Google Maps and Blurry Areas
August 9, 2019
Google Maps is an increasingly difficult and frustrating interactive map providing ad delivery.
Google Maps has political and physical views, plus Street View is opaque, falling behind a good old paper map. Due to Google’s wiring of its services, Google Maps can still help people get where they are going, sometimes saving time but possibly creating traffic jams in farms. Google Maps has recorded a good portion of the planet, except some areas, like the Canadian wilderness and and North Korea. Lad Bible investigates, “Google Earth: The Mystery Behind The Areas They Don’t Want You To See.”
North Korea and Area 51 are not the only places you cannot view on Google Earth. Most of them are confidential areas that technically we are not supposed to know exist. They are blocked because governments tell Google to block them or else. When the US government tells you or else, it is usually a good idea to listen. For the other blocked areas, there are conspiracy theories as to why Google will not let them be seen.
Different parts of the world are blocked out like an area in Russia that was possibly a base for nuclear development or a Százhalombattaoil refinery in Hungary that requested to be blurred, but specifically in green. That last one is weird. The top of Kangtega mountain in Nepal is blacked out. Maybe the government wanted to hide a huge pit of dead mountain climbers, but given the amount of bodies piled up on Everest it remains doubtful. The Keowee Dam in South Caroline is pixelated, probably because it supplies hydroelectric power to Oconee Power Plant. Part of Valencia City in the Philippines, home to more than 180,000, is blurred too. Is it a national security reason? Maybe.
The Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands has the most legitimate conspiracy theory about being pixelated on Google Earth:
“There’s actually quite a convincing theory behind this one. The former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Ruud Lubbers, claimed that there are 22 US nuclear bombs at this site. They are stored in the bunkers of the air bases that feature there. This includes B61 thermonuclear bombs and a device said to be four times as powerful as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Mr Lubbers featured in a National Geographic documentary and said: “I would never have thought those silly things would still be there in 2013. I think they are an absolutely pointless part of a tradition in military thinking.’”
The most likely and reasonable explanations for these blurred sites are that they are tied to national security and nuclear weapons. One big questions: What is the mechanism between Google and “others” which works out what one can see on a Google Map. We understand the pizza joints. But the blurry areas suggests a higher level interaction. That mechanism is blurry too.
Whitney Grace, August 9, 2019
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