Pentagon rattles sabre at Google's Street View

Ha ha ha

Laughing at the availability of the map.

Bleh.

In many countries, photographing a military or police building will get you arrested.

Although, I hoped that we were 'better' and more civilised than that. Banning google from having such a photo is not going to make the [US] nation a safer place. It's just more pathetic and wasteful paranoia.

Is it irony?

But these are the boys who think looking over the shoulder of everyone else is their mission in life. Tap a wire and email here, (get-)Real ID card there, rendition everywhere. For people who want pictures and assorted biometrics for everybody, they get a little too touchy when you go around showing pictures of a simple street. Turnabout is fair play as far as I'm concerned.

Paris because she is smarter than most Department of Homeboy Security types.

@dervheid

Hmmmmm, and what exactly is the El Reg standard paranoia unit I wonder?

Safer now?

Do you feel safer now? That will stop all those pesky terrorists.

Another load of BS from fine people from US.

Paranoia Levels

Scale;

1.0 = Laid Back

5.0 = Everyone in the Universe is out to get me / U.S.

Minimum Level achieved by (current) US Gov. is about 3.0, "Why does nobody like U.S?"

Of course, you could have used your imagination Pete!

Google moon

Wonder if they blank out the landing sites so we will never know the answer to the ultimate question....

What word is going....

....through every terrorists mind at seeing this news....

maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&lr=lang_en&hl=en&msa=0&msid=114161200382864544351.00000111c0def7e7eeb6a&t=k&z=19

Paranoia Levels

In that case maybe the Rumsfeld (being 10 Blunketts) might be a good starting point.

Reg standard unit of paranoia...

is obviously the (tinfoil hat)/(black helicopter) ratio in the area concerned.

so the more tinfoil hats per black helicopter in a given area, the higher the paranoia levels. the US has lots of black helicopters, but also a lot of paranoid people, probably comes to about ten.

tinfoil hat donned.

@ Steve

Do we still believe that? The Pentagon-thing is even less credible than Building 7. Not that it is that important anymore... *cough*

I say the terrorists point out these obvious issues with google-whatnot to the Pentagon, likely via twitter. Because our paranoia is their gain.

Saudi F16 bunkers

Few years ago, I flew off Taif precipice in a Saudi airforce chopper to take photos for the mayor of Taif.

The airman said to me, please don't photographe the F16's.

Ok says me -at the time - the saudis were vehemently denying that the american military were present in saudi - course they were I used to drink Jack Daniels with the strike teams.

Anyhow, a couple of days ago -I used Google maps (not even google earth) to check out the old haunts.

Lo and behold, the F16 bunkers were clearly visible in considerable detail, plus 4 other bases that i know of which are 'officially not there'.

Does the Israeli Airforce know?

Of course, they used to fly touch and go on the northern base airfield in Tabuk to annoy the Saudis.

By the way, maps are old -Concorde is still sitting on the south eastern side of Heathrow airport; by the cargo depot.

Military Intelligence

They're afraid of street view, but there are publicly available maps of the bases? Wow, and I thought the whole "military intelligence" being an oxymoron thing was just a joke

Standardised unit of paranoia

Obviously it should be the "Chertoff", where one Chertoff is equal to the increase in paranoia felt by the average American during one press conference by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Hmmm.

So would a NASA base (say ooh Ames Research Station) be something that supposed to be hidden from Street View? (Very nice picture of the boys in blue checking someone's ID there)

Alien because Nasa hides its aliens at Ames I'm sure of it :)

I propose the Chertoff

Scale:

1 Chertoff = Calm as Hindu Cows

5 Chertoffs = Don the tinfoil hat and lead lined trenchcoat

10 Chertoffs= Dig a hole in the desert and find yourself a spear

Waiting for the day

when saying "but terrorists could use that information" will get you not only laughed out of an office, but carried out by using large objects inserted into uncomfortable orifices.

Of course, countries and governments will continue to have their secrets. Like officially-not-there Air Force bases, and officially-did-not-happen incursions into other countries. I see these secrets the same as defending a trade mark: if you don't defend them, then you cannot deny usage.

Paris, because you simply cannot deny usage.

Oh Shut Up

Don't know the difference in value between maps and photographs?

If they miss some point of security you call them fools. If they show some concern you call them fools.

You sound like a bunch of whiny kids.

Re: Google moon

[quote]Wonder if they blank out the landing sites so we will never know the answer to the ultimate question.[/quote]

Shouldn't that be: ..."So we will never know the 'Question' to the 'Ultimate Answer'"??

As most People 'round these here parts know the 'Answer' is Forty-Two!

Nothing to hide

But I thought that "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear"... Please, help me: I'm getting confused as to which propaganda I should be believing.

Seriously though, if the military is concerned that a simple street view might provide an advantage to a hostile party, then perhaps we should all be concerned with the carelessness of said military to expose sensitive data to the public at large.

On a lighter note, blacking out images is a perfect illustration of "security through obscurity".

Royal Ordnance?

I don't know if it's still the case, but I recollect that the Royal Ordnance factories never appeared on British OS maps.

That wasn't so bad, but now the terrorists just need to check out which areas have been blanked off and they've got a list of potential targets because the US gov will presumably put all their secure establishments in the blank category.

Remind me again..

Just how many U.S. military bases have been attacked by terrorist, or anyone for that matter, inside the continental boundaries again? It's pure ignorance to think that anyone, much less a well organized terrorist organization would want to attack a very secure military installation and even if they were inclined to do so, that they would need pictures from google to pull it off. Seeing as the google van just "drove by" and snapped these pictures, I don't see any reason why someone else couldn't do the same, less conspicuously even... Question the real motivations behind this censorship of public domain.

google van just "drove by"

I want to see pictures of the google van. Does it have big colorful balls painted on it?

The painter's smock, please...

Ah...

The joys of "Security through Obscurity"...

School Project

There is an old story about a US school clas that was doing a project on creating maps from aerial photographs.

They approached the USAF for aerial photos of their local area, and were duly sent a stack - but with a large chunk missing.

On enquiring why, they were told that they couldn't have them, as it was a military base, and secret.

So they wrote to the Russian Embassy - who promptly sent photos of the missing area.

Probably taken by black Sikorskys.

Surpisingly lax security on domestic bases

You'd be surprised at how lax security is on many military bases in the US. In particular, I learned growing up that Air Force bases are pretty bad. I'm sure there's a number of reasons that will ostensibly piss off some of my AF chums for saying so, but the short of it is that too many of the guards at the gates are young and haven't had the idealism beat out of them, so they have plenty of other things on their minds and often don't mind "bending" the rules.

Paris, because she doesn't seem to mind "bending."

Re: Oh Shut Up

"If they miss some point of security you call them fools. If they show some concern you call them fools."

Because they show concern about something insignificant while missing blindingly obvious security threats. Because they are fools.

I am always amazed what you can find on google earth

The other month when the Reg went looking for Black Helecopters really opened my eyes. I would just naturally have thought they would have had google clean those up, possibly as far as pasting fields and trees over the areas. But then it might be difficult to get an Internet server to alter it's content. In which case you simply reprogram the worlds routers to point to a dummy server. As may have happened to YouTube the other day.

Black helicopters

I'd have thought we'd be seeing a higher concentration of black helicopter icons on the comments page really...

Oh well, I'll do my bit.

Google van / coloured balls

They won't be like these will they by any chance ?

http://www.bumpernuts.com

If so, you can paint them yourself !

@Jeremy

<<Obviously it should be the "Chertoff", where one Chertoff is equal to the increase in paranoia felt by the average American during one press conference by the Secretary of Homeland Security.>>

This might have been true a few years ago but not a "Chertoff" is a joke that relies on misinformed ideas. This is also known as a clueless joke.

Stop Chertoffing is now a common phase heard in middle america.

Not the first time

Spot the military base in this map of central Amsterdam:

http://maps.google.nl/?ll=52.373556,4.916403&spn=0.009393,0.019076&t=h&z=16

Unit of paranoia

Here in the United States our scale for measuring paranoia is called "The Homeland Security National Terror Alert Advisory." (It has 5 pretty colors.)

Just take your own photos..

...and post them on Google Earth as user contributions. Who says you can't?

Re: Bleh.

Yes, but these governments who jail you for photographing their millitary bases in civilian areas are all what we used to call repressive regimes.

E.g. Socialist Russia, North Korea, China, and so on.

Hence our issue with this.

Reg standard unit of paranoia

Wasn’t the Reg standard unit of paranoia the 911? I.e. one 911 = “the chance that 911 was an inside job”.

@ImaGnuber

>>If they miss some point of security you call them fools. If they show some concern you call them fools.

And you don't see the logic???