I'm looking at taking a class on Capitol Hill, and I wanted to see where it was. So I put the address into google maps. Then I noticed that Google Maps now has satellite photos. Neat!
Scrolling around Washington, DC, a couple of tiles look a little funny. The satellite tiles have a copyright watermark, which is fair enough. But the White House and Capitol office buildings are fuzzed out, or hinted at, rather than shown at full detail. (And these maps do show a lot of detail. Just look at the trees.)
I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, there's no reason to hide this information; if you are sufficiently determined to launch an attack on Washington DC from above (and incur the swift and immediate wrath of half the military aircraft on the Eastern Seaboard), you should be able to spot the Capitol dome by looking for the, um, Capitol dome. (The White House is naturally camouflaged[1]ÃÂ and survived one attack; let's hope it doesn't have to survive another.)
On the other hand, if you're sufficiently determined to launch an aerial attack on DC, there's no reason why Google should make it easier for you.
[1]: Thank you, Thomas Jefferson
Re:Area 51
n1vux on 2005-04-05T16:28:48
It's odd that they didn't censor the view of area 51.Are you sure? You've been there so you would recognize the missing xenoautopsy buildings as missing (if missing) even if the photoshop work was higher quality than the fuzzification of the capitol?
: - )
>=) (Alien Smiley)
Re:There is stuff up there
ziggy on 2005-04-05T18:25:28
No doubt that this data is scrubbed before it is cleared for civilian use. Best as I can tell, it's ~1m/pixel at the highest resolution, which is plenty good to identify one building from another, but not so good that you can read the newspapers littering the street to see when the photos were taken. (Military satellites supposedly has this capability, oh, 20 years ago.)I'm not pointing the finger at Google for anything (aside from the watermarking, which has their fingerprints all over it; besides, that's cool and tastefully done). When I said "...no reason why Google should make it easier...",
s/Google/any sat map provider/gas appropriate.There are some things that need to be scrubbed. Surely all military artifacts are blurred from these maps. (Hmmm...I wonder how bland Ft. Meade and Andrews look...) And the White House and EOB's were both reasonably scrubbed.
But the Capitol dome? Is it really a matter of the utmost national security that NOAA does not disclose that it's a big round thingy on top of a hill?
Re:There is stuff up there
Whammo on 2005-04-06T02:17:06
No doubt that this data is scrubbed before it is cleared for civilian use.That implies the source is the U.S. government. While American sources might artificially limit the resolution, the French have been selling commercial satellite imagery for years, and have no such scruples.
I'm not pointing the finger at Google for anything (aside from the watermarking, which has their fingerprints all over it; besides, that's cool and tastefully done).Interesting thing about the watermarking. The copyright notice is 2005, yet I can place some of the images as pre-2004.
There are some things that need to be scrubbed. Surely all military artifacts are blurred from these maps. (Hmmm...I wonder how bland Ft. Meade and Andrews look...)Not too bad, but just how much IMINT can be done with a single pass of low-res overhead?
