My colleague Tord Nedrelid led my attention to the following: Browsing the aerial photographs of Washington, D.C., in Google Maps,
you’ll notice that the details of the roofs of the White House, the Old
Executive Office Building, and the Department of Treasury have been
painted over in the photographs. (Look here.)
Moving on to Capitol Hill, you’ll find that the whole area has been
blurred considerably. (Look
here.)
It’s a matter of national security, I guess. You don’t want your
enemies to see where the skylights, air ducts, and snipers are placed
on important buildings, now do you? (It’s basically the same concern
that has been voiced by the governments of Thailand and South Korea
against Google’s tell-all satellite image search engine.)
However, if you check out the same buildings in the Google Earth
free downloadable application, you’re able to see all these buildings
down to the smallest details. (Apparently, there was quite a bit of
road construction going on in front of the Capitol building when the
picture was taken. By the way, one of the workers drove a white pick-up
truck.)
What are we to learn from this? That people who understand how to
download software aren’t as potentially dangerous as the ones who just
browse the Web?
