[IP] Google Maps Imagery and National Security
Begin forwarded message:
From: Tim O'Reilly <tim@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 9, 2005 10:31:14 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Google Maps Imagery and National Security
Nat Torkington recently posted the following to The O'Reilly Radar
(http://radar.oreilly.com), and it struck me that his comments might
be of interest to IP.
I recently did press call with Tim, talking about the Where 2.0
conference (http://conferences.oreilly.com/where). We covered the
popularity of Google Maps, the big changes coming for Internet
mapping portals, the rise of the grassroots hacker in this space,
and the cool pictometry of Microsoft's Virtual Earth. Ryan Singel
from Wired News was there, and asked a question about privacy and
mentioned "national security". I didn't really speak to national
security in my answer but had afterthoughts about the terror of
images, which I sent in a followup email. Here they are.
Hi, Ryan. When you said "national security," I felt like I had
something to say there, but I couldn't remember what it was.
Naturally, it came to me after the call ended.
Der Spiegel recently found a B2 bomber caught on Google's satellite
imagery. My wife worked on the zero radar emission protection for
the B2, and it was great fun for her to see "her baby" again. I
blogged about this. I think the story here is not that national
security has been compromised by consumer grade satellite imagery
showing a B2. The government can scrub the satellite images that
civilians get. If they felt it was of national security, they would
have scrubbed Edwards Air Force Base from the map. The story is not
even that other nations with spy satellites, and there are a lot of
them, have been able to see (at much greater resolution) our
landmarks, military bases, and secret aircraft for a long time.
The real story is how perception trumps reason. When I told a
coworker about Microsoft's pictometry (low-flying aircraft taking
oblique (45-degree) images of cities) the coworker said, "oh great,
the terrorists will love it!" I didn't agree. The fact is that
imagery, either satellite or pictometry, doesn't help them much.
Satellite imagery gives you roads and shapes of a map and lets you
discover the number of air-conditioners on building roofs. If the
terrorists can use that, all power to them.
The pictometry is higher resolution than the satellite but still
not enough to make you recognizable as you: they get about 1-foot
resolution compared to 1/2-meter resolution for satellites, so
assuming you're stark naked sunbathing in your back yard while the
pictometry camera flies overhead, you'll show up as five pixels
high. That's not enough to identify you as naked, let alone as you.
Pictometry goes up to half-foot resolution, but it's still not
enough. There's a great quote from the satellite imagery guy
exactly 24 minutes into the MSN Channel 9 piece on Virtual Earth :
"it's not until you get to 3 or 4 inches per pixel that it goes
from being aerial imagery to porn."
So what you can actually learn from the pictometry is far less than
you'd get by driving there in person, doing a live reconnaissance.
If I were to try to plan a bombing on a building, I'd get very
little information from Virtual Earth--I'd still want to do a live
scouting trip to learn more.
What worries people is not what's possible technically, but the
surprising effects of seeing a photo instead of seeing a map.
Photos feel more real, with more detail and a far great connection
to the world we inhabit. For me, it's the difference between
reading a musical score and hearing it. Realizing that anyone
anywhere can see your house from above is a shock, a connection
between the virtual and real worlds that wasn't possible before.
And every improvement in the images (detail, angle) that makes a
better view also generates a more startling reaction.
And it's this vitality, this power that comes with images, that
makes them useful. There are things I can learn from a map that I
can't learn from a turn-by-turn description, and there are things I
can learn from a satellite image that I can't learn from a map
(street parking, complex intersections, etc.). When MSN Virtual
Earth ships, I'll be using it to scout my route for every trip I
take: I'm constantly getting lost because the information in maps
and directions don't help me at tricky intersections.
So I'm not too concerned about national security implications, so
long as the Feds keep on top of their duty to scrub. The only
privacy implication I can think of is that my neighbourhood
association might use it to nosy through everyone's back yards,
looking for illegal outbuildings, spa pools without permits, or out-
of-code solar panels. But given that they're my neighbourhood
association, they could just wander through the neighbourhood and
look over our fences anyway. I don't mind that anyone can do it
over the Internet--they're not learning anything that could harm me.
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Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly Media, Inc.
1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472
707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com (company), http://tim.oreilly.com (personal)
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