playland (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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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]
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Finally, we know the undisclosed location Cheney is always going to!
Re:Rye Playland (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, we know the undisclosed location Cheney is always going to!
I've always suspected it involved a handbasket.
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That explains how he's luring the children...
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Abandoned amusement parks are usually prime real estate for evil geniuses, their evil projects, and their hordes of henchmen. It wouldn't surprise me that certain amusement parks are pixelated given the secrecy involved in taking over the planet.
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You have a fairly loose definition of "Rye, New York".
I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
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I notice there are a couple of round buildings. Maybe the blurring done by New York State is just looking for round buildings and considers them all to be tank farms?
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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.
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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.
Outdated (Score:2)
The Whitehouses roof used to be blanked out with matte tan. Now it isn't. The pentagon also used to be blanked out. I looked at these locations myself a long time ago. More recently I was surprised to see them unblanked.
Re:Outdated (Score:4, Interesting)
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Maybe they realized that Washington and the surrounding area contain several tall structures that a potential terrorist could use to take pictures of the roofs of the buildings in questions without having to go through an internet service.
Or if you're the paranoid type, maybe they made them clear again but got Google to report anyone who looks at them, so they can feed that into their data mining programs.
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I'm guessing USGOV asked them to sensor all "sensitive areas" 'pending review', and finally decided there was nothing worth blocking.
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> The White House roof is said to be a photoshop to mask the sniper and MANPADS emplacements up there.
See, I find this bizarre.
What exactly do they anticipate will happen with the debris of a 200 tonne airliner in the near-impossible case that an FIM-92 could actually cause structural failure?
Inertia is mean.
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Tom? Tom Clancy, you've made that point enough already, now stop teasing them.
(Seriously, the use of ground to air defenses around the white house is predicated on attacks by relatively small aircraft. High vulnerability scenarios include organized coup attacks on Marine 1 during take off or landing, probably by attack helicopter, as well as the more prosaic 'some psycho flying a small plane at the oval office and just hoping his target is in the right part of the building at the time' attack. Lone psycho a
Well it's not like they probably have much choice (Score:2)
Unfortunately people are too thick to realise that terrorists would probably visit the area they want to bomb to scope it out rather than visit google maps.
The Truth of it all is.... (Score:5, Funny)
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<Parent removed due to violation of a National Security Letter>
But does Google Street View steer clear of Obama? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google Street View steers clear of Obama's neighborhood [valleywag.com]
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hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Ramstein airbase is whited out (Score:5, Informative)
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]
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All the roads surrounding the airport are all messed up as well; almost none of them match up with the pictures. And, they're all labelled "Flugplatz".
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Huntsville Alabama airport runway extension [google.com]
See how the runway ends, goes through a field and then re-appears after the construction? I think the airbase is a victim of stitched together imagery that joins two photos taken at different times.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:RamsteinAB.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Looks to me like there is a lot of pavement.
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Also, here is another photo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:RamsteinAB.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Looks to me like there is a lot of pavement.
Yeah, I think the GP post is looking for a conspiracy where there isn't one. If you look at the Google version in the GP post, lots of other buildings' tops are saturated out by overexposure. The large expanse of saturated white with hints of shadow in question matches very nicely to, as the parent post put it, "a lot of pavement," or, maybe, a lot of concrete pavement. No trickery involved, just a badly exposed photo in the Google map.
Re:Ramstein airbase is whited out (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I've been seen and been to a lot of airports, so I know what a ramp looks like.
Good for you! So do I. Now, come on, do you really think the location I pointed out is such a case? Look hard before rushing to defend your "+5" position.
Meh, whatever, I'm going back to watching Sara Benincasa videos [youtube.com].
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Some of the newer bases, like the US CENTCOM complex in Qatar was designed to be low-observable from recce, electro-magnetic and optical. There are some good photos from back in '02 on globalsecurity's site under public eye.
I think something's wrong with my browser... (Score:4, Funny)
It's not all nefarious (Score:2)
It's not all due to nefarious Google-Corporate-Conspiracy. I know you guys like to think it's all one big giant conspiracy to keep nerds from ruling the Earth, but it's not true. Close up Google views are from airplane photos, not satellite photos. If airplanes can't fly over an area then you don't get good pictures of it. If the airplane photos belong to the government and they don't include them in the database, you don't get good pictures of it. It's as simple as that for most things. If something is del
Slashdot-brand blur (Score:2)
I tried a couple toward the bottom of the list. The train station in White Plains, NY is indeed blurred, as is the GE campus in Schenectady.
Some locations in the vicinity of Goonhilly Downs in England used to be blurred, but they aren't any more. You might expect this from countries with different ideas on security and privacy, but places like Buckingham Palace and Vauxhall Cross show up just fine, and you can count how many subs are moored in Polyarnyy.
...laura
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So is the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory:
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=42.82034,-73.86572&z=17&t=S [acme.com]
New York State blurs (Score:2)
New York State blurs tank farms, but you can see the blurring on their imagery, so no, it's not Google.
digg post somthing untrue? (Score:2)
Dear Google, Please Obscure My Country's Top Secre (Score:4, Insightful)
Niagara Falls (Score:2)
The Niagara Falls power station and reservoir DID used to be blurred out. After seeing this article, I checked again and it is clear as day. Some corporate/government drone probably just adjusted the rules of what needs to be censored and what doesn't.
If censorship of google maps images is a myth, then so are evolution, global warming, and the round earth "theory".
There is a Sydney harbor bridge crash in earth (Score:2)
There is a Sydney harbor bridge crash in earth just zoom in and try to go up it.
Propaganda piece of an article (Score:5, Informative)
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]
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It's not blurred, it's just a new style of impressionist architecture.
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What are the clear reasons? By blurring these overhead images, does it make the job of terrorists more difficult? Instead of hitting these targets with orbiting kinetic weapons, they have to resort to truck bombs? The deal is, any entity that is going to mount an offensive on these installations is going to do it in such an unsophisticated manner, that aerial photographs are unneccessary. Information about
/. this! (Score:2)
This article is part of a government conspiracy!
If you believe this is censorship, (Score:2)
please tag the article as "damagecontrol". I already did.
Catawba Nuclear Power Plant (Score:2)
Was clear a couple years ago, then got pixelated, but now it's half-and-half:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lake+wylie,+sc&ie=UTF8&ll=35.051649,-81.070637&spn=0.004479,0.006759&t=h&z=17&iwloc=addr [google.com]
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.
TFA IS FUD (Score:2)
As some people report, some of the places are blurred and pixelated.
Debunking would need a full around inspection, on as well lesser known censored locations. So in other words this Debunking article is *FUD* and by far an incomplete investigation to the matter.
Furthermore, it is in google's best interest that censorship is considered a myth / urban legend.
I've myself seen even in Finland a censored location.
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in southern finland, i heard it was somekind of military base. That censor was masked as corrupted image data (black areas etc. garbage which made it look like data is corrupted), a friend found it
Google cache of the article is unblurred. (Score:2)
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:http://www.xconomy.com/national/2008/09/26/boston-unblurred-debunking-the-google-maps-censorship-myth/ [64.233.169.104]
Wrong (Score:2)
Does anyone believe that the Truman, Enterprise, and Roosevelt have been in the same place for the last 3 years? Yet the are tied up at piers 11 & 12 with the Big E in a serious upkeep.
Pier 22
Same 4 Submarines
Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock
2 more Nimitz class carriers, one in drydock (overhaul/new construction) and one tied to the pier fitting out after launching/overhaul.
Google has not changed these pictures since google maps added the satellite view.
Area 51... (Score:2)
rj
Re:Fact Checking Failure (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
All the higher-res images are airplane shots, not satellite. Why does this need constant reminding?
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Correct. How would they get a high res shot where there is a no-fly zone? It is not censorship, it is avoiding being shot out of the sky by missiles.
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And when I was a kid, we shot our model rockets at the B52s that flew overhead. Correlation may not be causation, but they did stop flying the BUFFs over our cul-de-sac.
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Actually, Google Maps uses the same image database as Google Earth
No they don't. They use the same image data, but new image data is always added
to google earth first, and takes a couple of days up to more than a week to propagate to
google maps.
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Do we have any filtering process here at all? its not just wrong summary, its completely wrong.
Maybe you should do some filtering yourself; not all of the items are linked to Google Maps.
This one for Boston is linked to Google, but I can't find a blurry area anywhere near the coordinates, though I'll admit I have no clue wtf a natural gas terminal looks like. FTA:
Liquid Natural Gas Terminal in Chelsea, Mass. and a Large Portion [google.com] of an Industrial Port Area in Boston: Both of these areas are blurry on Google Maps.
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Well, naturally. It is, after all, the location of the HAL plant. Sheesh.
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That doesn't mean everyone needs access to aerial or satellite photographs that show centimetre-level detail of military institutions. What public interest is served by this?
How else are we supposed to locate the secret alien technology?