Much ado about maps this weekend: Another thread on Slashdot discusses how some potentially sensitive areas, like this nuclear facility in Boston, are blurred out on Google Maps. The concern over Google censorship comes after the Telegraph reported earlier this month that terrorists had been using Google Earth to plan their attacks.
But commenters point out that it’s probably not Google that’s doing the editing. Google gets its Massachusetts maps from MassGIS, which, according to one commenter, blurred several buildings after its 2005 fly-by.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to pixelate sensitive installations, but it’s also not likely to be effective. There are too many satellites owned by different companies, and if ne’er-do-wells wanted to get satellite imagery from one of them, it wouldn’t be too hard.