42 ms·

Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

1008 points by vanusa 5y ago

haecceity 5y ago
Why do re-education camps have soccer fields? What kind of weird soccer related torture are they performing??
Permit 5y ago
A small discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27178589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27178589
zokier 5y ago
tldr: Israeli-US agreement limited resolution until July 2020, and Gmaps hasn't gotten around to updating the imagery since.
- vanusa 5y ago
  The bigger question of course is why the "agreement" was made with the Israelis, and not with the Palestinians directly.
  - isoprophlex 5y ago
    Might makes right, as always ...
  - dijit 5y ago
    USA is the only country on earth that recognises all of Israel’s territory claims.
    - squarefoot 5y ago
      Not just that. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf
      - iDisagreedEar 5y ago
        127$/US citizen tax to murder people you never met. It's worse than that, you can't even travel as an American without people thinking you support murdering people.
      - devmunchies 5y ago
        $38 billion. woah. if US continues to give Israel unconditional aid then it will start to look like a vassal state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal_state
        alisonkisk 5y ago
        The US needs an ally in the Middle East that is more reliable than any of the Arab nations are. Better than being even more beholden to Saudi Arabia. US interests also benefit quite a lot from Israeli industry, from Intel to Cellebrite
        iskander 5y ago
        It's primarily a subsidy for American weapons manufacturers (from whom the Israelis have to make purchases), mixed with a hefty R&D budget for new military technology like Iron Dome.
        bombcar 5y ago
        Exactly. And it keeps Israel from buying similar equipment from Russia or China (and helping support those developers).
        vanusa 5y ago
        "Primarily" is more than a bit of stretch, here. All observation of U.S.-Israel relations since 1967 indicate that it's driven by a very strong ideological (and perceived electoral) component. In fact it's hard to think of a single case of a ("friendly") country for which the degree of U.S. support is less ideological. Pork barreling plays a role for sure as well, but it's definitely second fiddle.
      - 5y ago
  - wernercd 5y ago
    Because there's never been a country named "Palestine" and as such it's hard to make agreements with a country that doesn't exist.
    - zinekeller 5y ago
      ... in the US Government's (and some of its allies') perspective (NB: there are definitely some caveats and the most "Israel-only" policy is in the Trump era but in practice this is how it works). Most Arab countries (for some, until recently) have the inverse: they only recognize the Palestinian government and never the Israeli government. Some governments choose a more pragmatic "both Israel and Palestine exists but their land borders are definitely not defined well".
      - wernercd 5y ago
        in the US perspective? Please, show a map that has ever had the country Palestine... I love how a simple statement of fact is getting voted down: You can't make an agreement with a non-entity. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/139168 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/139168 > In fact, historically, there was never an independent country named Palestine. > So, the historical record says that Palestine was never a country, and was rarely ever an intact entity. Recognition of... what? a "government" of a country that never existed? People can vote me down more but facts remain that the country never existed as a real entity.
    - Angostura 5y ago
      The US seems to manage OK forming relationships with Taiwan, for example.
      - IncRnd 5y ago
        Taiwan has a working government.
        wernercd 5y ago
        And, I'd argue, it's willing to negotiate in good faith. The PLO, over the decades, has turned down anything that doesn't give it 100% of what it wants (basically, the destruction of Israel).
  - buserror 5y ago
    possibly because the israelis already have all the imagery they would want anyway, and the blurring is only a problem for people who don't?
  - duxup 5y ago
    As far as Gaza goes, Hamas rules Gaza but they're not the recognized government. I'm not sure who you would ask to make policy in such a situation. Just Hamas because they rule that area by force? That sounds a lot like asking Israel for the same reason. I don't think there's a good/ automatic answer for these situations.
    - zinekeller 5y ago
      > As far as Gaza goes, Hamas rules Gaza but they're not the recognized government. It's definitely more complicated by that, there is some evidence that people in the Gaza area have definitely supported Hamas, but of course they're rejected by the PNA (which rules over West Bank) and Israel.
      - pessimizer 5y ago
        > there is some evidence that people in the Gaza area have definitely supported Hamas Such as when they were elected.
    - windthrown 5y ago
      Playing the devil's advocate, if the US is willing to negotiate with both the Taliban and official Afghanistan government directly, why not Hamas and Israel? (I am not trying to equate these groups; just compare the official vs force relationships)
      - tifadg1 5y ago
        Because they can't win in Afghanistan and are planning a retreat, whereas gaza is this way due to historical reasons, but mostly because they don't pose a real threat.
  - betterunix2 5y ago
    Should they have negotiated with the Palestinian Authority, which only partially controls the West Bank, or with Hamas, which took control of Gaza and proceeded to murder leaders from other Palestinian political parties? It is kind of hard to know who the "official" representatives of the Palestinian people actually are due to the failure to establish a functional Palestinian state or government.
    - elmomle 5y ago
      I wish the recent history of Palestine were different too, but it seems unkind to use language that implicitly blames Palestinians as a people--or the factions that now hold power--for these issues. Literally any people on Earth would probably have a similar history, and be in a similar (or worse) place with respect to government, if they faced similar pressures for such an extended period of time.
      - betterunix2 5y ago
        How did I blame the Palestinian people? The fact is that they do not have a functioning government, and the government they have is not in a position to negotiate on their behalf when it comes to Gaza. The faction that controls Gaza is not even recognized as legitimate by the PA (which is supposed to represent the Palestinian people).
        lacksconfidence 5y ago
        You appear, and i could of course be mistaken, to be blaming the palestinian people for "the failure to establish a functional Palestinian state or government". As if it the fault of a population that's mostly under 30 years old that they haven't been able to establish a government under the existing conditions. I'm not sure anyone else could.
        betterunix2 5y ago
        That was a statement of fact, I was not blaming anyone in particular. As I have said elsewhere, if anyone is to blame it would be Hamas, whose political campaign in 2006 was based on delegitimizing the peace process and two-state solution and which pressed a war with Fatah that greatly weakened the PA. It is not as if the Palestinians were told to build a functioning state on their own; they receive a lot of help from other countries, including from Israel itself (e.g. joint police operations, joint security patrols, etc. -- all of which are confidence-building and institution-building measures).
  - zokier 5y ago
    Because Israel has more deeper pocketed lobby groups in US?
- _delirium 5y ago
  Perhaps pedantic, but it wasn't an agreement per se, just a regular domestic U.S. law, although Israel did indeed lobby in favor of the law. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment
  - iDisagreedEar 5y ago
    I wouldn't mind other countries paying us bribes (lobbying) if that money went to the taxpayer, but instead it goes to the politician that can brainwash us with that same money. Side note, does anyone have any great works of political theory that talks about how to deal with bribery?
- SilasX 5y ago
  And the US is emperor of pointing satellites at the Middle East? There aren’t other satellites outside US/Israel jurisdiction that can fill it in? Or they’re not allowed to pass it on?
  - lbotos 5y ago
    See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27187416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27187416 Google being a "US Company" they are following that law.
    - skissane 5y ago
      KBA doesn't actually apply to Google. KBA applies to operators of imaging satellites, Google's suppliers such as Maxar. In practice, it doesn't apply to distributors, only acquirers. (The text of KBA talks about issuing licenses for "dissemination" of satellite images, but you don't need a license to resell satellite images, or buy them then give them away for free like Google does.) Legally, there is nothing stopping Google from using a non-US imagery supplier to get higher resolution images of Israel into Google Maps. In practice, they probably don't want to. It is walking into a political minefield, and Google doesn't really gain anything for themselves by walking into that minefield.
deadalus 5y ago
Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet? If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  https://planet.com https://planet.com (planet customer, no other affiliation)
  - 5etho 5y ago
    >contact sales thank you company, I'm gladly calling to check your services now
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - ajcp 5y ago
    I think OP was asking more for a live-stream type service, where this appears to be static imagery.
    - shalmanese 5y ago
      This is the best that's currently available.
      - ajcp 5y ago
        No doubt, a great resource, was just trying to help get to the meat of the comment :D
- hatsunearu 5y ago
  https://zoom.earth/ https://zoom.earth/ not quite real time (I'm not sure if that's even possible) but this is quite up to date. I used to to check out the smoke from last year. edit: you get pictures every 10 minutes of the whole globe, but the resolution is pretty bad, good enough to check the cloud coverage though
Juntu 5y ago
Smoke is telling the truth that blurred on gg maps can be fixed by an update.
bawolff 5y ago
Im kind of confused - they're saying its a problem for reporters and people trying to investigate, but also that other providers provide high resolution imagery. I feel like both those things can't be true. How can it be a problem if you can just get the needed images from non usa companies?
- yomansat 5y ago
  They're available but not always free.
- whymauri 5y ago
  Probably price as a barrier. Or the background knowledge to know which providers are reliable, etc. You could imagine the pricing being inaccessible to certain markets (where currency is really weak, say Venezuela), whereas Google Maps is free for almost all uses.
- dr_orpheus 5y ago
  Up-to-date high resolution imagery is quite expensive. Most of Google maps imagery is generated from an older database of images. Businesses like Maxar (formerly Digital Globe) that provide Earth imagery will sell a database of old out-of-date imagery for much cheaper. But more recent imagery is much more expensive because it is much more valuable. These companies will often provide free images that are up to date to help with disaster and recovery efforts but that doesn't mean it has been put in to Google maps yet, a lot of it just still an old database of imagery. In Summary: - Old out-of-date imagery: $ - Newer up-to-date imagery that has been captured: $$$ - Tasking a spacecraft to request image of a specific area: $$$$
  - boringg 5y ago
    Like all data -- new and high def data costs a lot more than something a couple years old. Data ages out.
  - ideashower 5y ago
    random question, but where would one acquire old out of date imagery of this part of the world? For example, I know through Google Earth's timelapse feature that Gaza has been consistently scanned by satellites over the last 3 or so decades. But the images on Google Earth's timelapse feature are of very very low quality. But viewing the timelapse is evidence enough that this information is out there.
canada_dry 5y ago
Organizations/NGOs heavily rely on satellite imagery (i) to assist in delivering many humanitarian efforts. It would seem useful for the UN to strongly prohibit the diminishing of such capability. (i) www.hotosm.org
- panarky 5y ago
  The UN does not have this authority.
  - Judgmentality 5y ago
    Does the UN have any authority?
    - cdot2 5y ago
      The security council does
      - sigzero 5y ago
        Not where Google is concerned.
      - refurb 5y ago
        Only if the member states agree to back it up.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    The UN is less a legislative body and more of an international treaty negotiation forum. If all of the UN member states agreed to such a thing then it certainly could be ratified - it sounds like it might vaguely fall under the purview of the first committee DISEC (Disarmament and International Security) and Israel might object to it but usually there's some bargaining involved in these sorts of things. To my knowledge, there is, in fact, no strict limit on the authority the UN can have - but there may be some specific carve outs to other international bodies (i.e. laws of the sea - the division of antartica), however I think these carve outs were mostly made affirmatively by the UN to empower other organizations. There is a separate question on whether the UN has the power to enforce legislation it passes, but that's a pretty simplistic reduction that can be applied to pretty much any governmental body and will almost always result in the answer of "It depends".
tareqak 5y ago
The article mentions the Kyl-Bingaman Agreement [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl–Bingaman_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl–Bingaman_Amendment
qart 5y ago
I zoomed into random areas like Chekka, Lebanon and Kumasi, Ghana. I hadn't heard of these places before today, but they looked big enough on Google Maps. Zooming in, the mosaics appeared as if they were shot years apart, with noticeably different resolutions. Could Gaza just be one such scan, rather than something sinister? > "Considering the importance of current events, I see no reason why commercial imagery of this area should continue to be deliberately degraded," Yeah, no. That does not answer the question right before it. What's with these sinister edits?
- areoform 5y ago
  It's one of the most heavily imaged areas in the world - on the ground, as it's an active conflict zone. In space, satellites will pass over the region every X hours no matter what. Planet's satellites have a fresh, high resolution map of the Earth ~3.5 hours. Google had, at the very least, 7 satellites imaging the Earth in 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySat. The question isn't whether the data exists. It does. The question is, why isn't it being displayed? Correction: Google now consumes data from Planet - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/google-gets-out-of-the-satellite-business/515841/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/googl...
  - garmaine 5y ago
    Because until very, very recently it was illegal to provide commercial high resolution images of this area: https://spacenews.com/u-s-government-to-allow-sale-of-high-resolution-commercial-satellite-images-of-israel/ https://spacenews.com/u-s-government-to-allow-sale-of-high-r...
  - merth 5y ago
    my guess would be that they dont want clear image of slow destruction and take overs also before after pictures.
    - azernik 5y ago
      In Gaza? There are no takeovers there, just a DMZ and periodic shooting. The original Israeli ask, accepted by the US Congress, was for all of Israel, including the Territories, to have degraded satellite imagery - as a defensive measure against foreign intelligence-gathering and targeting.
fireeyed 5y ago
Because it’s a dump ?
squeaky-clean 5y ago
Not really related to the article at hand, but I've been on a bit of a Google Maps binge the past couple weeks. I learned a few interesting facts, blurry Israel being one of them. Another strange thing I found that might not be super well known (I didn't know about it) is that all GPS data in China is offset by a nonlinear psuedo-random amount. If you turn on the satellite view in Google Maps and look at various cities in China, you'll see that the road and business overlay is off by anywhere from 50m to 500m. And the strangest thing is that it's not a consistent offset from place to place. Turns out this is very intentional, and China uses a different geographic coordinate system than the rest of the world. WGS-84 is the most common coordinate system, but China uses GCJ-02, sometimes called Mars Coordinates. Part of GCJ-02 is an algorithm that obfuscates the results. So applying any GCJ-02 coordinate to a globe using WGS-84 coordinates gets distorted like a funhouse mirror. It's easy to find open source libraries to convert WGS-84 to GCJ-02 and vice versa. But Google Maps doesn't do it, for political reasons I suppose? I've read that if you open Google Maps within China the mapping data is correct, but have no way to test that.
- js2 5y ago
  Recently, I discovered Street View sometimes captures car crashes: https://goo.gl/maps/kJdgWQUU3eUMReUE8 https://goo.gl/maps/kJdgWQUU3eUMReUE8 https://ibb.co/x18fy3s https://ibb.co/x18fy3s
  - joering2 5y ago
    Two years ago when I saw Google car in front of me about to pass, I sure as hell opened the window and give it a bird, Maverick style. And sure as hell some 6 months later punching the address of my encounter, there I was in my car, with blurred face showing a middle finger that was surprisingly not blurred. So I showed it to all my friends all proud and stuff. Sadly a few months later the photo was replaced by I guess another drive-by. I imagine for many reasons since they already have a car in place, I'm sure they take few takes when passing by and someone must have reported me.
    - fy20 5y ago
einpoklum 5y ago
tl;dr: Because Israel wants this, and the US has forced that wish on commercial companies like Google.
- devmunchies 5y ago
  > US has forced that wish on commercial companies like Google Not necessarily. Google has R&D in Israel[1]. Sergey Brin and Larry Page are both Jewish. Not that all Jews support Israel, but typically the case. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multinational_companies_with_research_and_development_centres_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multinational_companie...
  - einpoklum 5y ago
    The regulation applies not only to Google; plus, your reservation seems to regard the linked article - I was just trying to extract the essence of its answer to the question.
avipars 5y ago
Also look at the azrieli mall in tel aviv... there is a huge military base there which is blocked/blurred
- mgerullis 5y ago
  I am curious and looking but I cannot find it, you think you can drop a pin and share that link?
  - azernik 5y ago
    Look here. The pin is at the western side of the base. It's IDF headquarters, used to be bigger (from an old British camp, back when Tel Aviv hadn't grown to swallow it up), but the army has been steadily selling off the valuable urban land and relocating functions to less central locations. I'm not seeing any notable degradation in satellite imagery, specific to that area, though. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mahane+Rabin+(HaKirya),+Tel+Aviv-Yafo,+Israel/@32.0743848,34.78774,665m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x151d4b9b64100a47:0xc15872669cce16!8m2!3d32.074689!4d34.786894 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mahane+Rabin+(HaKirya),+Te...
- azernik 5y ago
  Blurring military bases is pretty common - also done in the US, for example.
  - vultour 5y ago
    I've never seen a US military base blurred on Google Maps.
    - azernik 5y ago
      Has to be particularly sensitive ones, apparently - and more common for US bases in Europe? See https://fas.org/blogs/security/2018/12/widespread-blurring-of-satellite-images-reveals-secret-facilities/ https://fas.org/blogs/security/2018/12/widespread-blurring-o... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data#Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...
manquer 5y ago
There is perhaps an interesting machine learning application here. There are higher resolution images available at lower frequencies and low resolution images possible with high frequency. Would it not possible to "zoom and enhance" a low resolution image to higher resolution one using historical high res data of the location and learning from object types and classification?
- agnokapathetic 5y ago
  Yes: https://medium.com/the-downlinq/super-resolution-and-object-detection-a-love-story-part-1a-2f1e962e99dd https://medium.com/the-downlinq/super-resolution-and-object-...
  - gruez 5y ago
    You're basically letting an AI to hallucinate details, which looks good in most cases but in edge cases may cause unintended results: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650
    - vinhboy 5y ago
      Yo. That was crazy. So the whole "zoom and enhance" thing they do on TV is no longer science fiction. That meme is dead judging by what I am seeing in that thread.
      - fwip 5y ago
        We can get computers to make things up, sure. But usually when they "zoom and enhance" on TV it's because they want to see what's really there.
        gruez 5y ago
        Yeah, if you used this sort of upscale AI on a pixelated picture of a suspect, you'll just end up arresting some guy who's face looks most common in the training dataset.
xikrib 5y ago
So that Israel can draw its own borders without the criticism of 'international treaties' or 'human rights'
- 2rsf 5y ago
  Did you even tried to open Google maps on the area? even at the lower resolution you can clearly see houses and roads
- hereme888 5y ago
  Israel gets criticized every day, and often at the UN. Most of it is unfair criticism.
sequoia 5y ago
Tangentially related but where does this come from and why is it so widely repeated (as in this article): > ...Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world I've seen this claim (both in the "one of the most..." and "the #1 most..." forms) many times and I don't know where it comes from. What am I missing? Here[0] wikipedia says Gaza Strip has ~5,046/sqkm. I thought maybe Gaza City was meant, it's density is 13,000/sqkm[1]. Neither of these come close to ranking on wikipedias list of cities by population density[2], and I haven't been able to find any "most populated places" lists that list anything below 15,000 people per square kilometer, which Gaza city is well below. Is the BBC just plain wrong here or am I missing something? I hope it's me because if it's the former, that says something really bad about their fact checking and would suggest that BBC is not a reliable/trustworthy source, at least on this topic. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_City 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density
- jcranmer 5y ago
  You're probably missing this listing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... Where Gaza listed as its own country, it would be one of the densest, since it's basically a city and its urban sprawl and nothing more (like the other densest entries on the list). Of course, Gaza is itself arguably only part of Palestine, but the West Bank itself is pretty dense (see how high Palestine ranks on that list).
  - djhn 5y ago
    That sounds like "technically correct with caveats".
    - Kranar 5y ago
      So does OPs entire post. Gaza is, by all reasonable accounts, among the most densely populated areas in the world. There's no real reason to start questioning the credibility and trustworthiness of a news organization over the fact that Gaza is referred to as such, it's a very bizarre thing to fixate over.
Trias11 5y ago
The questions are: - Does Google deliberatly blurring Gaza strip? - Who benefits by artificially degraded quality of Gaza maps? - Does Google quietly taking political sides?
- DSingularity 5y ago
  - Yes. - Israel. - Yes, see how they took a position on the heart of this issue — the occupied territories themselves. They literally erased Palestine from the map.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Google did not erase Palestine. You can search "Palestine" on Maps and be shown Gaza Strip and West Bank, areas that were named before Google existed.
  - slg 5y ago
    >- Yes, see how they took a position on the heart of this issue — the occupied territories themselves. They literally erased Palestine from the map. The US government doesn't recognize Palestine. Therefore displaying the occupied territories as a distinct state would be the more politicalized option compared with displaying them as they currently do. Either way, it just goes to show that the idea of a company being apolitical becomes more difficult as it grows and eventually becomes impossible when you reach Google's size. There is no potential choice here that isn't going to be viewed politically.
    - nashashmi 5y ago
      The UN recognizes Palestine as do many other countries. The US was motivated not to recognize it because of the Israeli diaspora in America.
      - bostonvaulter2 5y ago
        The list of states that recognize Palestine was very surprising to me. Basically it seems like only the "first-world" nations that do not recognize Palestine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_the_State_of_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_t...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
DSingularity 5y ago
The motivation should be obvious to everyone here: to stop the public from directly seeing the Israeli war crimes. That way the propaganda machine coming from the American authorities can continue to be swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
- azernik 5y ago
  This is the result of historical blurring of all of Israel and all of the Territories, by US law. The goal was preventing intelligence gathering against Israel in general, not anything specific to Israeli action in Gaza and the West Bank.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  This makes no sense whatsoever, regardless of what side you are allowed with. Satellite imagery is inferior to simple cameras at documenting what's happening in Gaza, war crimes or not. You are not improving the reputation of Palestinian concerns with your post, so you if you want to help them, rethink your approach.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Satellite imagery can be damning when it comes to documenting genocide. See this article for a modern example[1] or this article for another example from WWII[2]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-... [2] https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2020/01/holocaust-evidence-air/ https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2020/01/holocaust-evid...
slim 5y ago
Is there an alternative (european?) source with higher definition ? Even outdated imagery would be useful
kzrdude 5y ago
It's usually called satellite imagery, but isn't most of the high-resolution, closest photos actually aerial imagery, not from satellites? In that case I would understand if there isn't that much coverage.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  No; at least per the providers, actual low-orbit satellite imagery is available to the (paying) public at 50cm resolution.
  - jtsiskin 5y ago
    That’s a little scary. If those covered the globe, you could see and track anyone anytime they left their house. This gets dystopian fast. Imagine the ad targeting. Or “sorry, we notice you haven’t been to the gym all month, we have raised your insurance premiums 10%”
    - Laforet 5y ago
      You don't even need satellite to track people, the FBI has been getting really good results with a small fleet of Cessnas. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/fbi-surveillance-government-planes-cities https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/fbi-surveill... Not to mention you already carry a mobile phone with both Bluetooth and wifi turned on. You gym plus others knew you have not been there since February.
    - avdlinde 5y ago
      50cm is not really good to identify a person. And it's not real time at all. You'd be better off calling the gyms directly.
    - aembleton 5y ago
      Google already knows this if you have an Android phone.
    - ska 5y ago
      The temporal resolution isn't great, and you don't have much control over timing. Also 50cm is too coarse for much people-sized activity to be really identifying. So; great for seeing how a property has been developed over time, not so great for seeing who is going the gym or not.
egrljerg 5y ago
I find the comments here to be very anti-semitic. Can we please leave the politics off HN?
saltmeister 5y ago
because fucking jews
yawaworht1978 5y ago
Forgive me the joke, but maybe it is because the borders are dynamic.
fjerljkl 5y ago
I know the twitter lynch mob doesn't understand many things but just to reiterate - homosexuality is a crime in Palestine. They will kill you for it. You still want to support them?
agumonkey 5y ago
Because of a lack of resolution.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
askvictor 5y ago
Here's an interesting article I came across last month concerning a couple of archaeologists bumping against this problem (tldr - some non-US companies take hi-res satellite photos, and provide them at a cost) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-05/archaeologists-accidentally-expose-israeli-nuclear-facility/100043518 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-05/archaeologists-accide...
smashah 5y ago
The plight and occupation of Gaza isn't a technical curiosity. The answer is that there's a campaign of genocide and dehumanisation going on that bleeds into all aspects of life, that's why.
Scoundreller 5y ago
Usually what I do in these situations is jump to Yandex maps, but they're the pulling the same censoring in Gaza and surroundings. Here's a French prison blurred out on Google Maps, but uncensored on Yandex: https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Prison+%22La+Sant%C3%A9%22/@48.8337878,2.3380657,547m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1 https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Prison+%22La+Sant%C3%A9%22/... https://yandex.com/maps/org/tyurma_sante/117105575064/?l=sat&ll=2.339979%2C48.833818&z=17 https://yandex.com/maps/org/tyurma_sante/117105575064/?l=sat...
- nyolfen 5y ago
  i am guessing that the israelis approach governments or corporations with the request to reduce the quality of imagery of israeli territory in order to hinder hamas' OSINT efforts, and include the caveat that gaza etc be blurred out as well to preserve the appearance of neutrality; obviously the israeli state has access to high quality imaging outside of google maps et al
andyxor 5y ago
probably for the same reason Israel is blurred, to protect it against terrorist attacks, and the algorithm is probably dumb enough to bundle Israel and Gaza into one territory in some geo index
- 2rsf 5y ago
  I bet on that although this is really stupid since houses and roads are clearly visible and most of Israel is mapped at street level as well
KryptoKlown 5y ago
My address actually isn’t even listed on google maps. I tried to rectify the situation but they wanted proof which baffled me because how do I prove where I live when they’re the ones with the damn satellites?
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  They probably just wanted a proof of residence such as a Utility Bill.
- sumedh 5y ago
  Give them your utility bill with your address?
KryptoKlown 5y ago
If you were to look up my address (I wish I could post publicly for verification purposes but for security I cannot) it doesn’t display it. It comes up with “address does not exist” and skips from my one neighbor’s house to the next completely skipping over our house.
plaidfuji 5y ago
This link title is extremely misleading to the point of being disingenuous and provocative. The title of the linked article is “Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps?”... because the entire Israel / Gaza / West Bank region is blurred in the exact same way. There is no preferential blurring of Palestinian areas. The clear answer is to prevent actors on both sides from using Google’s satellite imagery to plan attacks against one another. But please continue the breathless hot takes.
- jussij 5y ago
  Israel can get all the detailed imagery it needs by just launching a reconnaissance aircraft or drone. So on that basis I would say it only stops the Palestinians from getting imagery of the area. Now considering the fact Palestine only has rockets and not missiles, I doubt that imagery is of much value to them. Call me cynical, but I suspect the more important reason to keep these images blurred might be to stop the rest of the world from seeing what is going on.
  - tayo42 5y ago
    If that was the case why stop now? And why did they let parts unknown film in Palestine in 2013. The episode wasn't very pro Israel either. This a little to conspiracy theory for me.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - betterunix2 5y ago
    I have learned to demand a very high standard of evidence for conspiracy theories, so...let's see the evidence that there is some conspiracy between Google and Israel to hide what is happening there. For that matter, I am not even sure what you think Israel is hiding -- Netanyahu is not at all shy about settlements, the IDF calls people up to tell them when a bomb is going to be dropped on their building, and there are reporters and international observers all over the Israel and the Palestinian territories.
caf 5y ago
Wikipedia (of course!) has a list of locations intentionally blurred on public satellite map services: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...
- alluro2 5y ago
  That's interesting - the one in Antarctica, for example, really tickles the fantasy, doesn't it.
  - thepasswordis 5y ago
    Whoa that is pretty interesting.
  - flyGuyOnTheSly 5y ago
    If they were truly hiding some secret villain's lair, why wouldn't they cover their tracks by making it look like any other expanse of white snow?
    - cutemonster 5y ago
      Why not do both
  - slim 5y ago
    This declassified video is maybe relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ujx_pND9wg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ujx_pND9wg
  - circularfoyers 5y ago
    Not really. The reason seems pretty straight forward to me, "The vast majority of Antarctica is also in low resolution due to the bright, often featureless, ice and snow making high-resolution imaging both difficult and largely unnecessary".
  - BatteryMountain 5y ago
    That's where they activate the portal duh. Don't tell anyone, lives depend on it, human and non-humanoid.
neiman 5y ago
Am I the only one thinking it's not a bug, it's a feature? Please also blur all the Google Maps satellite images of where I live. Took me ages to get the ones of Google Street View blurred lol. Where do I sign up?
forgithubs 5y ago
On the same note, why is Azeria labs offices blurred on Google Maps ? Is it a special feature ? Or just that you need to know people at Google ?
ZebusJesus 5y ago
Probably so they can’t be blamed for giving intel aka maps to Palestinians fighting for their lives
itsbits 5y ago
It can be conspiracy or may be not. For example Indian cities doesn't have clear images as US cities. Sometime back, I tried finding reason for same. Apparently, Google not just use satellite images. It gets aerial images from planes as well. Obviously, Google didn't pay for aerial images of Indian cities. This can be a reason for Israel as well.
- 2rsf 5y ago
  I don't think it's a conspiracy- Israel admit that it requested Google to lower image resolution. The question is the reason behind it
Aissen 5y ago
I know satellite photo-imagery has greatly improved, as seen recently by the flex satellite companies showed on the Ever Given incident, but I'm a bit tickled by the conflation of satellite and aerial imagery. The later is the one we think of the most when thinking of Google Maps high-res "Satellite" view: https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370129089941505 https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370129089941505
nextstep 5y ago
Semi-related: Jillian C. York’s recent book “Silicon Values” talks a bit about the “digital apartheid” in Palestine. Media companies like Facebook often have no presence in the occupied territories and let the Israeli office and policies apply to Palestinian accounts, often resulting in censorship of war crimes. https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Values-Future-Surveillance-Capitalism-ebook/dp/B089S6JCYN https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Values-Future-Surveillance-Ca...
stewx 5y ago
TLDR: it used to be illegal under US law to distribute high-resolution images of Israel and Gaza. Now it's not. High-resolution images are available for purchase from satellite imaging companies but they haven't made it into Google Maps yet.
- oblak 5y ago
  Pretty asinine if your claim about it being illegal in the pas is true. Making it illegal to know the truth about genocide... That's on a whole new level than turning Manning into Chalsea for revealing to the world how much US army cares for the conquered people
Teracotage 5y ago
Google also used to hide this Secret U.S. Drone Base in Saudi Arabia, yet MS maps showed it. Which could show who is more chummy with the government. 'The image of the airfield, available in Bing Maps, would be almost impossible to discover randomly. At moderate resolutions, satellite images of the area show nothing but sand dunes. Only on close inspection does the base reveal itself. In Google's catalog of satellite pictures, the base doesn't appear at all." https://www.wired.com/2013/02/secret-drone-base-2/ https://www.wired.com/2013/02/secret-drone-base-2/
NelsonMinar 5y ago
FWIW Bing Maps (not mentioned in article) is also blurry, or rather because of their rendering preferences it is pixelated. Bing Maps has different and sometimes superior aerial imagery to Google Maps, but not this time. Baidu Maps astonishingly has no roads at all in Gaza; just a little bit of data about parks. No aerial imagery for the area too. I don't read Chinese so can't tell if they have any explanation.

1008 points by vanusa 5y ago

Why do re-education camps have soccer fields? What kind of weird soccer related torture are they performing??

A small discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27178589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27178589

zokier 5y ago

tldr: Israeli-US agreement limited resolution until July 2020, and Gmaps hasn't gotten around to updating the imagery since.

vanusa 5y ago
The bigger question of course is why the "agreement" was made with the Israelis, and not with the Palestinians directly.
- isoprophlex 5y ago
  Might makes right, as always ...
- dijit 5y ago
  USA is the only country on earth that recognises all of Israel’s territory claims.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    Not just that. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf
    - iDisagreedEar 5y ago
      127$/US citizen tax to murder people you never met. It's worse than that, you can't even travel as an American without people thinking you support murdering people.
    - devmunchies 5y ago
      $38 billion. woah. if US continues to give Israel unconditional aid then it will start to look like a vassal state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal_state
      - alisonkisk 5y ago
        The US needs an ally in the Middle East that is more reliable than any of the Arab nations are. Better than being even more beholden to Saudi Arabia. US interests also benefit quite a lot from Israeli industry, from Intel to Cellebrite
      - iskander 5y ago
        It's primarily a subsidy for American weapons manufacturers (from whom the Israelis have to make purchases), mixed with a hefty R&D budget for new military technology like Iron Dome.
        bombcar 5y ago
        Exactly. And it keeps Israel from buying similar equipment from Russia or China (and helping support those developers).
        vanusa 5y ago
        "Primarily" is more than a bit of stretch, here. All observation of U.S.-Israel relations since 1967 indicate that it's driven by a very strong ideological (and perceived electoral) component. In fact it's hard to think of a single case of a ("friendly") country for which the degree of U.S. support is less ideological. Pork barreling plays a role for sure as well, but it's definitely second fiddle.
    - 5y ago
- wernercd 5y ago
  Because there's never been a country named "Palestine" and as such it's hard to make agreements with a country that doesn't exist.
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    ... in the US Government's (and some of its allies') perspective (NB: there are definitely some caveats and the most "Israel-only" policy is in the Trump era but in practice this is how it works). Most Arab countries (for some, until recently) have the inverse: they only recognize the Palestinian government and never the Israeli government. Some governments choose a more pragmatic "both Israel and Palestine exists but their land borders are definitely not defined well".
    - wernercd 5y ago
      in the US perspective? Please, show a map that has ever had the country Palestine... I love how a simple statement of fact is getting voted down: You can't make an agreement with a non-entity. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/139168 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/139168 > In fact, historically, there was never an independent country named Palestine. > So, the historical record says that Palestine was never a country, and was rarely ever an intact entity. Recognition of... what? a "government" of a country that never existed? People can vote me down more but facts remain that the country never existed as a real entity.
  - Angostura 5y ago
    The US seems to manage OK forming relationships with Taiwan, for example.
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      Taiwan has a working government.
      - wernercd 5y ago
        And, I'd argue, it's willing to negotiate in good faith. The PLO, over the decades, has turned down anything that doesn't give it 100% of what it wants (basically, the destruction of Israel).
- buserror 5y ago
  possibly because the israelis already have all the imagery they would want anyway, and the blurring is only a problem for people who don't?
- duxup 5y ago
  As far as Gaza goes, Hamas rules Gaza but they're not the recognized government. I'm not sure who you would ask to make policy in such a situation. Just Hamas because they rule that area by force? That sounds a lot like asking Israel for the same reason. I don't think there's a good/ automatic answer for these situations.
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    > As far as Gaza goes, Hamas rules Gaza but they're not the recognized government. It's definitely more complicated by that, there is some evidence that people in the Gaza area have definitely supported Hamas, but of course they're rejected by the PNA (which rules over West Bank) and Israel.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      > there is some evidence that people in the Gaza area have definitely supported Hamas Such as when they were elected.
  - windthrown 5y ago
    Playing the devil's advocate, if the US is willing to negotiate with both the Taliban and official Afghanistan government directly, why not Hamas and Israel? (I am not trying to equate these groups; just compare the official vs force relationships)
    - tifadg1 5y ago
      Because they can't win in Afghanistan and are planning a retreat, whereas gaza is this way due to historical reasons, but mostly because they don't pose a real threat.
- betterunix2 5y ago
  Should they have negotiated with the Palestinian Authority, which only partially controls the West Bank, or with Hamas, which took control of Gaza and proceeded to murder leaders from other Palestinian political parties? It is kind of hard to know who the "official" representatives of the Palestinian people actually are due to the failure to establish a functional Palestinian state or government.
  - elmomle 5y ago
    I wish the recent history of Palestine were different too, but it seems unkind to use language that implicitly blames Palestinians as a people--or the factions that now hold power--for these issues. Literally any people on Earth would probably have a similar history, and be in a similar (or worse) place with respect to government, if they faced similar pressures for such an extended period of time.
    - betterunix2 5y ago
      How did I blame the Palestinian people? The fact is that they do not have a functioning government, and the government they have is not in a position to negotiate on their behalf when it comes to Gaza. The faction that controls Gaza is not even recognized as legitimate by the PA (which is supposed to represent the Palestinian people).
      - lacksconfidence 5y ago
        You appear, and i could of course be mistaken, to be blaming the palestinian people for "the failure to establish a functional Palestinian state or government". As if it the fault of a population that's mostly under 30 years old that they haven't been able to establish a government under the existing conditions. I'm not sure anyone else could.
        betterunix2 5y ago
        That was a statement of fact, I was not blaming anyone in particular. As I have said elsewhere, if anyone is to blame it would be Hamas, whose political campaign in 2006 was based on delegitimizing the peace process and two-state solution and which pressed a war with Fatah that greatly weakened the PA. It is not as if the Palestinians were told to build a functioning state on their own; they receive a lot of help from other countries, including from Israel itself (e.g. joint police operations, joint security patrols, etc. -- all of which are confidence-building and institution-building measures).
- zokier 5y ago
  Because Israel has more deeper pocketed lobby groups in US?
_delirium 5y ago
Perhaps pedantic, but it wasn't an agreement per se, just a regular domestic U.S. law, although Israel did indeed lobby in favor of the law. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment
- iDisagreedEar 5y ago
  I wouldn't mind other countries paying us bribes (lobbying) if that money went to the taxpayer, but instead it goes to the politician that can brainwash us with that same money. Side note, does anyone have any great works of political theory that talks about how to deal with bribery?
SilasX 5y ago
And the US is emperor of pointing satellites at the Middle East? There aren’t other satellites outside US/Israel jurisdiction that can fill it in? Or they’re not allowed to pass it on?
- lbotos 5y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27187416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27187416 Google being a "US Company" they are following that law.
  - skissane 5y ago
    KBA doesn't actually apply to Google. KBA applies to operators of imaging satellites, Google's suppliers such as Maxar. In practice, it doesn't apply to distributors, only acquirers. (The text of KBA talks about issuing licenses for "dissemination" of satellite images, but you don't need a license to resell satellite images, or buy them then give them away for free like Google does.) Legally, there is nothing stopping Google from using a non-US imagery supplier to get higher resolution images of Israel into Google Maps. In practice, they probably don't want to. It is walking into a political minefield, and Google doesn't really gain anything for themselves by walking into that minefield.

deadalus 5y ago

Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet? If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?

toomuchtodo 5y ago
https://planet.com https://planet.com (planet customer, no other affiliation)
- 5etho 5y ago
  >contact sales thank you company, I'm gladly calling to check your services now
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ajcp 5y ago
  I think OP was asking more for a live-stream type service, where this appears to be static imagery.
  - shalmanese 5y ago
    This is the best that's currently available.
    - ajcp 5y ago
      No doubt, a great resource, was just trying to help get to the meat of the comment :D
hatsunearu 5y ago
https://zoom.earth/ https://zoom.earth/ not quite real time (I'm not sure if that's even possible) but this is quite up to date. I used to to check out the smoke from last year. edit: you get pictures every 10 minutes of the whole globe, but the resolution is pretty bad, good enough to check the cloud coverage though

Juntu 5y ago

Smoke is telling the truth that blurred on gg maps can be fixed by an update.

bawolff 5y ago

Im kind of confused - they're saying its a problem for reporters and people trying to investigate, but also that other providers provide high resolution imagery. I feel like both those things can't be true. How can it be a problem if you can just get the needed images from non usa companies?

yomansat 5y ago
They're available but not always free.
whymauri 5y ago
Probably price as a barrier. Or the background knowledge to know which providers are reliable, etc. You could imagine the pricing being inaccessible to certain markets (where currency is really weak, say Venezuela), whereas Google Maps is free for almost all uses.
dr_orpheus 5y ago
Up-to-date high resolution imagery is quite expensive. Most of Google maps imagery is generated from an older database of images. Businesses like Maxar (formerly Digital Globe) that provide Earth imagery will sell a database of old out-of-date imagery for much cheaper. But more recent imagery is much more expensive because it is much more valuable. These companies will often provide free images that are up to date to help with disaster and recovery efforts but that doesn't mean it has been put in to Google maps yet, a lot of it just still an old database of imagery. In Summary: - Old out-of-date imagery: $ - Newer up-to-date imagery that has been captured: $$$ - Tasking a spacecraft to request image of a specific area: $$$$
- boringg 5y ago
  Like all data -- new and high def data costs a lot more than something a couple years old. Data ages out.
- ideashower 5y ago
  random question, but where would one acquire old out of date imagery of this part of the world? For example, I know through Google Earth's timelapse feature that Gaza has been consistently scanned by satellites over the last 3 or so decades. But the images on Google Earth's timelapse feature are of very very low quality. But viewing the timelapse is evidence enough that this information is out there.

canada_dry 5y ago

Organizations/NGOs heavily rely on satellite imagery (i) to assist in delivering many humanitarian efforts. It would seem useful for the UN to strongly prohibit the diminishing of such capability. (i) www.hotosm.org

panarky 5y ago
The UN does not have this authority.
- Judgmentality 5y ago
  Does the UN have any authority?
  - cdot2 5y ago
    The security council does
    - sigzero 5y ago
      Not where Google is concerned.
    - refurb 5y ago
      Only if the member states agree to back it up.
- munk-a 5y ago
  The UN is less a legislative body and more of an international treaty negotiation forum. If all of the UN member states agreed to such a thing then it certainly could be ratified - it sounds like it might vaguely fall under the purview of the first committee DISEC (Disarmament and International Security) and Israel might object to it but usually there's some bargaining involved in these sorts of things. To my knowledge, there is, in fact, no strict limit on the authority the UN can have - but there may be some specific carve outs to other international bodies (i.e. laws of the sea - the division of antartica), however I think these carve outs were mostly made affirmatively by the UN to empower other organizations. There is a separate question on whether the UN has the power to enforce legislation it passes, but that's a pretty simplistic reduction that can be applied to pretty much any governmental body and will almost always result in the answer of "It depends".

tareqak 5y ago

The article mentions the Kyl-Bingaman Agreement [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl–Bingaman_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl–Bingaman_Amendment

qart 5y ago

I zoomed into random areas like Chekka, Lebanon and Kumasi, Ghana. I hadn't heard of these places before today, but they looked big enough on Google Maps. Zooming in, the mosaics appeared as if they were shot years apart, with noticeably different resolutions. Could Gaza just be one such scan, rather than something sinister? > "Considering the importance of current events, I see no reason why commercial imagery of this area should continue to be deliberately degraded," Yeah, no. That does not answer the question right before it. What's with these sinister edits?

areoform 5y ago
It's one of the most heavily imaged areas in the world - on the ground, as it's an active conflict zone. In space, satellites will pass over the region every X hours no matter what. Planet's satellites have a fresh, high resolution map of the Earth ~3.5 hours. Google had, at the very least, 7 satellites imaging the Earth in 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySat. The question isn't whether the data exists. It does. The question is, why isn't it being displayed? Correction: Google now consumes data from Planet - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/google-gets-out-of-the-satellite-business/515841/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/googl...
- garmaine 5y ago
  Because until very, very recently it was illegal to provide commercial high resolution images of this area: https://spacenews.com/u-s-government-to-allow-sale-of-high-resolution-commercial-satellite-images-of-israel/ https://spacenews.com/u-s-government-to-allow-sale-of-high-r...
- merth 5y ago
  my guess would be that they dont want clear image of slow destruction and take overs also before after pictures.
  - azernik 5y ago
    In Gaza? There are no takeovers there, just a DMZ and periodic shooting. The original Israeli ask, accepted by the US Congress, was for all of Israel, including the Territories, to have degraded satellite imagery - as a defensive measure against foreign intelligence-gathering and targeting.

fireeyed 5y ago

Because it’s a dump ?

squeaky-clean 5y ago

Not really related to the article at hand, but I've been on a bit of a Google Maps binge the past couple weeks. I learned a few interesting facts, blurry Israel being one of them. Another strange thing I found that might not be super well known (I didn't know about it) is that all GPS data in China is offset by a nonlinear psuedo-random amount. If you turn on the satellite view in Google Maps and look at various cities in China, you'll see that the road and business overlay is off by anywhere from 50m to 500m. And the strangest thing is that it's not a consistent offset from place to place. Turns out this is very intentional, and China uses a different geographic coordinate system than the rest of the world. WGS-84 is the most common coordinate system, but China uses GCJ-02, sometimes called Mars Coordinates. Part of GCJ-02 is an algorithm that obfuscates the results. So applying any GCJ-02 coordinate to a globe using WGS-84 coordinates gets distorted like a funhouse mirror. It's easy to find open source libraries to convert WGS-84 to GCJ-02 and vice versa. But Google Maps doesn't do it, for political reasons I suppose? I've read that if you open Google Maps within China the mapping data is correct, but have no way to test that.

js2 5y ago
Recently, I discovered Street View sometimes captures car crashes: https://goo.gl/maps/kJdgWQUU3eUMReUE8 https://goo.gl/maps/kJdgWQUU3eUMReUE8 https://ibb.co/x18fy3s https://ibb.co/x18fy3s
- joering2 5y ago
  Two years ago when I saw Google car in front of me about to pass, I sure as hell opened the window and give it a bird, Maverick style. And sure as hell some 6 months later punching the address of my encounter, there I was in my car, with blurred face showing a middle finger that was surprisingly not blurred. So I showed it to all my friends all proud and stuff. Sadly a few months later the photo was replaced by I guess another drive-by. I imagine for many reasons since they already have a car in place, I'm sure they take few takes when passing by and someone must have reported me.
  - fy20 5y ago

einpoklum 5y ago

tl;dr: Because Israel wants this, and the US has forced that wish on commercial companies like Google.

devmunchies 5y ago
> US has forced that wish on commercial companies like Google Not necessarily. Google has R&D in Israel[1]. Sergey Brin and Larry Page are both Jewish. Not that all Jews support Israel, but typically the case. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multinational_companies_with_research_and_development_centres_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multinational_companie...
- einpoklum 5y ago
  The regulation applies not only to Google; plus, your reservation seems to regard the linked article - I was just trying to extract the essence of its answer to the question.

avipars 5y ago

Also look at the azrieli mall in tel aviv... there is a huge military base there which is blocked/blurred

mgerullis 5y ago
I am curious and looking but I cannot find it, you think you can drop a pin and share that link?
- azernik 5y ago
  Look here. The pin is at the western side of the base. It's IDF headquarters, used to be bigger (from an old British camp, back when Tel Aviv hadn't grown to swallow it up), but the army has been steadily selling off the valuable urban land and relocating functions to less central locations. I'm not seeing any notable degradation in satellite imagery, specific to that area, though. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mahane+Rabin+(HaKirya),+Tel+Aviv-Yafo,+Israel/@32.0743848,34.78774,665m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x151d4b9b64100a47:0xc15872669cce16!8m2!3d32.074689!4d34.786894 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mahane+Rabin+(HaKirya),+Te...
azernik 5y ago
Blurring military bases is pretty common - also done in the US, for example.
- vultour 5y ago
  I've never seen a US military base blurred on Google Maps.
  - azernik 5y ago
    Has to be particularly sensitive ones, apparently - and more common for US bases in Europe? See https://fas.org/blogs/security/2018/12/widespread-blurring-of-satellite-images-reveals-secret-facilities/ https://fas.org/blogs/security/2018/12/widespread-blurring-o... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data#Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...

manquer 5y ago

There is perhaps an interesting machine learning application here. There are higher resolution images available at lower frequencies and low resolution images possible with high frequency. Would it not possible to "zoom and enhance" a low resolution image to higher resolution one using historical high res data of the location and learning from object types and classification?

agnokapathetic 5y ago
Yes: https://medium.com/the-downlinq/super-resolution-and-object-detection-a-love-story-part-1a-2f1e962e99dd https://medium.com/the-downlinq/super-resolution-and-object-...
- gruez 5y ago
  You're basically letting an AI to hallucinate details, which looks good in most cases but in edge cases may cause unintended results: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650
  - vinhboy 5y ago
    Yo. That was crazy. So the whole "zoom and enhance" thing they do on TV is no longer science fiction. That meme is dead judging by what I am seeing in that thread.
    - fwip 5y ago
      We can get computers to make things up, sure. But usually when they "zoom and enhance" on TV it's because they want to see what's really there.
      - gruez 5y ago
        Yeah, if you used this sort of upscale AI on a pixelated picture of a suspect, you'll just end up arresting some guy who's face looks most common in the training dataset.

xikrib 5y ago

So that Israel can draw its own borders without the criticism of 'international treaties' or 'human rights'

2rsf 5y ago
Did you even tried to open Google maps on the area? even at the lower resolution you can clearly see houses and roads
hereme888 5y ago
Israel gets criticized every day, and often at the UN. Most of it is unfair criticism.

sequoia 5y ago

Tangentially related but where does this come from and why is it so widely repeated (as in this article): > ...Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world I've seen this claim (both in the "one of the most..." and "the #1 most..." forms) many times and I don't know where it comes from. What am I missing? Here[0] wikipedia says Gaza Strip has ~5,046/sqkm. I thought maybe Gaza City was meant, it's density is 13,000/sqkm[1]. Neither of these come close to ranking on wikipedias list of cities by population density[2], and I haven't been able to find any "most populated places" lists that list anything below 15,000 people per square kilometer, which Gaza city is well below. Is the BBC just plain wrong here or am I missing something? I hope it's me because if it's the former, that says something really bad about their fact checking and would suggest that BBC is not a reliable/trustworthy source, at least on this topic. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_City 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density

jcranmer 5y ago
You're probably missing this listing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... Where Gaza listed as its own country, it would be one of the densest, since it's basically a city and its urban sprawl and nothing more (like the other densest entries on the list). Of course, Gaza is itself arguably only part of Palestine, but the West Bank itself is pretty dense (see how high Palestine ranks on that list).
- djhn 5y ago
  That sounds like "technically correct with caveats".
  - Kranar 5y ago
    So does OPs entire post. Gaza is, by all reasonable accounts, among the most densely populated areas in the world. There's no real reason to start questioning the credibility and trustworthiness of a news organization over the fact that Gaza is referred to as such, it's a very bizarre thing to fixate over.

Trias11 5y ago

The questions are: - Does Google deliberatly blurring Gaza strip? - Who benefits by artificially degraded quality of Gaza maps? - Does Google quietly taking political sides?

DSingularity 5y ago
- Yes. - Israel. - Yes, see how they took a position on the heart of this issue — the occupied territories themselves. They literally erased Palestine from the map.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Google did not erase Palestine. You can search "Palestine" on Maps and be shown Gaza Strip and West Bank, areas that were named before Google existed.
- slg 5y ago
  >- Yes, see how they took a position on the heart of this issue — the occupied territories themselves. They literally erased Palestine from the map. The US government doesn't recognize Palestine. Therefore displaying the occupied territories as a distinct state would be the more politicalized option compared with displaying them as they currently do. Either way, it just goes to show that the idea of a company being apolitical becomes more difficult as it grows and eventually becomes impossible when you reach Google's size. There is no potential choice here that isn't going to be viewed politically.
  - nashashmi 5y ago
    The UN recognizes Palestine as do many other countries. The US was motivated not to recognize it because of the Israeli diaspora in America.
    - bostonvaulter2 5y ago
      The list of states that recognize Palestine was very surprising to me. Basically it seems like only the "first-world" nations that do not recognize Palestine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_the_State_of_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_t...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

DSingularity 5y ago

The motivation should be obvious to everyone here: to stop the public from directly seeing the Israeli war crimes. That way the propaganda machine coming from the American authorities can continue to be swallowed hook, line, and sinker.

azernik 5y ago
This is the result of historical blurring of all of Israel and all of the Territories, by US law. The goal was preventing intelligence gathering against Israel in general, not anything specific to Israeli action in Gaza and the West Bank.
alisonkisk 5y ago
This makes no sense whatsoever, regardless of what side you are allowed with. Satellite imagery is inferior to simple cameras at documenting what's happening in Gaza, war crimes or not. You are not improving the reputation of Palestinian concerns with your post, so you if you want to help them, rethink your approach.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Satellite imagery can be damning when it comes to documenting genocide. See this article for a modern example[1] or this article for another example from WWII[2]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-... [2] https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2020/01/holocaust-evidence-air/ https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2020/01/holocaust-evid...

slim 5y ago

Is there an alternative (european?) source with higher definition ? Even outdated imagery would be useful

kzrdude 5y ago

It's usually called satellite imagery, but isn't most of the high-resolution, closest photos actually aerial imagery, not from satellites? In that case I would understand if there isn't that much coverage.

ComputerGuru 5y ago
No; at least per the providers, actual low-orbit satellite imagery is available to the (paying) public at 50cm resolution.
- jtsiskin 5y ago
  That’s a little scary. If those covered the globe, you could see and track anyone anytime they left their house. This gets dystopian fast. Imagine the ad targeting. Or “sorry, we notice you haven’t been to the gym all month, we have raised your insurance premiums 10%”
  - Laforet 5y ago
    You don't even need satellite to track people, the FBI has been getting really good results with a small fleet of Cessnas. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/fbi-surveillance-government-planes-cities https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/fbi-surveill... Not to mention you already carry a mobile phone with both Bluetooth and wifi turned on. You gym plus others knew you have not been there since February.
  - avdlinde 5y ago
    50cm is not really good to identify a person. And it's not real time at all. You'd be better off calling the gyms directly.
  - aembleton 5y ago
    Google already knows this if you have an Android phone.
  - ska 5y ago
    The temporal resolution isn't great, and you don't have much control over timing. Also 50cm is too coarse for much people-sized activity to be really identifying. So; great for seeing how a property has been developed over time, not so great for seeing who is going the gym or not.

egrljerg 5y ago

I find the comments here to be very anti-semitic. Can we please leave the politics off HN?

saltmeister 5y ago

because fucking jews

yawaworht1978 5y ago

Forgive me the joke, but maybe it is because the borders are dynamic.

fjerljkl 5y ago

I know the twitter lynch mob doesn't understand many things but just to reiterate - homosexuality is a crime in Palestine. They will kill you for it. You still want to support them?

agumonkey 5y ago

Because of a lack of resolution.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

askvictor 5y ago

Here's an interesting article I came across last month concerning a couple of archaeologists bumping against this problem (tldr - some non-US companies take hi-res satellite photos, and provide them at a cost) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-05/archaeologists-accidentally-expose-israeli-nuclear-facility/100043518 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-05/archaeologists-accide...

smashah 5y ago

The plight and occupation of Gaza isn't a technical curiosity. The answer is that there's a campaign of genocide and dehumanisation going on that bleeds into all aspects of life, that's why.

Scoundreller 5y ago

Usually what I do in these situations is jump to Yandex maps, but they're the pulling the same censoring in Gaza and surroundings. Here's a French prison blurred out on Google Maps, but uncensored on Yandex: https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Prison+%22La+Sant%C3%A9%22/@48.8337878,2.3380657,547m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1 https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Prison+%22La+Sant%C3%A9%22/... https://yandex.com/maps/org/tyurma_sante/117105575064/?l=sat&ll=2.339979%2C48.833818&z=17 https://yandex.com/maps/org/tyurma_sante/117105575064/?l=sat...

nyolfen 5y ago
i am guessing that the israelis approach governments or corporations with the request to reduce the quality of imagery of israeli territory in order to hinder hamas' OSINT efforts, and include the caveat that gaza etc be blurred out as well to preserve the appearance of neutrality; obviously the israeli state has access to high quality imaging outside of google maps et al

andyxor 5y ago

probably for the same reason Israel is blurred, to protect it against terrorist attacks, and the algorithm is probably dumb enough to bundle Israel and Gaza into one territory in some geo index

2rsf 5y ago
I bet on that although this is really stupid since houses and roads are clearly visible and most of Israel is mapped at street level as well

KryptoKlown 5y ago

My address actually isn’t even listed on google maps. I tried to rectify the situation but they wanted proof which baffled me because how do I prove where I live when they’re the ones with the damn satellites?

systemvoltage 5y ago
They probably just wanted a proof of residence such as a Utility Bill.
sumedh 5y ago
Give them your utility bill with your address?

KryptoKlown 5y ago

If you were to look up my address (I wish I could post publicly for verification purposes but for security I cannot) it doesn’t display it. It comes up with “address does not exist” and skips from my one neighbor’s house to the next completely skipping over our house.

plaidfuji 5y ago

This link title is extremely misleading to the point of being disingenuous and provocative. The title of the linked article is “Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps?”... because the entire Israel / Gaza / West Bank region is blurred in the exact same way. There is no preferential blurring of Palestinian areas. The clear answer is to prevent actors on both sides from using Google’s satellite imagery to plan attacks against one another. But please continue the breathless hot takes.

jussij 5y ago
Israel can get all the detailed imagery it needs by just launching a reconnaissance aircraft or drone. So on that basis I would say it only stops the Palestinians from getting imagery of the area. Now considering the fact Palestine only has rockets and not missiles, I doubt that imagery is of much value to them. Call me cynical, but I suspect the more important reason to keep these images blurred might be to stop the rest of the world from seeing what is going on.
- tayo42 5y ago
  If that was the case why stop now? And why did they let parts unknown film in Palestine in 2013. The episode wasn't very pro Israel either. This a little to conspiracy theory for me.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- betterunix2 5y ago
  I have learned to demand a very high standard of evidence for conspiracy theories, so...let's see the evidence that there is some conspiracy between Google and Israel to hide what is happening there. For that matter, I am not even sure what you think Israel is hiding -- Netanyahu is not at all shy about settlements, the IDF calls people up to tell them when a bomb is going to be dropped on their building, and there are reporters and international observers all over the Israel and the Palestinian territories.

caf 5y ago

Wikipedia (of course!) has a list of locations intentionally blurred on public satellite map services: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...

alluro2 5y ago
That's interesting - the one in Antarctica, for example, really tickles the fantasy, doesn't it.
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  Whoa that is pretty interesting.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 5y ago
  If they were truly hiding some secret villain's lair, why wouldn't they cover their tracks by making it look like any other expanse of white snow?
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    Why not do both
- slim 5y ago
  This declassified video is maybe relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ujx_pND9wg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ujx_pND9wg
- circularfoyers 5y ago
  Not really. The reason seems pretty straight forward to me, "The vast majority of Antarctica is also in low resolution due to the bright, often featureless, ice and snow making high-resolution imaging both difficult and largely unnecessary".
- BatteryMountain 5y ago
  That's where they activate the portal duh. Don't tell anyone, lives depend on it, human and non-humanoid.

neiman 5y ago

Am I the only one thinking it's not a bug, it's a feature? Please also blur all the Google Maps satellite images of where I live. Took me ages to get the ones of Google Street View blurred lol. Where do I sign up?

forgithubs 5y ago

On the same note, why is Azeria labs offices blurred on Google Maps ? Is it a special feature ? Or just that you need to know people at Google ?

ZebusJesus 5y ago

Probably so they can’t be blamed for giving intel aka maps to Palestinians fighting for their lives

itsbits 5y ago

It can be conspiracy or may be not. For example Indian cities doesn't have clear images as US cities. Sometime back, I tried finding reason for same. Apparently, Google not just use satellite images. It gets aerial images from planes as well. Obviously, Google didn't pay for aerial images of Indian cities. This can be a reason for Israel as well.

2rsf 5y ago
I don't think it's a conspiracy- Israel admit that it requested Google to lower image resolution. The question is the reason behind it

Aissen 5y ago

I know satellite photo-imagery has greatly improved, as seen recently by the flex satellite companies showed on the Ever Given incident, but I'm a bit tickled by the conflation of satellite and aerial imagery. The later is the one we think of the most when thinking of Google Maps high-res "Satellite" view: https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370129089941505 https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370129089941505

nextstep 5y ago

Semi-related: Jillian C. York’s recent book “Silicon Values” talks a bit about the “digital apartheid” in Palestine. Media companies like Facebook often have no presence in the occupied territories and let the Israeli office and policies apply to Palestinian accounts, often resulting in censorship of war crimes. https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Values-Future-Surveillance-Capitalism-ebook/dp/B089S6JCYN https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Values-Future-Surveillance-Ca...

stewx 5y ago

TLDR: it used to be illegal under US law to distribute high-resolution images of Israel and Gaza. Now it's not. High-resolution images are available for purchase from satellite imaging companies but they haven't made it into Google Maps yet.

oblak 5y ago
Pretty asinine if your claim about it being illegal in the pas is true. Making it illegal to know the truth about genocide... That's on a whole new level than turning Manning into Chalsea for revealing to the world how much US army cares for the conquered people

Teracotage 5y ago

Google also used to hide this Secret U.S. Drone Base in Saudi Arabia, yet MS maps showed it. Which could show who is more chummy with the government. 'The image of the airfield, available in Bing Maps, would be almost impossible to discover randomly. At moderate resolutions, satellite images of the area show nothing but sand dunes. Only on close inspection does the base reveal itself. In Google's catalog of satellite pictures, the base doesn't appear at all." https://www.wired.com/2013/02/secret-drone-base-2/ https://www.wired.com/2013/02/secret-drone-base-2/

NelsonMinar 5y ago

FWIW Bing Maps (not mentioned in article) is also blurry, or rather because of their rendering preferences it is pixelated. Bing Maps has different and sometimes superior aerial imagery to Google Maps, but not this time. Baidu Maps astonishingly has no roads at all in Gaza; just a little bit of data about parks. No aerial imagery for the area too. I don't read Chinese so can't tell if they have any explanation.