Abhi posted earlier about Sri Lanka objecting to high-res satellite imagery of sensitive government sites on Google Earth.
At the time, Indian officials were also worried but had given up trying to block it. Ironically, the post came on one of India’s two biggest military parade holidays:
India agrees. Reuters quotes an anonymous security official there as confirming that “the issue of satellite imagery had been discussed at the highest level but the government had concluded that ‘technology cannot be stopped’…” [Link]
There’s apparently been a change of heart behind the red sandstone in Delhi. You can’t stop technology, but you can lean on companies. India has escalated the issue to the man who used to run India’s missile program:
Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam expressed concern Saturday about a free mapping program from Google Inc., warning it could help terrorists by providing satellite photos of potential targets… The Google site contains clear aerial photos of India’s parliament building, the president’s house and surrounding government offices in New Delhi. There are also some clear shots of Indian defense establishments… [Link]
India’s not the only one complaining:
The governments of South Korea and Thailand and lawmakers in the Netherlands have expressed similar concerns… South Korean newspapers said Google Earth provides images of the presidential Blue House and military bases in the country, which remains technically at war with communist North Korea. The North’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon is among sites in that country displayed on the service. [Link]
This issue is similar to that of the deliberate error injected by civilian GPS satellites to prevent use by enemy missiles. On one hand, Google fuzzes out sensitive U.S. sites, so why not let other legitimate governments submit these requests as well? On the other, the public has a right to know, and foreign providers of satellite data will always step into the gap.
I come down on the side of consistency. As a private company rather than an extension of the U.S. government, Google should act even-handedly, no matter which approach it takes.
If terrorist really wanted to there are better sources to get satellite imagery from. Terrorist cells don’t work like star trek or some special ops movie starring Kurt Russell or Chuck Norris.
i work in the satellite business. my roomate works for google maps. we’ve had interesting conversations about this. google publishes everything they can, meaning there is content that the us government limits. this is why certain us sites are not available through satellite imagery. it’s not out of google’s goodwill, it’s because they have to adhere to federal law.
kalam should be going after the us government instead of google to get the government to mark particular locations as sensitive, as should any other country concerned about terrorist cells constructing information about particular locations. it’s important to note that google’s satellite imagery, like most companies online, is one to two years old and there is no realtime imaging data available.
I agree. Big ticket terrorism is always state sposored, in which case they can always obtain satellite images from other commercial sources.
You’ll be glad to hear that Google does not in fact censor the White House or area 51 in Google Earth. Check it out for yourself.