Friday, March 7, 2008

Google Takes Panorama Pics Inside Military Base, Gets Banned

Associated Press writes that the Pentagon sent around a message to all defense department bases to not allow Google inside anymore. What had happened was that a Google crew asked to get access to the Fort Sam Houston base to take pictures for a panoramic view. Guess it can’t hurt asking if you’re on a mission to index all the world’s information. And indeed Google was granted access... then took the pictures... and put them online as part of their Google Maps Street View feature.

That’s when the Pentagon started to get worried (*cough* just in time). Air Force General Renuart told the Associated Press that such panorama views show where all the guards are, where barriers go up and down, how to get inside buildings and so on, “a real security risk to our military installations.” Google was asked to remove the imagery and quickly did so, and Google said it was actually against their policy anyway to take pictures which need special requests to military bases.

[Thansk Mathias Schindler and Bilal!]

Google Takes Panorama Pic ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (2+7)

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