Censorship

[captpackrat]

The US government is censoring Google Maps/Google Earth.

Try looking up Washington DC. The Capitol building is nothing but a blur, and the White House has a plain, flat brown roof. Several other buildings are blurred out or have solid color roofs. There are other "omissions" that I've found, like the artificial oil pump islands in Long Beach Harbor. The labels are there (in Google Earth), but the islands are missing.

Oddly enough, the Pentagon is there in all its glory, without censorship. As is Cheyenne Mountain. I guess oil is more important than the military. But then again, we've known this for several years now....

Comments

[nicodemusrat.livejournal.com]

This isn't new. Ever since satellite photos became easily publicly accesible, the government has been altering certain buildings. It's probably that Google's source of images had this alteration. It sucks but it's not too surprising.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

It looks like Terraserver and NASA World Wind have the same images of Washington, apparently from the USGS (USGS Urban Area Ortho). All three have the exact same censorship of the White House and Capital Hill.

Oddly, Terraserver's Aerial View and World Wind's USGS 1m Digital Ortho and Landsat maps are NOT censored. Odd.

And oddly, the oil islands in Long Beach DO appear in both Terraserver and World Wind.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

*snickers* about the camouflaged oil rigs in urban areas.
Do you really need oil that badly? I guess so. Eep!

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

The Long Beach oil field is pretty big. Those four islands alone pump about 32,000 barrels of oil a day, and 9 million cubic feet of natural gas. At the current $61 a barrel, that's nearly $2 million A DAY from just the oil!

The man-made oil islands were done right. They look beautiful in the daytime, and are absolutely spectacular at night. There are waterfalls, sculptures, palm trees, and what look like high-rise hotels. If you didn't know they were pumping oil, you'd swear it was some kind of exclusive resort.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

It does make you wonder why possible level of detail one could get off the Capitol Building that couldn't simply be observed from the ground ...