• The Hindu: New remote sensing data policy eases restrictions [in India]
  In India, 'The revised remote sensing data policy […] has lifted restrictions on the supply of satellite data with resolutions of up to one metre.'

  'However, all data involving better than one metre resolution will need to be screened and cleared. The new policy also states that “specific requests for data of sensitive areas, by any user, can be served only after obtaining clearance” from the government's High Resolution Image Clearance Committee.'

  As the article states, ha;f-meter resolution of imagery of all of India is still freely available from US imagery providers… 

• In Bangalore, police ground Google Street View (for now)
  Deccan Herald: "Although the City police commissioner was not available for comment, it is learnt that the police had reservations about the legality of the Street View service in India. The restrictions on photography by foreigners and foreign firms in the country could also be a reason for the police decision, sources said." 

• Google Earth, an iPhone compass and experience playing 'Call of Duty' have been vital to Libya's rebel war plan | The Australian
  Snip: "We use Google Earth both in the frontline and here in the city," said Khalifa Abdullah Zawawi, the leader of the city's resistance council. They said that three computer experts had been entrusted with helping NATO's targeting by supplying GPS co-ordinates. The only problem they had encountered was that some satellite images of the area on Google Earth were from 2004 and no longer accurate."

In a major step for open access to scientific research, Nature Publishing Group’s free, peer-reviewed Creative-Commons-licensed online journal Scientific Reports has just launched, and its inaugural “edition” contains an article on marine predator-prey behaviour, Landscape of fear visible from space, that uses Google Earth imagery as a primary source of evidence:

A Google Earth image survey of the lagoon habitat at Heron Island within Australia’s Great Barrier Reef revealed distinct halo patterns within algal beds surrounding patch reefs. Ground truth surveys confirmed that, as predicted, algal canopy height increases with distance from reef edges. A grazing assay subsequently demonstrated that herbivore grazing was responsible for this pattern. In conjunction with recent behavioural ecology studies, these findings demonstrate that herbivores’ collective antipredator behavioural patterns can shape vegetation distributions on a scale clearly visible from space.

The accompanied imagery is a screen grab from this location is Google Earth/Maps:

View Larger Map

Animal-created habitat transformations visible from space! That is always cool. (For another recent example, see the world’s largest beaver dam in Canada.)

If you want an easy-to-read version of the results, both Monga Bay and Tree Hugger write up the article. Disappointingly, neither of these news sites manages a link to the original research report on which their story is based — thus missing the entire point of open-access scientific research.

Finally! A new measure of clarity regarding Google’s intentions for its China-facing mapping product, ditu.google.cn. Both Reuters and Dow Jones report that Google has indeed acquiesced to new tighter government regulations, applying through the company’s joint venture, Beijing Guxiang information Technology, for the mapping license it needs to legally continue to run ditu.google.cn. As recently as a few days ago, it wasn’t clear whether Google would engage in this new more strenuous application process.

Unlike Google’s Chinese search product, which is now run out of Hong Kong, the mapping product continues to be served out of China, and is subject to local laws dictating borders, place names, user-generated content and censorship.

I was rather hoping Google would take the high road regarding its maps in China, but that now seems unlikely. It is of course still possible that the application is denied, for example if Google continues to vocally blame China for cyber-attacks against its Gmail service and outages of its services on the mainland.

(Fact Check: Reuters gets this sentence exactly wrong:

Recently, requirements for a mapping license were relaxed to allow for foreign online mapping providers, such as Google, to engage in joint ventures to provide the service.

Actually, it used to be the case that no such license was needed. In May 2010 China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping announced the requirement to apply for an online mapping license; it recently hardened the rule, announcing that foreign companies would not be eligible for such a license, except through a joint venture.)

The strange creature that is the Kyl-Bingaman amendment has reached a measure of mainstream recognition this past week, with a critical article in Mother Jones prompting a further piece by PC Mag on the US law. Long-time readers of Ogle Earth will be familiar with the amendment, argued against back in 2007, which has effectively kept the commercially available resolution of satellite imagery of Israel and the Occupied Territories at 2.5m per pixel vs an operational maximum of around 50cm per pixel for current commercial satellites. (That’s a 25x artificial reduction in detail).

The Kyl-Bingaman amendment prohibits US companies from selling imagery of Israel at a higher resolution than commercially available elsewhere — currently that France’s Spot Image, which sells 2.5m per pixel imagery of Israel. Russian and South Korean satellite imagery providers, meanwhile, have agreements with Israel not to sell imagery of Israel at higher resolutions than France’s satellites. (There are possibly other such agreements, between Israel and other countries.) As a result, American companies GeoEye and DigitalGlobe pixellate their imagery of Israel before they sell it to the likes of Google.

The impetus for Mother Jones revisiting this law is the news that a Turkish company will soon be launching a high-resolution imaging satellite that can upset the current status quo re Israel. When launched in 2013, The Göktürk satellite will be able to provide imagery to the public at resolutions better than 2m per pixel, including of Israel and Israeli-controlled territories. According to reports, Israel has already tried to negotiate an agreement with Turkey to limit the sale of imagery of Israel, but Turkey is pointedly not playing ball, which is not surprising considering the current freeze in their bilateral relations.

The upshot is that by 2013, Google may well be able to buy higher resolution imagery of Israel from Göktürk. But if Göktürk imagery is commercially available at, say, 1m per pixel, then that will free American companies to also sell commercially at that resolution, as per the Kyl-Bingaman amendment.

Intriguingly, there is yet another new satellite constellation being developed that may substantially improve on the time-frame for availability of higher-resolution imagery of Israel: France’s Pleiades satellites, due to launch this year and next, have a maximum resolution of 50cm per pixel. What remains to be seen is whether Israel convinces their operators to also limit commercial access to imagery of Israel.

(Fact check: PC Mag erroneously believes the amendment is currently interpreted to allow imagery of 1m per pixel. They should have kept on reading the Washington Report article that they reference.)

Google’s mapping saga in China continues to twist and turn — this week, Chinese authorities announced they had again tightened regulations, now outright banning non-Chinese companies from offering online maps in China, unless they do so as a minority partner in a joint venture with a local company. China’s official press agency Xinhua News reported the news on June 8, although the new regulation has apparently been in effect since April 27.

Because these stories sometimes disappear from the internet, here it is in full, for future reference:

China bans foreign companies from offering online mapping, except joint ventures
English.news.cn — 2011-06-08 — 15:53:41

BEIJING, June 8 (Xinhua) — Foreign companies are effectively banned from providing Internet mapping services in China, however joint ventures are exempted, according to a notice issued by the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping on Wednesday. [Note: The hopelessly out-of-date website does not itself carry this notice]

The notice cited an amended regulation on overseas organizations and individuals that offer online mapping services. This amendment has been in effect since April 27, 2011.

The amendment also states that, for joint ventures with Internet mapping as their sole business, foreign investors cannot own more than 50 percent of the enterprise.

According to the notice, the amended regulation sets a stricter criteria for market entry which helps tighten up the rules governing the Internet mapping service market.

As the Internet mapping service market is developing rapidly, a lot of problems are surfacing, such as confidential geographic information being marked on maps, and maps showing no respect for China’s territorial integrity, reads the notice.

The amended regulation also clarifies requirements for overseas companies and individuals surveying China’s territory. They can either set up joint-ventures, contractual joint-ventures, or do one-off surveying with permission of relevant authorities.

In addition, the regulation bans foreign companies and individuals surveying and mapping of borders between administrative regions in China, as well as surveying and mapping of oceans.

As usual, the story serves little to clarify the situation, or the implications for ditu.google.cn, Google’s mapping service for the Chinese market. As of this writing, the website is still up (so is Microsoft’s Chinese map product) – so the amended regulation appears not yet to have been enforced. One possibility is that Google has agreed to enter into some kind of joint-venture arrangement with a Chinese company and given it operational control of ditu.google.cn — but there is no news of such a move, and the website continues to solely refer to Google as the provider.

Back in October 2010, an article on Sina.com.cn referred to the joint-venture requirement as a reason why ditu.google.cn would not get an internet mapping license, unless Google entered into a joint venture. That article, however, only referenced unnamed government sources and did not pinpoint to a published regulatory amendment. That amendment seems to have finally been announced in some official capacity.

For those new to this story, some context is in order. In May 2010, China announced internet mapping regulations that required licenses for online maps in China; companies were only eligible if they had not recently breached rules regarding sensitive information or shown borders that diverged from China’s own view. Arguably, Google’s ditu.google.cn product was in compliance with these conditions, as the dataset it uses obeys Chinese law and does not display user-generated content. A year-end deadline was set for a crackdown on “unregistered or illegal internet map servers”.

Google did not immediately make the cut, however — by the end of June, it was not on a draft list of companies up for approval, though it is also possible Google had not yet applied as it sought clarification through back channels. In July 2010, Google did manage to renew its license for its main google.cn property, though with search queries shunted to google.com.hk, hosted in the free-speech haven of Hong Kong. At this time, I argued that continuing to offer a censored mapping product in China was incompatible with Google’s stated position that it was no longer willing to censor its China-facing properties.

In October 2010, we had the story about the joint-venture requirement on Sina.com.cn. Then 2011 arrived and yet ditu.google.cn continued to operate. By March 30, 2011, Google had still not applied for a license, according to Chinese authorities. One possible clue as to Google’s plans came in April 2011, when it previewed Google Earth Builder, a mapping platform that lets anyone build and serve internet maps on top of Google Maps technology, but with complete control over the contents. Google Earth Builder could be a way for third parties to create mapping products palatable to Chinese authorities, based on Google Maps.

At this point, the main questions are: Is Google interested in entering into a joint venture to keep serving up ditu.google.cn in China? Or will it instead run out the clock and see if/when ditu.google.cn gets shuttered for being an unlicensed/illegal website? If so, will it then try to to market Google Earth Builder to third parties more willing to navigate the morally murky waters of Chinese mapping regulations? Might Google become a minority partner in a joint venture running Google Earth Builder, responsible just for the technical implementation of the platform? In that case, would Google’s distance from the grimy business of censorship be sufficient to placate anti-censorship advocates increasingly intent on keeping western companies from operating in ways that compromise human rights? Stay tuned.