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This is a mind boggling realization. Is OSM data also compromised in the same way?
by junon 5y ago
This is a mind boggling realization. Is OSM data also compromised in the same way?
- ryandrake 5y agoOpenStreetMap has a page[1] on this. TLDR: Private individuals surveying is illegal in China, which seems to outlaw the entire OSM project and any participation or contribution. I am not a lawyer or expert on Chinese law so who knows. 1: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/China https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/China
- javajosh 5y agoThat is rather chilling, is it not? That a nation would prevent its citizens from looking around and measuring what they see? I can't help but wonder how the chickens will come home to roost.
- foota 5y agoThat's the chilling thing about Chinese censorship?
- Eelongate 5y ago> "the chilling thing" Your comment implies a singular chilling thing, while his does not.
- whatshisface 5y agoChickens can't find their way home if maps are illegal now can they.
- ngc248 5y agoThey won't even be able to cross the road, hence for the CCP the age old question "Why did the chicken cross the road?" is meaningless :)
- PoignardAzur 5y agoI'm no sympathizer to the CCP, but I don't think this argument makes sense in our time. There's a big gap between a private individual looking around, and lots of private individuals coordinating to look at everything all the time. Modern technology is making that gap larger year after year.
- whatshisface 5y agoThat argument would be more appropriate if OSM was about something other than where the streets went.
- morio 5y agoSadly anything can be politicized these days.
- int_19h 5y agoUSSR/Russia also had a very long history of restrictions on accurate maps (of just about anything!), on the basis that it is a national security threat if the country ever gets invaded. Street-level maps were broadly available but deliberately falsified: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/03/world/soviet-aide-admits-maps-were-faked-for-50-years.html https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/03/world/soviet-aide-admits-... Detailed (<1:2500000) topographic maps were automatically classified as a state secret, and restricted on a "need to know" basis outside of the military until 1989. A detailed article on this explaining how and why they went about it: http://www.hundzor.org/lj/10postnikov.pdf http://www.hundzor.org/lj/10postnikov.pdf
- seniorivn 5y agofunnily enough correct and detailed maps of ussr were available in nato countries
- aivisol 5y agoTrue, and people knew it. I used to travel on the bicycle with the help of USSR maps made in early eighties (due to unavailability of other options), and yes, what you saw on the map was sometimes very different from what was in the real life, especially if you were close to the external border.
- uuidgen 5y agoThey're preventing citizens from publishing that info, not looking around and measuring from what I found. Imagine a country that prevents its citizens from recording a song they hear and sharing it with their friends. Oh, wait, US more or less does that and forces other countries to implement policies that prevent it or they will ban trade with those countries.
- javajosh 5y ago>a country that prevents its citizens from recording a song... False analogy. No-one claims copy-write on the physical world. Well, not except the CCP.
- 8note 5y agoThat's not true. Building designs have copyrights as do skylines. Eg the lights on that tower in france
- Proven 5y agoUnrelated. Building designs are man-made and in any case this is about taking photographs and not replicating man-made designs.
- pmontra 5y agoMost of the things we care about on a map are man made too. Roads, tracks, bridges, shops, street addresses. I rarely care about where a mountaintop or a river are. I care for the track to get there or the bridge to cross to the other bank or the road to a restaurant.
- varajelle 5y agoSongs are being played in the physical world. I think the analogy is perfectly valid anyway. You're just trying to find an excuse to compensate a dissonance. But all rules are arbitrary.
- resters 5y ago
- stjohnswarts 5y agoNo where near as chilling as to be constantly being anxious about your social score, getting disappeared for political speech, overstepping your bounds with a corrupt local government official, and a 100 other things.
- 8note 5y agoAn equivalent worry being that the US will nuke you because the president's real estate portfolio didn't go as well as he hoped. National defense can justify all kinds of strange things
- powerapple 5y agoMostly because every year China would arrest a few Japanese for surveying lands in China. It is funny how surveying a country is so important.
- mistrial9 5y agoI am curious about this -- is it more complete to say that zero surveying is allowed without a permit, if it is an individual or company or school or anyone?
- gsich 5y agoNo.
- nefitty 5y agoSomewhat related, Natural Earth is a global map dataset in the public domain. I stumbled on this issue regarding Taiwan and China: https://github.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/issues/331 https://github.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/issues/331 Apparently, the resolution was to create political POV versions, although the default seems to lean toward a "Western-centric" direction.
- resters 5y agoGPS data from the satellites was intentionally "compromised" for all civilian uses until fairly recently. Why alter the maps if you can alter the GPS.