A lot of murders are committed using kitchen knives.

It's also worth pointing out that you can use Google Maps as an anti-crime tool too. I used to work for a large online retailer and used Google Maps to plot instances of fraud, it was then easy to spot areas of high fraud and report them to the police.

I fear it won't be the ratio of legal vs. illegal use that the politicians worry about, so much as the potential for damage. And, like most bureaucrats, they'll likely decide to take the easy route and simply say, "Shut it down" rather than try to figure out the math.

Note: I don't think they were after the jet-fuel pipelines at the airport per se, but the jet-fuel pipelines as they cross beneath the city of New York. Especially in areas where the pipelines happen to pass near elementary schools.

While this would not "blow up JFK airport" like the idiot headlines say it would, it would absolutely put a halt to business there, as well as terrify the civilian population as the explosions happen in their midst and incinerate their kids.

The latter part would be just about as important, if not more, to the terrorists, as the aspect of shutting down business at JFK.

> the potential for damage

This one is hard to measure. First of all, a map is indirect damage, if anything, because Google Earth itself doesn't make things blow up – so it's probably along the lines of other tools like, say, a book about airports which you can abuse, or a pencil with which you can write down notes that help you blow up something.

Any enabling technology can be used for good or bad purposes.

If you try to restrict that technology, the restrictions are more likely to affect the "good" uses than the "bad" uses, because the "bad" people are less likely to feel bound by the restrictions.

As they like to say on SlashDot: "If you outlaw maps, only outlaws will use maps."