An article in today’s Christian Science Monitor looks at what legal recourse countries might have should they feel sufficiently offended or exposed by Google Earth.

The article gives room to both sides of the debate. On the side of those who believe there might be a legal recourse for countries to constrain Google is Ram Jakhu, a professor of space law at McGill University in Montreal, who points to what the article calls “a 1986 UN resolution” which states that satellite photography “shall not be conducted in a manner detrimental to the legitimate rights and interests of the sensed State.” He concludes from this that “The US is under obligation to make sure these images are not being distributed in a manner other countries consider harmful,” according to the article.

The resolution in question is in fact a General Assembly resolution, Principles Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Outer Space. General Assembly resolutions are not binding treaties, and hence easily neglected as a source of international law, which is why authors of GA resolutions tend to encode impossible objectives.

The Principles have suddenly become quite dated, reading them at the end of 2005, post-release of Google Earth. The language is clearly aimed at actors that are states, not private corporations or individuals. In 1986, the output from imaging satellites was primarily for state actors — the idea that individuals might one day consume such intelligence without state interference was clearly beyond imagining. Consider, for example Principle XI:

Remote sensing shall promote the protection of mankind from natural disasters. To this end, States participating in remote sensing activities that have identified processed data and analysed information in their possession that may be useful to States affected by natural disasters, or likely to be affected by impending natural disasters, shall transmit such data and information to States concerned as promptly as possible.

When it came to the Pakistan quake, this kind of “principle” proved wholly superseded by events. A private company (Google) made satellite imagery available from a private satellite imaging (Digital Globe) via a distributed network (the internet) to individuals and NGOs who then used the information to organize relief efforts. What state initiative there was involved Pakistan trying to hinder this dissemination of data.

MultiGen-Paradigm jumps on the KML bandwagon with version 3.1 of their Creator software.

This company is into making software tools for creating real-time 3D content. I don’t think an export function to KML in Creator is suddenly going to allow us to drive around in virtual cars on Google Earth, but it did lead me to think that it would be rather nice to have a physics model in Google Earth, one day maybe, so that we could fly around in it if we were so inclined. Or perhaps, slightly more realistically, tracking the International Space Station could soon be done using a real 3D model rather than a 2D icon. After all, if the resolution of some maps is down to decimeters, then an object the size of a bus could be represented faithfully.

Google Earth’s democratization of satellite imagery continues to inspire innovative uses. Just last week, a Swiss legislator proposed hunting for orange jumpsuits on satellite images of Europe to track down alleged secret CIA prisons. Google Earth comes tantalizingly close to helping along — half of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, mentioned in the Reuters article linked to above, is shown in high resolution (KML link), but no smoking gun here, I’m afraid. Still, if incriminating satellite images were to leak out, they’d be on Google Earth as overlays in no time at all, is my guess.

Elsewhere, Asiapundit links to a blogger who’s been exploring northern Laos with Google Earth, wondering if the extensive logging he sees there is legal.

Not much of a shopper myself, I completely missed Google’s own Froogle + Maps official mashup that launched last week: Froogle Local.

Here’s Froogle Local in action, looking for iPod nanos in the East Village, sorted by distance.

Usually when I see something web 2.0-ish, I’ll hunt down the Google Earth angle (I run this blog, see) so I was a little bit disappointed not to find a dynamically generated KML network link at the bottom of my search results directing me to Google Earth, where iPod nanos would then appear (automatically generated logos would be nice) whereever they are sold, whenever I pause my view, in the manner of the cooler network links currently out there.

Froogle Local would also work well as one of the search options inside Google Earth, so that you can circumvent the browser for that part. Currently, though, this is a missing bit of synergy from Google’s products, and I assume it’s because nobody can do everything all at once.

Mapz, a GIS librarian, lists his essential software for a GIS Lab. It’s always interesting to see what else is out there.