Censorship fallout

It didn’t take long for the lesson from Basra to sink in with other governments. Here comes the next volley from South Korea. Reports dongA.com today:

In the satellite service provided by U.S. search portal “Google,” a closely-taken photo of an anti-aircraft missile position of Korea’s air force is posted. Since the photo is showing part of the key defense networks of Seoul and the metropolitan area against North Korea, they are raising a security issue. […]

The resolution of the photo is so high that one can see not only the exact location of the military unit but also how many positions of anti-air craft missiles exist and where those missiles are deployed within the unit. One military official said, “The location of key air-defense missile deployments are an important military secret. They are at least category 2 confidentiality.” […]

One source from a military security agency said, ” Since there is no means to ban the satellite photos taken by foreign commercial satellites, which are not subject to domestic laws. Currently there is no clear way to deal with such issues even if similar cases happen.”

Maybe they could try to find a North Korean holding a printout of the view from Google Earth.

3 thoughts on “Censorship fallout”

  1. why not change position of the unit every other week? LOLx100, same for basra, if the military knows their job they change the position of sensitive stuff frequently… all the BS about GE and other geo tools is sickening. the military is supposed to use camouflage and change the location… if stuff like this happens it tells me people get complacent and lazy… if they wouldn’t this stuff would NOT happen, simple as that. but this point was never brought up in any news outlet….

  2. Maybe the South Koreans are using this to their advantage. “Hey, North Korea… look at this, you can totally see where we put our AA guns, you should attack here first.”

    Nothing like acting pissed just to make the other side think they have some valuable information. Who knows how old the images are or where the AA guns are now.

  3. Given that even terrorists have reportedly flown model airplanes with cameras, the only smart thing to do is to disguise sensitive areas from observation.

    The only reason for censoring public imagery is to prevent lawful citizens from seeing what’s going on, and that’s hardly what I’d call a valid reason.

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