Should Google Earth be censored?
A California assemblyman has introduced legislation which would force Google Earth to stop showing clear, detailed images of certain buildings without blurring them.
The law that Joel Anderson has introduced in the California legislature calls for fines of up to $250,000 per day for:
An operator of a commercial Internet Web site or online service that makes a virtual globe browser available to members of the public shall not provide aerial or satellite photographs or imagery of a building or facility in this state that is identified on the Internet Web site by the operator as a school or place of worship, or a government or medical building or facility, unless those photographs or images have been blurred.
An operator of a commercial Internet Web site or online service that makes a virtual globe browser available to members of the public shall not provide street view photographs or images of the buildings and facilities described in subdivision (a).
Anderson is not the first to offer objections to the availability of satellite imagery to anyone with a computer. United States security agencies have often complained that anyone but national security personnel have access to such images. A government minister in India says that he wants Google censored immediately due to security and terrorism concerns. That minister is quoted in a CNN article as saying, “We want Google Earth censored. We shall submit a proposal to the center and other concerned agencies to implement it as soon as possible.”
Anderson had much to say on the subject in a CNN interview last week, but his points all seem to boil down to those usually made by people in favor of censorship. He thinks it is alright for the government to possess these sorts of maps, but that it is not all right for the citizens that elect that government to be able to see such information.
This is the very logic that causes us to classify the amount of peanut butter consumed by our military because someone could use it to calculate troop strength, even though troop strengths are regularly published by the press. In other words, Anderson can see these images because he is important, but regular citizens cannot see it because they are not; Anderson is somehow inherently privileged, but those who elected him are not.
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March 14th, 2009
It’s not clear cut – do we really want or need so much information so easily available? I understand the dangers, but so far, no one has really argued why this information is in the pubic interest? It just seems to be all about information for information’s sake.
March 16th, 2009
The human survives and advances because of its knowledge. We cannot restrict availability of knowledge (google “copernicus” for but a couple of examples), whether for political ends or some perceived “security” threat. Google Earth has millions of users, all for different purposes (fun, business, curiosity, nosiness, academic), but all with the benefit of increasing human knowledge. Google Earth should not be censored.
March 17th, 2009
Censorship works real good – just ask Adolf Hitler!
Enough said?