In the USA, sensitive sites are not hidden by blur, but instead by fake scenery generation.
Nearby where I live, there is an oil pipeline pump/monitor station. Shows up on Google maps as dilapidated concrete pad, decades old. Its really a modern pump/lift station, with a razor fence around it.
Google maps indicates the tile data is from 2025. The station has been there for 10+ years.
Even weirder, is that Bing maps shows the pump station proper.
jofer 2 hours ago [-]
More likely, the date attribution in the imagery is incorrect.
As someone who works in that exact field (literally - I produce seamless mosaicked global maps and work for a satellite company), I can assure you that we don't and can't do this (generate "fake" imagery). Depending on country the exact satellite is licensed through, some areas may be lower-res (e.g. sats licensed via Canada can't provide imagery in active conflict zones above a certain resolution). The US govt can in principle demand we stop imaging for US-licensed satellites (though they never have so far as I know). A lot of regulatory details can vary based on the country 1) your satellites are licensed in, 2) your company is based in, and 3) where you're selling data.
However, none of the imagery is "fake". Our imagery sometimes feeds into google maps, and I don't know google's exact processing chain, so I can't rule out them doing something like that. However, I'd be absolutely shocked if they were for a lot of different reasons.
It's _way_ more likely that the tile data is incorrectly indicating 2025. E.g. they're using 3rd party data that doesn't have detailed scene provenance information in that area and are just showing "2025" in the absence of other information.
More interesting is the things China and some other countries do around datums. If you process things correctly, your satellite data won't align with their official street/infrastructure maps. Instead it will be randomly and smoothly shifted in different directions across the country. That's to make on-the-ground targeting based on official maps much more difficult. E.g. you can't reliably take one of the official maps and go "point the artillery at an azimuth of 321.5 degrees and target a location 4567 meters away". However, it makes things really tough when you're trying to provide a correctly processed "backdrop" mosaic to Chinese customers. (IIRC, this problem has gone away due to the ubiquity of OSM data or regulations changed in recent years. Still, China in particular has a lot of interesting regulations around map accuracy.)
mystraline 1 hours ago [-]
I dont think the sat photography companies are providing false or manipulated data.
I would believe that Google and other "free" sites would be potentially under orders to edit tile data by federal mandate.
A colleague of mine back in the early 2000's put gas/water/sewer/electric maps on GIS. All from public sources. And within a few weeks, the feds caught wind of this and classified his combined maps.
Thats why I suspect editing on gas pump stations. And to be fair, they're ill-defended targets that could cause a massive chemical and pollutant spill if they were targeted (like the MAGAs shooting substations). And theres obvious national security aspects with shutting down energy grid operations.
Now yeah, there is the Chinese datum problem. But again, non-Chinese sat companies can map in accordance to their government in whichever country they are operating in.
> And there's obvious national security aspects with shutting down energy grid operations.
This reminds me of visiting the Moffat Tunnel and being surprised by the heavy security labeled Department of Homeland Security of all things. Then I realized there's a giant pipe running alongside the tracks that carries the water supply for the entirety of Denver lol
wkat4242 1 hours ago [-]
Not sure about Google but on Bing Maps they were definitely messing around with fake images.
Some of the airbases showed some fields where the actual jet bunkers are, and if you zoomed out you could see it was just a copy/paste of a field nearby. Total fakery.
They have stopped doing that since, probably because there is no point with the amount of imagery available today.
And yeah countries like China messing with their map datum is weird. And so easy to compensate that it serves no military purpose.
cyp0633 59 minutes ago [-]
Chinese coordinates definitely can be converted to WGS-84 - it's Google that did not do that. Look at Shenzhen River in OpenStreetMap, the streets of Hong Kong and Shenzhen align with each other perfectly.
One specific example was Camp Bucca in 2007, around the time local insurgents managed to successfully inflict casualties with a rocket attack [0]. In an onboarding briefing I recall some officers lamenting the delay in getting Google to "delete" the base from Maps, though I am unsure if there are any public sources that reflect this.
Probably possible to cross reference bing and google imagery to get a complete list of the spots they don't want people to see.
aerostable_slug 2 hours ago [-]
Yandex too.
France is particularly full of these kinds of sites, mostly having to do with their nuclear deterrent. If you want to see the interesting vertical silo storage they use for their SLBMs near the loading pier, you're best off using Yandex.
mystraline 2 hours ago [-]
Can you add contact info? I'd be glad to privately share 1 of these sites.
And your other interests really coincide with mine. :)
johnbellone 48 minutes ago [-]
Anyone know if there's a reason why it is different?
You'd think that procedurally generated scenery would be preference for most governments. It raises less awareness than a blur or missing tiles.
general1465 1 hours ago [-]
It is like that for European maps too. i.e. military bases for many countries are blurred Google Maps, but when you will use some local maps, like mapy.com they are not.
phendrenad2 2 hours ago [-]
This isn't really the best reporting on the situation.
Here's the deal:
Google Maps currently doesn't work well in South Korea. That's because the SK government has refused to give Google access to their official map data, because of "security concerns". They apparently had no problem giving map data to local SK companies, however, so essentially those companies had an unfair advantage.
While negotiating tariffs, it seems like Google was able to slip into the talks and cut a deal with the SK government to get the data. I guess a minor detail of the deal is that certain things will be blurred? I assume military bases?
papichulo2023 20 minutes ago [-]
This reminds me SK making Twitch to pay for user's traffic while local competitors dont have to. I wonder why other countries dont retaliate.
jhanschoo 1 hours ago [-]
Quote 1:
> That is because South Korean laws require that companies store core geospatial data locally, something Google has long refused to do.
Quote 2:
> That's because the SK government has refused to give Google access to their official map data, because of "security concerns".
Quote 3:
> Google said Tuesday it will accept the South Korean government's security requirements to remove coordinates for the Korean region from its map in order to secure approval to export high-precision map data overseas.
(Quote 1) from the article is my prior understanding of the situation. Your claim (Quote 2) doesn't match my prior understanding either. I did some googling, and found additional reporting (Quote 3), which seems to be more precise and accurately contextualized than (Quote 1).
I am personally quite sympathetic to the posture of KR's government, regarding data sovereignty of high-precision map data. I understand that Google and other tech companies were always legally able to serve maps of SK of comparable quality from a datacenter in SK.
JKCalhoun 2 hours ago [-]
> I guess a minor detail of the deal is that certain things will be blurred? I assume military bases?
That can't be the case — blurry billboards saying essentially, "Nothing to see here!"
devsda 1 hours ago [-]
> They apparently had no problem giving map data to local SK companies, however, so essentially those companies had an unfair advantage.
I don't suppose having GMaps installed by default on Android and having the backing of nation government that can bend entire countries to its whims are considered unfair advantages for Google ?
GuB-42 39 minutes ago [-]
Maybe, maybe not. But it makes a lot of sense as for why it was discussed in the context of tariff negotiations. Tariffs are also an "unfair advantage" and letting American companies compete on mapping is likely to be part of the deal.
But a trade agreement doesn't mean that Google will get to disregard South Korean national security rules, so, blurring.
reaperducer 17 minutes ago [-]
because of "security concerns".
If your next-door neighbor had 50 nuclear weapons, and threatened to use them on you almost daily, you probably wouldn't use the dismissive scare quotes.
mystraline 2 hours ago [-]
How about a better solution, which is to provide equal access to everyone, be they some local company, OSM, Google, Bing or whoever?
And its not a "security issue". Only way that would be true is if they have a countrywide tarp across the country. /sarcasm
j_maffe 2 hours ago [-]
blurry everything.
aerostable_slug 2 hours ago [-]
That's effectively what Israel has. America forces a maximum satellite resolution on any commercial providers that want to play ball with .gov buyers (which is all of them, since .gov is a huge customer of commercial imagery).
wkat4242 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah it's weird. A lot of countries try to interfere with global mapping anyway. Like China which has its entire country at an offset by using a slighly offset datum standard.
It's the same with military sites in France, where satellite images are blurred but you still get street view, and if that doesn't exist, you can still look at ground level photos, like so https://maps.app.goo.gl/Kr2822pASFRPLJHR7
Compliance is fun.
perihelions 2 hours ago [-]
France tried in the past to censor information about their sensitive facilities on Wikipedia, too. In 2013, their intelligence agency detained a random admin who was a French national, and forced them to use their credentials to make an edit in front of them,
> "As a result of the controversy, the article temporarily became the most read page on the French Wikipedia, which was noted as an example of the Streisand effect.")
Residents of Saint Pierre and Miquelon are French (and EU) Citizens, not Canadian citizens.
rtkwe 3 hours ago [-]
Aerial images that look down to the inside courtyards etc of a location are different than Streetview which just shows the same view someone could get walking by.
trillic 2 hours ago [-]
List of satellite map images with missing or unclear data
Years ago I requested Google blur my house on Street View - it still is. Granted, every other mapping service has satellite photos of my house but I'm just surprised they still honor it.
perihelions 3 hours ago [-]
Alternative link to the identical (AFP) article, if anyone has technical issues with the barrons.com (progressive-loading) site:
For the longest time there were plenty of locations in the US that were also blurred. The Naval Observatory, Vice President's residence/office in DC, for example.
It's not anymore, though the maps are lower quality over DC now and the USG can just compel Google to edit the tiles to obscure details of sensitive sites.
bapak 3 hours ago [-]
Wasn't that always the case? I was in Seoul in 2016 and Google Maps wasn't even allowed to be vectorial there.
bryanhogan 3 hours ago [-]
Do I understand correctly that this just means that military zones will be blurred?
Then how does this sentence make sense?
> Google said on Tuesday that it would comply with the South Korean government's demand to blur sensitive satellite images on its mapping services, paving the way for the US tech giant to compete better with local navigation platforms.
Anyone in South Korea will continue to use Naver Maps or Kakao Maps.
ctphipps 2 hours ago [-]
Residents might, but the huge number of international visitors who rely on Google Maps wherever they go won't need to go hunting for alternatives when arriving in South Korea. And the other parts of the Google ecosystem that rely on Maps will start to function in South Korea again.
Apple finally got the green light to enable Find My in South Korea back in April. Before that, you disappeared off the map when in South Korea, at least as far as Find My is concerned.
zamadatix 3 hours ago [-]
I dunno if it means solely military zones or not, e.g. maybe certain key government buildings might be blurred/hidden/obfuscated too. The article seems very light on details.
Regardless of what's included in the above, I took the quoted sentence as meaning something like "because Google will blur the sensitive locations, Maps will now be able to provide directions between two points in South Korea instead of reporting 'Sorry, your search appears to be outside our current coverage area for driving'. This will enable it to be competitive with local navigation platforms". How many people will continue to use the existing services or switch over to Maps is not guaranteed, but I'm willing to bet the net effect is not 0.
perihelions 3 hours ago [-]
That's how I parse the subsequent quote later in the article,
> "...oogle would "invest a lot of time and resources" to remove the coordinates of security facilities from its maps."
RajT88 2 hours ago [-]
This is probably because in the absence of a space program, North Korea uses Google maps for surveilling it's rivals.
(I kid, I kid. I am sure they have access to Chinese spy satellite data)
tokai 20 minutes ago [-]
Russian data is more probable. Seeing they are military allies.
Apparently Pokemon Go was a major driver for OSM editors in Korea--Niantic used OSM and PokeStops wouldn't spawn due low quality OSM data.
3 hours ago [-]
newsclues 2 hours ago [-]
It's not like NK can't get uncensored imagery from Russia or China, or commercial access.
Simulacra 3 hours ago [-]
Couldn't another company do this that's not as international as Google?
perihelions 2 hours ago [-]
Yes; it's an absurd law. Anyone looking for unblurred satellite photos of South Korea can trivially find them on any number of international services who are not Google. Google is complying with this law, which is absurd, in order to negotiate export-controlled GIS data from South Korea—it needs those to make Google Maps competitive with South Korean consumers. The net result is Google will now blur a couple buildings; other websites will not; and incompetent bureaucrats will continuing failing upwards, doing useless things.
(It's arguably even actively counterproductive, since internationally there are people who[0] go tracking down blurred objects on satellite maps, and identifying what they are. The Streisand Effect of these regulations is to provide curated, military-certified alists of (1) what a military thinks is valuable enough it *ought* to be a secret, paired together with (2) the complete content of that secret).
> As a result, domestic technology firms like Naver and Kakao have cornered the market for mapping services, making navigation harder for foreign visitors unfamiliar with their platforms.
Rendered at 16:58:34 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Nearby where I live, there is an oil pipeline pump/monitor station. Shows up on Google maps as dilapidated concrete pad, decades old. Its really a modern pump/lift station, with a razor fence around it.
Google maps indicates the tile data is from 2025. The station has been there for 10+ years.
Even weirder, is that Bing maps shows the pump station proper.
As someone who works in that exact field (literally - I produce seamless mosaicked global maps and work for a satellite company), I can assure you that we don't and can't do this (generate "fake" imagery). Depending on country the exact satellite is licensed through, some areas may be lower-res (e.g. sats licensed via Canada can't provide imagery in active conflict zones above a certain resolution). The US govt can in principle demand we stop imaging for US-licensed satellites (though they never have so far as I know). A lot of regulatory details can vary based on the country 1) your satellites are licensed in, 2) your company is based in, and 3) where you're selling data.
However, none of the imagery is "fake". Our imagery sometimes feeds into google maps, and I don't know google's exact processing chain, so I can't rule out them doing something like that. However, I'd be absolutely shocked if they were for a lot of different reasons.
It's _way_ more likely that the tile data is incorrectly indicating 2025. E.g. they're using 3rd party data that doesn't have detailed scene provenance information in that area and are just showing "2025" in the absence of other information.
More interesting is the things China and some other countries do around datums. If you process things correctly, your satellite data won't align with their official street/infrastructure maps. Instead it will be randomly and smoothly shifted in different directions across the country. That's to make on-the-ground targeting based on official maps much more difficult. E.g. you can't reliably take one of the official maps and go "point the artillery at an azimuth of 321.5 degrees and target a location 4567 meters away". However, it makes things really tough when you're trying to provide a correctly processed "backdrop" mosaic to Chinese customers. (IIRC, this problem has gone away due to the ubiquity of OSM data or regulations changed in recent years. Still, China in particular has a lot of interesting regulations around map accuracy.)
I would believe that Google and other "free" sites would be potentially under orders to edit tile data by federal mandate.
A colleague of mine back in the early 2000's put gas/water/sewer/electric maps on GIS. All from public sources. And within a few weeks, the feds caught wind of this and classified his combined maps.
Thats why I suspect editing on gas pump stations. And to be fair, they're ill-defended targets that could cause a massive chemical and pollutant spill if they were targeted (like the MAGAs shooting substations). And theres obvious national security aspects with shutting down energy grid operations.
Now yeah, there is the Chinese datum problem. But again, non-Chinese sat companies can map in accordance to their government in whichever country they are operating in.
Relevant PG&E: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/641b21b495f049c6958...
> (like the MAGAs shooting substations)
There's no need to partisanize this. There's a very famous 2013 one from right here in the Bay Area that AFAIK is still unsolved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
> And there's obvious national security aspects with shutting down energy grid operations.
This reminds me of visiting the Moffat Tunnel and being surprised by the heavy security labeled Department of Homeland Security of all things. Then I realized there's a giant pipe running alongside the tracks that carries the water supply for the entirety of Denver lol
Some of the airbases showed some fields where the actual jet bunkers are, and if you zoomed out you could see it was just a copy/paste of a field nearby. Total fakery.
They have stopped doing that since, probably because there is no point with the amount of imagery available today.
And yeah countries like China messing with their map datum is weird. And so easy to compensate that it serves no military purpose.
It was built more than three years ago.
Looks the same on Google and Bing. You can see it on Apple Maps though: https://maps.apple.com/place?coordinate=21.324794,-157.67986...
[0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6737159.stm
France is particularly full of these kinds of sites, mostly having to do with their nuclear deterrent. If you want to see the interesting vertical silo storage they use for their SLBMs near the loading pier, you're best off using Yandex.
And your other interests really coincide with mine. :)
You'd think that procedurally generated scenery would be preference for most governments. It raises less awareness than a blur or missing tiles.
Here's the deal:
Google Maps currently doesn't work well in South Korea. That's because the SK government has refused to give Google access to their official map data, because of "security concerns". They apparently had no problem giving map data to local SK companies, however, so essentially those companies had an unfair advantage.
While negotiating tariffs, it seems like Google was able to slip into the talks and cut a deal with the SK government to get the data. I guess a minor detail of the deal is that certain things will be blurred? I assume military bases?
> That is because South Korean laws require that companies store core geospatial data locally, something Google has long refused to do.
Quote 2:
> That's because the SK government has refused to give Google access to their official map data, because of "security concerns".
Quote 3:
> Google said Tuesday it will accept the South Korean government's security requirements to remove coordinates for the Korean region from its map in order to secure approval to export high-precision map data overseas.
(via https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20250909/...)
(Quote 1) from the article is my prior understanding of the situation. Your claim (Quote 2) doesn't match my prior understanding either. I did some googling, and found additional reporting (Quote 3), which seems to be more precise and accurately contextualized than (Quote 1).
I am personally quite sympathetic to the posture of KR's government, regarding data sovereignty of high-precision map data. I understand that Google and other tech companies were always legally able to serve maps of SK of comparable quality from a datacenter in SK.
That can't be the case — blurry billboards saying essentially, "Nothing to see here!"
I don't suppose having GMaps installed by default on Android and having the backing of nation government that can bend entire countries to its whims are considered unfair advantages for Google ?
But a trade agreement doesn't mean that Google will get to disregard South Korean national security rules, so, blurring.
If your next-door neighbor had 50 nuclear weapons, and threatened to use them on you almost daily, you probably wouldn't use the dismissive scare quotes.
And its not a "security issue". Only way that would be true is if they have a countrywide tarp across the country. /sarcasm
It's called the China GPS Shift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...
Compliance is fun.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503354 ("French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Article (wikimedia.fr)", 191 comments)
The military site in that dispute was
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pierre-sur-Haute_... ("Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station")
> "As a result of the controversy, the article temporarily became the most read page on the French Wikipedia, which was noted as an example of the Streisand effect.")
https://www.google.com/maps/place/46%C2%B046'51.6%22N+56%C2%...
https://www.google.com/maps/@46.7812199,-56.1705941,3a,46.7y...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/google-to-obey-s...
It's not anymore, though the maps are lower quality over DC now and the USG can just compel Google to edit the tiles to obscure details of sensitive sites.
Then how does this sentence make sense?
> Google said on Tuesday that it would comply with the South Korean government's demand to blur sensitive satellite images on its mapping services, paving the way for the US tech giant to compete better with local navigation platforms.
Anyone in South Korea will continue to use Naver Maps or Kakao Maps.
Apple finally got the green light to enable Find My in South Korea back in April. Before that, you disappeared off the map when in South Korea, at least as far as Find My is concerned.
Regardless of what's included in the above, I took the quoted sentence as meaning something like "because Google will blur the sensitive locations, Maps will now be able to provide directions between two points in South Korea instead of reporting 'Sorry, your search appears to be outside our current coverage area for driving'. This will enable it to be competitive with local navigation platforms". How many people will continue to use the existing services or switch over to Maps is not guaranteed, but I'm willing to bet the net effect is not 0.
> "...oogle would "invest a lot of time and resources" to remove the coordinates of security facilities from its maps."
(I kid, I kid. I am sure they have access to Chinese spy satellite data)
Apparently Pokemon Go was a major driver for OSM editors in Korea--Niantic used OSM and PokeStops wouldn't spawn due low quality OSM data.
(It's arguably even actively counterproductive, since internationally there are people who[0] go tracking down blurred objects on satellite maps, and identifying what they are. The Streisand Effect of these regulations is to provide curated, military-certified alists of (1) what a military thinks is valuable enough it *ought* to be a secret, paired together with (2) the complete content of that secret).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w... ("List of satellite map images with missing or unclear data")