Maps with Blank Spots
September 2, 2020
We noted the “real” news outfit story “Blanked-Out Spots On China’s Maps Helped Us Uncover Xinjiang’s Camps.” The how to is interesting. We learned:
Our breakthrough came when we noticed that there was some sort of issue with satellite imagery tiles loading in the vicinity of one of the known camps while using the Chinese mapping platform Baidu Maps. The satellite imagery was old, but otherwise fine when zoomed out — but at a certain point, plain light gray tiles would appear over the camp location. They disappeared as you zoomed in further, while the satellite imagery was replaced by the standard gray reference tiles, which showed features such as building outlines and roads. At that time, Baidu only had satellite imagery at medium resolution in most parts of Xinjiang, which would be replaced by their general reference map tiles when you zoomed in closer. That wasn’t what was happening here — these light gray tiles at the camp location were a different color than the reference map tiles and lacked any drawn information, such as roads.
After reading the article, DarkCyber wonders what other interesting sites are missing?
Stephen E Arnold, September 2, 2010
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