Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Google the planet
Google-Earth must be the coolest web tool ever. You could waste hours just mucking around with it; it’s heaven for map-junkies like me.

But the real power of it lies in using the over-lays.

If you want to find which hotel is nearest the Pyramids of Giza and next to golf course, just punch in the details and you even get to see the size of the swimming pool!

At the moment, the detailed satellite coverage covers only of a few heavily populated areas of the planet – probably 0.5% of the land surface, but then it is always going to be ‘work-in-progress’. Some of the best imagery will come in the near future when open space areas and natural features are plugged-in in detail, if Google can find a way to make money from it.

Here is our house. (Though the five bushes in the front garden, either side of the path have now been cut down. I reckon it was taken at around 7.30am, in the summer, as the milk van is outside our neighbour’s house and the sun is quite high in the sky.)

Spooky....

But FOX-News not impressed....

Not surprisingly, FOX-News has been a little more cautious in welcoming such technology. But then FOX-News couldn’t print a story about mating Pandas, without raising the spectre of terrorism and the potential threat to the American security caused by humping zoo animals.

FOX-News suggested, “some are questioning whether Google Earth also provides terrorists with readily accessible data that they can use to attack the United States or other countries, particularly when users can zoom in from space level to street level.”

Who those ‘some’ people are, is not made explicit at the top of the article. This is a commonly used rhetorical device, which often allows ‘impartial’ media channels – like FOX News - to subtly introduce their own editorial bias, without good evidence supporting such a view. Indeed, ‘some people say’ that FOX-News’s strap line shouldn’t be “Fair and Balanced”, but the more folksy “Some people say….”.

Only later in the article does it become clear who those ‘some’ people are. It is not the Pentagon, nor is it Homeland Security. In fact, no US department, nor the President considers Google Earth to be a security risk.

But one who does is (Retired) Marine Lt. Col. Bill Cowan, a FOX-News ‘military analyst’. He suggests that "These imagery products [that are] available on the Web, or commercially, are a tool without question that can be used by terrorists or insurgents."

Another who worries about Google Earth is Steve Emerson, a ‘terrorism analyst’ from “The Investigative Project”, a right wing, somewhat conspiratorial, ‘think tank’. Steve thinks “If a terrorist doesn't have to leave the confines of his sanctuary and can remotely view the entire infrastructure, vulnerability points, access points of a sensitive place that he wants to bomb — wow, his job has already been made 90 percent easier."

So one of the ‘some’ who question Google Earth’s applications is one of FOX News’s own staff and the other is a weirdo from a paranoid institution. Some people might say they don’t really offer a Fair and Balanced assessment.

Fear is an easy thing to perpetuate, and few organisations can do as insidiously as FOX-News.

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