Hilarious Reporting on Google Earth

Today the country or more accurately ‘The Times of India’ woke up to the phenomena called Google Earth.

They have printed a front page article detailing the various places you can see in high Resolution. The whole of Indian Media was caught dozing. If you remember, after the July Rains, Times had published an article about how AAI have flouted norms while building a runway over the Mithi River. The Picture accompanying it was taken from Google Earth (Without acknowledgment of course). Then they published another article with the Help of Rishi’s Paper on the Mithi River. After that they forgot about that little wonderful software till sometime yesterday.

Star News has now picked up the story, and is rerunning the pictures with hilarious commentary. You can see them claiming that these are exclusive videos downloaded of the Net. lol! They are of course focussing on New Delhi and the pictures of Rashtrapati Bhavan and Mainly Lyten’s Delhi, which to set the record straight, were initially the only High Resolution Areas in India when Google Earth 1.00 was released on 28 June 05. (Ya I have been using this software since then) BTW, if you look at the Star News report, they do not show any Military areas. Do you know why? Because if they do, they are guilty according to the Official Secrets Act, of exposing sensitive information.
The areas under discussion were updated to High resolution on the 17th of Sep 2005. By a happy co-incidence, I went to visit the Naval Dockyard on the 18th and on coming home I was surprised to find these areas in such good resolution.
I instantly made a few placemarks and put them on my blog. Now that I am thinking, even I may could be hauled off as a traitor to the country. Lol!

What do I think about showing these satellite pictures? I am very happy. This is what the internet should be all about. This is the information age, where nothing is hidden, everyone who wants to know something is able to find it out.
The Military people may lead you to believe that this information was not earlier available to ‘The enemies’ of the country, before the advent of Google earth.
They are plain wrong. Countries like US and China have 35 and 4 military grade spy satellites respectively. (These are only the ones we know. There will be many more unacknowledged ones.) As for anyone else, these images, shot by the Ikons satellite are available in the commercial market for a price.

The Indian government mentality is all for secrecy, and they believe that if they do not let common people see what is happening, there would be no problem. That is why they have archaic rules like no photography at the most scenic places. Did you know that you cannot shoot photographs of any Bridge, Dam, Canal, Radio Tower or even the railway station?
I hope that The Indian Government wakes up form its peaceful sleep, can get rid of its denial mode and truly secure the country instead of believing it is safe with some archaic laws in force.

P.s. The commentry on Star news is truly rib tickling! see it to believe it.
BTW they have a show at 2130 hrs today, I am going to watch that to see really how internet challenged these people are!