While you're at it ban GPS, mobile phones, maps, cars and any other tool the terrorists might have used. Better still ban more than two people in a group - schools, churches, business lunches, picnics.......

Paris 'cos ......

Food was used by the terrorists. So was air. And clothes. And water. And cars. Ban them all, I say! Won't somebody think of the Children???

Are they going to ban tourist maps and city guides too then ?

They can be used to familiarize yourself with a remote city, possibly for terrorist attacks, too ....

Bah.

AC & Black Helicopter, for obvious reasons ....

Perhaps coughing up some money so that two indian soldiers don't have to share a single 70 year old .303 lee enfield rifle when facing two terroists with AK47s might be better.

Bloody brave soldiers, bloody stupid politicians.

One of the eyewitnesses told of armed police refusing to engage the attackers. Instead, the police hid or ran away.

We are told by police, teachers, government in all forms, and punditry galore that we ought not to have general ownership of firearms because we need to leave the use of force to the trained professionals.

Screw that. When the trained professionals piss themselves and run away that argument evaporates. The only people in a position to stop madmen such as those in Mumbai are those who are right there at the time, but only if they have guns as well.

I was tempted to post this as A.C. but that just won't do this time. I firmly believe what I've said and am not at all afraid to say so under my real name.

Since the terrorists were alive, we need to ban being alive. It's the only way we can ensure the safety of our... Well, I can't say future at this point, can I?

It'll still stop those terrorists from exploiting being alive! >:[

Mine's the one with the cyanide-based terrorism prevention capsules.

Legal advocates have petitioned an Indian court to ban the skills of reading & writing following intelligence indicating that reading & writing were used to plan last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed 170 people.

Advocate Amit Karkhanis told India's High Court that the skills of reading & writing "aids terrorists in plotting attacks" by providing detailed information used to acquaint radical militants with their targets. He asked that Libraries, Newspapers, and all Shop & Street Signs be blurred of painted over in all areas in the country while the case proceeds....

Apparently, India is trying for the Guiness Book of World Records "Most Stupid Authorities" title.

If banning stuff works so well to defeat terrorism, just ban guns and terrorism

The bad guys will just Google Earth from outside India, or *shock* *horror* use a VPN from within India. We really need people with a clue to be in decision making roles.

Let's ban maps, GPS, mobile phones but not guns, grenades, light machine guns, etc.

Their use was purely coincidental and circumstancial and have nothing to do with what happened

... namely, that it's pretty stupid.

And if they were really trained in Pakistan, then they'd just use Pakistani ISPs to access Google Earth.

Cant they just ban life since you...or you....or you could be a terrorist. No not me though, im a politician

what good will banning Google Earth in India do?

sir, you fail. we understand the situation is hard, but it not excuse for plain stupidity. that image can be adquired outside of india regardless what your parlament/court will say. it is backward idea to ban anything on internet... proves ingnorance of our times.

" I was just wondering how stupid are some of your readersThey dont understand the gravity of the situation and doesnt realy know what difference it can make with an arial view of strategic places ending up in wrong hands.The first thing shoud be banned is not the gadgets,but the holy mouths of your idiotic readers for being ridiculously miopic."

Well for blaming others to be nearsighted (myopic), you might want to learn how to use punctuation and proper spelling first. As others have pointed out, there are lots of other ways to get an aerial view (like maps).

Yes, we 'shoud' ban free speech (and definitely holy mouths), thank you for pointing that out. While we're doing that, we might also want to ban coherent thought, punctuation and tolerance as well.

" Thanks"

You're welcome.

..religion.

That's whats behind all this malarkey anyway.

All gods please report to the scrap-heap.

At one point the Indian government banned the whole of yahoo groups (not a great loss, granted) on the basis that some were being used to discuss potential terrorist naughtiness. The main culprits, IIRC, were SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India), part of which I believe later morphed into the Indian/Deccan/visiting Pakistani Mujeheddin connected to the Bombay attacks. They obviously signed up to MySpace instead.

Google earth isn't the problem anyway, the ISI is. The sooner India launches a successful takeover bid for Pakistan, the better.

@sreekHi

oh don't be so bloody shrill.

Paris, cos even she knows religion is for pillocks

Maps, books, street views... and as we go... do it from all over the world and to all over the world.

And by the way... ask the Chinese, American, English, Russian and everyone else with image satellites to do the same to their captured images.

I just wonder where this censorship appologists people have lost their brains... but alas, that info was censored, so i can't give the answer to everyone...

;)

PH- because she has all his curves on photo... and not censured... or blured...

You're kidding right?

I have no problem with poking fun at Adv.Karkhanis and his ilk for all the reasons already discussed.

I also have no problem with you choosing a tragedy of this magnitude as a platform for your gun ownership views. Bad timing, I would be tempted to say, but it's your opinion and you have a right to it.

(Let's leave aside the fact the US, where most gun rights advocates hail from, has more urban gun crime and related fatalities than the rest of the world put together, yet there is no known occurrence of civilian gun ownership having thwarted a terrorist attack)

But claiming that Indian law enforcement refused to engage? Do you have any facts at all, or are "one eyewitness told" type anonymous references the best you can do? Do you have any idea how offensive (and ignorant) you sound to someone like me, an Indian who knew one of the cops who died fighting?

There's a lot of questions we're asking ourselves.

Like why it took the authorities 8 plus hours to send out commandos from the Navy and the National Security Guard who're trained for precisely this kind of situation.

Like why city police forces don't have the resources to raise elite commando forces of their own.

Like why, as one of the other readers pointed out, city policemen still have antiquated equipment like .303 rifles.

Like why questions are being asked if a batch of bullet proof jackets was in service even after failing tests (and what kind of human being would strike a corrupt deal on substandard life jackets).

Like when will the politicians finally get their heads out of their ___s and their hands out of the till and work on a real crisis response system.

Questioning the bravery of our fighting men, though, is not one of them.

It's sad that people choose to make a soapbox out of a tragic incident like this. It's even sadder that the loudest people on the soapbox are also the most ignorant.

My dear readers,

While I respect the freedom of expression and appreciate the concern of ALL those who felt that Google earth be banned from showing "vital information", we need to think whether it is the right solution. I'm afraid it may lead to 'restriction of Information and Technology' which we need to develop more and more for a better living.

Any way this is purely my personal opinion; which may not be correct.

-samuelongc@gmail.com

sreekHi, you should really read what you wrote before you assume you're not standing in the middle of the glass house and throwing stones (or something like that).

Truly, the events in Mumbai are tragic, not because of the values of the lives lost but because of the moronic motivations of those who carried out those heinous acts. I couldn't agree more about the evils of religion, although we aren't worried as much about the religion itself as much as the sadistic people leading the violent sects of these religions that twist the thoughts of their followers for their own purposes. I certainly wouldn't characterize Islam as a violent religion, nor Christianity, etc.

The real problem in all of this is people. Until people will stop being stupid, this sort of thing will go on forever. Until we can kill all people on earth, there won't be an solution that can be legislated or enacted. People are the problem.

Instead of blurring military bases ... have them in extra high res with 3d modeling .... seriously I think most governments would rather have terrorist target a military installation than some crowded marketplace.

And when you dealing with goverment vs government not government vs terrorist ... well those governments have their own means of getting images of the same area, only higher quality and more recent.

Best way to defend themselves is to build a bunch of plywood guard towers, inflatable tanks, dress up manikins are foot patrols, fake anti missle systems.

It could be fun. The nations of the world can try to come up with the scariest looking military base.

BE AN ANTI TERRORIST AND KILL THEM IF YOU SEE ONE

Have you really thought this through? Terrorists invade crowded public area and start shooting people. Armed populace start shooting back. More armed populace turn up and start shooting at whoever looks the most threatening. Surviving terrorists sneak away quietly, leaving a growing firefight.

Whether or not they ran away, at least the professionals wear a uniform, halving the identification problem. Now if we can just get the terrorists to wear a different uniform... solves all the airport screening and no-fly list problems. Come on, it is at least as workable as your proposal!

The terrorists were apparently pumped up on drugs, which was how they managed to out-maneuvre the commandos for so long without food or water.

So we should ban drugs.

Oh. Erm..

I'll get me coat. ;)

Looks like they'll have to use maps.live.com now instead!

Evil Gates because MS are helping terrorists now.

Google earth didn't give them much more than any tourist street map in locating targets and the time taken to travel between them. What was instrumental in the attack was the detailed knowledge of the buildings internal layout, which they could only have gained from on the ground reconnaissance, not google earth.

"They dont understand the gravity of the situation and doesnt realy know what difference it can make with an arial view of strategic places"

Yeah, let's ban arial. Verdana is much better looking.

so sorry if this has been said already,

But werent they planned from pakistan, so if india bans access to google earth all that will happen is indian people wont be able to access it, but people in pakistan and the rest of the world will be able to access it, and so see pictures of india, thus not actually preventing the problem? Or do they intend to get google to remove all images of india from the service? and if so can they do this?