7 ms·

Google Earth didn't update its image of a military installation for eight years

99 points by amaccuish 8y ago

ucaetano 8y ago
Except that it was refreshed in 2017 (per the article itself). What is even the point?
- dudul 8y ago
  Slightly misleading headline and first paragraphs yes, but then they focus on the idea that the location was not refreshed for 8 years and are curious about this gap.
  - romed 8y ago
    I think it is much more likely that the mapreduce shard responsible for updating the tile was stuck for 8 years, than there is a massive government conspiracy to prevent the update.
- notahacker 8y ago
  To be fair to the authors, you have to try quite hard to make the subject of remote sensing image policy and licensing interesting (and I say that as someone who knows people who wrote multiple books on it) Not sure that anyone actually believes that online mapping is an "all seeing eye" though. Without any plausible licensing/security restrictions and despite having updated other parts of their UK dataset far more recently, Google Earth also hasn't updated their image set of my home town in the UK in about 8 years. Unlike Nevada lake beds this has changed quite a bit and better aerial imagery and mapping data would be pretty useful; Google Maps look very odd when it overlays an (incomplete) road network over bare fields. Friends that live on that newish estate advise people to use Apple Maps instead.
matt4077 8y ago
> That this gap occurred for eight years without any acknowledgement from Google, Alphabet, or the federal government suggests that it can happen again with no warning or oversight. This is Google’s Earth, not ours. Reading this sentences, I gained a new understanding of what my dog feels when he tilts his head and looks at me with his big, questioning eyes.
guessmyname 8y ago
Here is the Google Maps link to the satellite imagery of the Tonopah Test Range site [1]. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tonopah+Test+Range+Airport/@37.7303561,-116.7295302,49155m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tonopah+Test+Range+Airport...
avar 8y ago
> [...]We immediately assumed censorship at a federal level[...] This is just sensationalism. How about: a) These areas are restricted airspace, and most of the aerial imagery Google et al buy is taken from airplanes. b) Even if it wasn't restricted airspace, what's the commercial interest for a company like Google? To sell mapping services to the armed forces within their own bases? It's not like they're all buying Android phones and getting turn-by-turn directions in their Humvees. c) There's also satellite imagery, but no imaging company is imaging the entire globe at a resolution Google and friends are interested in. You need to pay for specific areas, which brings us back to b), what's the commercial interest? d) They point out that other restricted areas had updated imagery, but none are the size of the Nevada site, so they might have been imaged as a side-effect of imaging other nearby areas via satellites. Maybe that's not what's going on, but these sound like reasonable explanations that don't require us to assume a bunch of men in black and a shadowy cabal of CIA agents coercing SV companies.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > It's not like they're all buying Android phones and getting turn-by-turn directions in their Humvees. Err.... you may be surprised.
  - behringer 8y ago
    I've driven on bases before. They're massive and you need directions to get around. Usually the folks on the ground like those letting you on will tell you what turns to make.
- ramblerouser 8y ago
  Even if Google and the US military have an agreement not to update images of millitary bases, it's perfectly understandable and doesnt infringe on anyone's rights. I agree this is sensationalism piggybacking on real privacy and government power concerns.
- csours 8y ago
  b) You might be surprised. https://www.zdnet.com/article/fitness-app-polar-exposed-locations-of-spies-and-military-personnel/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/fitness-app-polar-exposed-loca...
olivermarks 8y ago
I'm probably overly cynical but I think it highly unlikely any of the publicly viewable 'military installation' mapping would be accurate or up to date. Basic military strategy requires maps for planning - why share location details with your potential enemies?
- MaxLeiter 8y ago
  The vast majority of our enemies have satellites of their own for high resolution images that we can’t stop them from taking, right?
  - olivermarks 8y ago
    of course and so do we. My point was about publicly viewable online maps
  - nradov 8y ago
    The concern was mainly over terrorists, who don't have their own satellites and have to rely on commercial imagery.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- erentz 8y ago
  I seem to recall in the early days of Google Earth this was common. Famously IIRC the Naval Observatory in DC was a very obvious blurred out circle. (I believe the VP lives there?) But in more recent times it’s become harder to find these. Personally I don’t see why it would be that surprising in the early days that military would ask for sensitive sites to be removed. It’s not to defend against Russian or Chinese threats. But states or groups that do not have their own satellite imaging. As satellite imaginng has become so common and accessible they seem to have re-evaluated the risk.
ramblerouser 8y ago
Vice is being very sensationalist. There are very real abuses of government power related to 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act, but this is a distraction.
- stronglikedan 8y ago
  > Vice is being very sensationalist. FWIW, they've always been investigative editorialists, so I'm not surprised. Although, I do often enjoy their style, even if I don't always agree with their opinions.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Isn't it possible for this to be happening on a smaller scale and in plain sight? That is, for example, if Google is not always the source of the images, can't the supplier / vendor doctor the images it provides to Google? Who would know?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago
LOL..'censorship'. FFS. Way to go Vice. YOU # 1!
mwfunk 8y ago
I thought that many, maybe even most US military facilities (at least the more secretive ones) were blanked out altogether on Google Earth. I thought it had always been that way. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m more surprised that it was there in the first place, if there were people who considered it sensitive. Not updating the imagery of a particular military site for 8 years seems more like expected behavior than some monocle-popping revelation of malfeasance.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  You might be surprised. You can't find it by searching, for instance, but if you put in the coordinates you can see the notorious Groom Lake airfield (aka "Area 51") isn't blanked out: https://goo.gl/maps/UHEneL7nJbN2 https://goo.gl/maps/UHEneL7nJbN2
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    There's even an easter egg around there when you try to use the Street View.
    - singingboyo 8y ago
      Who needs streetview when the nearest highway is 'Extraterrestrial Highway'? Also, possibly spoiling the easter egg - apparently military bases are a) boring b) not as strict as expected (see [1], which specifically says not to photograph and yet... though there are also no connected street views.) [1] https://goo.gl/maps/eRP4dhtVK3R2 https://goo.gl/maps/eRP4dhtVK3R2 ETA: Apparently google has added photo spheres to its map, so that's not strictly street view. However, it's still interesting.
amingilani 8y ago
> The contract we signed with Apollo states that we may show "image derivatives" of image #103001000EBC3C00 to "authorized users" within our company. Thus all attendees will have to sign a document temporarily making them independent contractors of Eyebeam. That's the best darn r/MaliciousCompliance I've ever seen.
topynate 8y ago
Commenters annoyed by sensationalism, use of the term "censorship", or the lack of a substantive argument, should bear one thing in mind: It's an art installation. A successful show needs a message, and needs press. It's very accepted within the art community for the message to be a bit blurred around the edges. Take these "cyberlibertarian progenitors", for instance. Who are they and how are they making people believe the internet is a "flat, endless digital plain"? Any sources? No? Well, it doesn't really matter, because this isn't really journalism. It could be very important to the artists – of course it would be very important to them! – but it should not be judged by journalistic standards. Sadly, this does mean that Vice is something less than a home for journalism proper – but why would anyone ever have started to think that in the first place?
noonespecial 8y ago
Seems like if there were really some mustache-twirling villainy going on here, there would be hi-res imagery that was completely inaccurate/faked.
- vaughnegut 8y ago
  This is the case in South Korea where imagery of sensitive locations is illegal. If you compare Naver maps to Google maps you'll see military installations are missing and are replaced with home and trees. Interestingly this also applies to the presidential palace, which is a huge building in the center of the capital which has stood for decades. I'm still not sure why they did that.
  - dba7dba 8y ago
    Simply due to North Korea. Despite all talks of normalization between South and North Korea, it's still not safe to let your guard down. Such talks of normalization took place few times in the past, going back as far as 1960s I believe.
    - avar 8y ago
      There's been good discussion on some episodes of the Arms Control Wonk podcast[1] about how bad the South Koreans are at this, although I unfortunately can't remember on which episodes. Things like military installations being obvious from aerial imagery because it's the only areas where someone incompetent at using the Photoshop clone tool has copied a bunch of trees around. Other examples are "secret" missile silos being discovered because a bunch of buildings are seen in the exact size / configuration as other known military sites. The South Koreans having re-used the plans and architectural drawings. They said that in some cases the most plausible explanation for some sites still being secret is to save face. Nobody wants to own up to how much of an open secret they are due to opsec failures over the years, even though everyone, and certainly the North Koreans, know exactly where they are and what they're for. 1. https://www.armscontrolwonk.com https://www.armscontrolwonk.com
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Google used to blur many sensitive commercial sites. Fuel depots, airports, and critical manufacturing plants would just be indistinct smudges. They seem to have abandoned the practice after switching to primarily aerial imagery for urban areas.
- puzzle 8y ago
  A more accurate description is that they used to buy satellite imagery from third parties such as DG, which were responsible for the blurring. Nowadays, a lot of images come from planes, many of which are operated by Google, which does not do the blurring.
patrickyeon 8y ago
Without getting into the conspiracy-ish side of this, I'd like to point out that this is changing. Until recently, I worked at Planet Labs where our goal was to image the entire landmass of the Earth, at 3m resolution (not quite as good as Google's most zoomed-in imagery), every day and make it available to everyone. The monitoring system design means, amongst other wins, we don't need to know "something is about to change" to get the before/after pictures, and it also prevents the "checkbook shutter control" the article talks about. You can sign up for an account[0] with just an email address and start digging through imagery right now (unfortunately, purchasing it at full quality is a different story). Make sure to select an Area Of Interest to get down to daily imagery, I'll start you off with one for the Tonopah Test Range[1] which has coverage on 21 different days so far in October. [0] https://www.planet.com/explorer/ https://www.planet.com/explorer/ [1] https://www.planet.com/explorer/#/area-coverage/0.32,1/mosaic/global_monthly_2018_09_mosaic/center/-116.851,37.723/zoom/11/geometry/POLYGON((-116.8971+37.6131,-116.5308+37.6131,-116.5308+37.8955,-116.8971+37.8955,-116.8971+37.6131))/items/PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180533_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180532_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180531_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180530_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180529_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180528_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180425_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180424_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180423_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180422_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180421_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180420_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_174521_0f49,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_174520_0f49/interval/1%20day https://www.planet.com/explorer/#/area-coverage/0.32,1/mosai...
anonu 8y ago
> join us at Eyebeam, at 199 Cook Street in Brooklyn, at 6pm on Thursday October 25th to view image #103001000EBC3C00 yourself. Cool - I'll be there!
xbmcuser 8y ago
It's a military installation unless it's an illegal millatary installation I don't see what's wrong with any government from any country asking any public satellite company not to show details publicly.
uslic001 8y ago
They have not updated many places in NC for over two years now. I think they are going to phase it out like all their other pet projects.

99 points by amaccuish 8y ago

ucaetano 8y ago

Except that it was refreshed in 2017 (per the article itself). What is even the point?

dudul 8y ago
Slightly misleading headline and first paragraphs yes, but then they focus on the idea that the location was not refreshed for 8 years and are curious about this gap.
- romed 8y ago
  I think it is much more likely that the mapreduce shard responsible for updating the tile was stuck for 8 years, than there is a massive government conspiracy to prevent the update.
notahacker 8y ago
To be fair to the authors, you have to try quite hard to make the subject of remote sensing image policy and licensing interesting (and I say that as someone who knows people who wrote multiple books on it) Not sure that anyone actually believes that online mapping is an "all seeing eye" though. Without any plausible licensing/security restrictions and despite having updated other parts of their UK dataset far more recently, Google Earth also hasn't updated their image set of my home town in the UK in about 8 years. Unlike Nevada lake beds this has changed quite a bit and better aerial imagery and mapping data would be pretty useful; Google Maps look very odd when it overlays an (incomplete) road network over bare fields. Friends that live on that newish estate advise people to use Apple Maps instead.

matt4077 8y ago

> That this gap occurred for eight years without any acknowledgement from Google, Alphabet, or the federal government suggests that it can happen again with no warning or oversight. This is Google’s Earth, not ours. Reading this sentences, I gained a new understanding of what my dog feels when he tilts his head and looks at me with his big, questioning eyes.

guessmyname 8y ago

Here is the Google Maps link to the satellite imagery of the Tonopah Test Range site [1]. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tonopah+Test+Range+Airport/@37.7303561,-116.7295302,49155m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tonopah+Test+Range+Airport...

avar 8y ago

> [...]We immediately assumed censorship at a federal level[...] This is just sensationalism. How about: a) These areas are restricted airspace, and most of the aerial imagery Google et al buy is taken from airplanes. b) Even if it wasn't restricted airspace, what's the commercial interest for a company like Google? To sell mapping services to the armed forces within their own bases? It's not like they're all buying Android phones and getting turn-by-turn directions in their Humvees. c) There's also satellite imagery, but no imaging company is imaging the entire globe at a resolution Google and friends are interested in. You need to pay for specific areas, which brings us back to b), what's the commercial interest? d) They point out that other restricted areas had updated imagery, but none are the size of the Nevada site, so they might have been imaged as a side-effect of imaging other nearby areas via satellites. Maybe that's not what's going on, but these sound like reasonable explanations that don't require us to assume a bunch of men in black and a shadowy cabal of CIA agents coercing SV companies.

chrisseaton 8y ago
> It's not like they're all buying Android phones and getting turn-by-turn directions in their Humvees. Err.... you may be surprised.
- behringer 8y ago
  I've driven on bases before. They're massive and you need directions to get around. Usually the folks on the ground like those letting you on will tell you what turns to make.
ramblerouser 8y ago
Even if Google and the US military have an agreement not to update images of millitary bases, it's perfectly understandable and doesnt infringe on anyone's rights. I agree this is sensationalism piggybacking on real privacy and government power concerns.
csours 8y ago
b) You might be surprised. https://www.zdnet.com/article/fitness-app-polar-exposed-locations-of-spies-and-military-personnel/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/fitness-app-polar-exposed-loca...

olivermarks 8y ago

I'm probably overly cynical but I think it highly unlikely any of the publicly viewable 'military installation' mapping would be accurate or up to date. Basic military strategy requires maps for planning - why share location details with your potential enemies?

MaxLeiter 8y ago
The vast majority of our enemies have satellites of their own for high resolution images that we can’t stop them from taking, right?
- olivermarks 8y ago
  of course and so do we. My point was about publicly viewable online maps
- nradov 8y ago
  The concern was mainly over terrorists, who don't have their own satellites and have to rely on commercial imagery.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
erentz 8y ago
I seem to recall in the early days of Google Earth this was common. Famously IIRC the Naval Observatory in DC was a very obvious blurred out circle. (I believe the VP lives there?) But in more recent times it’s become harder to find these. Personally I don’t see why it would be that surprising in the early days that military would ask for sensitive sites to be removed. It’s not to defend against Russian or Chinese threats. But states or groups that do not have their own satellite imaging. As satellite imaginng has become so common and accessible they seem to have re-evaluated the risk.

ramblerouser 8y ago

Vice is being very sensationalist. There are very real abuses of government power related to 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act, but this is a distraction.

stronglikedan 8y ago
> Vice is being very sensationalist. FWIW, they've always been investigative editorialists, so I'm not surprised. Although, I do often enjoy their style, even if I don't always agree with their opinions.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Isn't it possible for this to be happening on a smaller scale and in plain sight? That is, for example, if Google is not always the source of the images, can't the supplier / vendor doctor the images it provides to Google? Who would know?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago

LOL..'censorship'. FFS. Way to go Vice. YOU # 1!

mwfunk 8y ago

I thought that many, maybe even most US military facilities (at least the more secretive ones) were blanked out altogether on Google Earth. I thought it had always been that way. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m more surprised that it was there in the first place, if there were people who considered it sensitive. Not updating the imagery of a particular military site for 8 years seems more like expected behavior than some monocle-popping revelation of malfeasance.

smacktoward 8y ago
You might be surprised. You can't find it by searching, for instance, but if you put in the coordinates you can see the notorious Groom Lake airfield (aka "Area 51") isn't blanked out: https://goo.gl/maps/UHEneL7nJbN2 https://goo.gl/maps/UHEneL7nJbN2
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  There's even an easter egg around there when you try to use the Street View.
  - singingboyo 8y ago
    Who needs streetview when the nearest highway is 'Extraterrestrial Highway'? Also, possibly spoiling the easter egg - apparently military bases are a) boring b) not as strict as expected (see [1], which specifically says not to photograph and yet... though there are also no connected street views.) [1] https://goo.gl/maps/eRP4dhtVK3R2 https://goo.gl/maps/eRP4dhtVK3R2 ETA: Apparently google has added photo spheres to its map, so that's not strictly street view. However, it's still interesting.

amingilani 8y ago

> The contract we signed with Apollo states that we may show "image derivatives" of image #103001000EBC3C00 to "authorized users" within our company. Thus all attendees will have to sign a document temporarily making them independent contractors of Eyebeam. That's the best darn r/MaliciousCompliance I've ever seen.

topynate 8y ago

Commenters annoyed by sensationalism, use of the term "censorship", or the lack of a substantive argument, should bear one thing in mind: It's an art installation. A successful show needs a message, and needs press. It's very accepted within the art community for the message to be a bit blurred around the edges. Take these "cyberlibertarian progenitors", for instance. Who are they and how are they making people believe the internet is a "flat, endless digital plain"? Any sources? No? Well, it doesn't really matter, because this isn't really journalism. It could be very important to the artists – of course it would be very important to them! – but it should not be judged by journalistic standards. Sadly, this does mean that Vice is something less than a home for journalism proper – but why would anyone ever have started to think that in the first place?

noonespecial 8y ago

Seems like if there were really some mustache-twirling villainy going on here, there would be hi-res imagery that was completely inaccurate/faked.

vaughnegut 8y ago
This is the case in South Korea where imagery of sensitive locations is illegal. If you compare Naver maps to Google maps you'll see military installations are missing and are replaced with home and trees. Interestingly this also applies to the presidential palace, which is a huge building in the center of the capital which has stood for decades. I'm still not sure why they did that.
- dba7dba 8y ago
  Simply due to North Korea. Despite all talks of normalization between South and North Korea, it's still not safe to let your guard down. Such talks of normalization took place few times in the past, going back as far as 1960s I believe.
  - avar 8y ago
    There's been good discussion on some episodes of the Arms Control Wonk podcast[1] about how bad the South Koreans are at this, although I unfortunately can't remember on which episodes. Things like military installations being obvious from aerial imagery because it's the only areas where someone incompetent at using the Photoshop clone tool has copied a bunch of trees around. Other examples are "secret" missile silos being discovered because a bunch of buildings are seen in the exact size / configuration as other known military sites. The South Koreans having re-used the plans and architectural drawings. They said that in some cases the most plausible explanation for some sites still being secret is to save face. Nobody wants to own up to how much of an open secret they are due to opsec failures over the years, even though everyone, and certainly the North Koreans, know exactly where they are and what they're for. 1. https://www.armscontrolwonk.com https://www.armscontrolwonk.com

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

Google used to blur many sensitive commercial sites. Fuel depots, airports, and critical manufacturing plants would just be indistinct smudges. They seem to have abandoned the practice after switching to primarily aerial imagery for urban areas.

puzzle 8y ago
A more accurate description is that they used to buy satellite imagery from third parties such as DG, which were responsible for the blurring. Nowadays, a lot of images come from planes, many of which are operated by Google, which does not do the blurring.

patrickyeon 8y ago

Without getting into the conspiracy-ish side of this, I'd like to point out that this is changing. Until recently, I worked at Planet Labs where our goal was to image the entire landmass of the Earth, at 3m resolution (not quite as good as Google's most zoomed-in imagery), every day and make it available to everyone. The monitoring system design means, amongst other wins, we don't need to know "something is about to change" to get the before/after pictures, and it also prevents the "checkbook shutter control" the article talks about. You can sign up for an account[0] with just an email address and start digging through imagery right now (unfortunately, purchasing it at full quality is a different story). Make sure to select an Area Of Interest to get down to daily imagery, I'll start you off with one for the Tonopah Test Range[1] which has coverage on 21 different days so far in October. [0] https://www.planet.com/explorer/ https://www.planet.com/explorer/ [1] https://www.planet.com/explorer/#/area-coverage/0.32,1/mosaic/global_monthly_2018_09_mosaic/center/-116.851,37.723/zoom/11/geometry/POLYGON((-116.8971+37.6131,-116.5308+37.6131,-116.5308+37.8955,-116.8971+37.8955,-116.8971+37.6131))/items/PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180533_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180532_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180531_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180530_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180529_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180528_100c,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180425_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180424_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180423_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180422_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180421_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_180420_1009,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_174521_0f49,PSScene4Band%3A20181023_174520_0f49/interval/1%20day https://www.planet.com/explorer/#/area-coverage/0.32,1/mosai...

anonu 8y ago

> join us at Eyebeam, at 199 Cook Street in Brooklyn, at 6pm on Thursday October 25th to view image #103001000EBC3C00 yourself. Cool - I'll be there!

xbmcuser 8y ago

It's a military installation unless it's an illegal millatary installation I don't see what's wrong with any government from any country asking any public satellite company not to show details publicly.

uslic001 8y ago

They have not updated many places in NC for over two years now. I think they are going to phase it out like all their other pet projects.