…and so does everyone else it seems. Whilst doing some general research into cyber cartography for my 3rd-year project I stumbled across a fascinating, if not somewhat scary website. The site features, amongst other things, detailed satellite imagery with corresponding maps & photos of government facilities, sensitive sites (like nuclear power plants and dams) as well as the odd celebrity mansion. Using publicly available data individual ‘eyeballing’ pages have been created for each site with sometimes detailed security information to go with it. Some of the satellite photos are staggeringly detailed with individual cars and people visibly clear. Sites features are mainly from the US and UK, one of my favourites would have to be Bill Gates’s riverside mansion which is pretty impressive:
The issues of the freedom of information aside part of me wonders whether providing all this information in a convenient and interlinked form is such a good idea. Yes, it’s publicly available, and yes no one has broken the law, but isn’t a freely available directory of high-profile/security sites a terrorist’s dream come true? Now they don’t even have to research their activities, they just have to print out the maps and jump in the car/plane. Whilst I’m all for freedom of information etc this sort of thing does slightly worry me and you can’t but help wonder about the motivation of the individuals putting together all this stuff:
“Young [the creator] has a clear political agenda in creating the eyeballing map montages, to show people the places that the powerful do not want the rest of the community to know about or think about. The mapping of facilities related to America’s continued maintenance of weapons of mass destruction, for example, is clearly designed to expose the hypocrisy of the Bush Government.”
Aurora Pulsed Radiation Simulator – simulates the effects of a nuclear explosion.
Having said all this it’s a fascinating site and well worth a browse.
Reply