Kathryn Cramer writes that she was interviewed for a BBC The World Tech Report podcast, and she calls it “a must-listen for Google Earth enthusiasts” because the show has many interesting things to say about the Global Connection collaboration between Google, NASA and National Geographic. Available online (episode #55, it’s already in the feed, though not in the archives yet).

And while we’re on the topic (see previous post), The Australian, a real newspaper, actually interviewed actual Indian military personnel (unlike the Times of India) and manages to get quotes such as these:

“I don’t think it poses a security threat,” C. Uday Bhaskar, the deputy head of New Delhi military think tank the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses said.

…

An Indian navy source said the pictures in themselves “do not pose a serious threat to security”.

Another army officer, who wished to remain unidentified, agreed.

“Everyone knows where the (Indian) president’s palace is, everyone knows how many rooms it has – these details are there in school books. As for the location, there is no mystery about that either.”

The officer noted that satellite imagery is not a foolproof tool, and cited the US’ failure to detect preparations for India’s May 1998 nuclear tests.

What’s interesting is another case discussed in the article — when India moved tanks closer to the Pakistani border during the 2002 escalation, the US did pick this up via their satellites, and “asked” India about it. This is precisely the kind of intelligence that Google does not provide, however — Google Earth’s priority is showing images taken when skies are clear, not when tanks are moving. And as we’ve learned from the challenges of acquiring fresh images post-Pakistan earthquake, clear skies are not nearly as prevalent as we think, and thus images are refreshed at best intermittently.

It’s not my idea to harp on about the more nationalistic elements in India and their problems with the revelatory powers of Google Earth. But wherever Times of India (ToI) goes, Ogle Earth will follow.

In their most recent article on Google Earth, they revisit a topic first raised on Google Groups a few weeks after Google Earth was released: Kashmir:

ToI: “Google’s googly: PoK is shown as part of Pakistan!”

One blogger, arZan, can’t get enough of this outrage (oh the exclamation marks!) and delivers the incriminating evidence as screenshots — on which you can see that Google Earth uses the Line of Control as the de facto border between India and Pakistan across Kashmir.

if you’re not going to show the contours of the disputed area, and don’t want too take sides between India and Pakistan, than this is indeed the most correct approach to take, as it depicts the situation on the ground. If disputed areas are to be shown, then the entire Kasmir entity should drawn separately, both on Pakistan and India’s side. National Geographic does this, though it additionally marks the area as disputed. That might not sit well with ToI and the above blogger, but that’s how international maps of record tend to show it.

Google Earth’s borders feature turns on rudimentary yellow lines. It need not be thus forever. Perhaps a collaboration with National Geographic on this front could produce a borders layer with more nuanced context. Such a layer would also inure Google from further nationalist anklebiting — Google could then just argue that nobody bothered to complain about National Geographic’s maps, which are easily the ones with the most gravitas internationally. I’d be all in favor of outsourcing border decisions to that venerable institution, whose maps are the very model of evenhandedness.

And of course, ToI and the blogger in question are always free to make their own layers with borders, through which they can see themselves in control of as much territory as they wish.