[Tech.Blorge] Hide and Seek! Google Earth uncovers top secret UK missile silo! - Overclock.net

Black Magix · 03-09-09

Quote:

The Google Earth project has been the subject of much controversy due to the nature of what it can reveal. Countries such as India and South Korea have expressed concerns over the project. It seems that those concerns were warranted as a UK tabloid newspaper recently used Google Earth to reveal a top-secret British nuclear base.

Google Earth is a powerful application that can shows satellite images of almost anywhere in the world. The application compiles images from various sources and can be accessed by just about anyone. One of the concerns raised by the public has been that anyone can zoom in on a private property and get an understanding of the layout.

Various governments have also expressed concern over the availability of sensitive information that could provide tactical data to terrorists. The latest controversy surrounding Google Earth revolves around the accidental exposure of a top-secret British nuclear base.

The facility is said to be located in Faslane on the River Clyde in Scotland. This nuclear base was previously blurred out by the request of the British Government. However, with the latest update provided via Google Earth, many of the blurred out locations were accidentally revealed. The story was initially broken by the UK’s Sun newspaper, and the Google Map can be seen here.

Some of the other locations revealed are MI6’s London offices, Britain’s nuclear crisis HQ and the SAS training facility. Apparently the UK Government is worried that terrorists could potentially launch missile attacks to those target areas with the exact coordinates readily available on the Internet.

John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps has in the past argued that terrorists will attack with or without Google’s help. This is certainly true, but the question still remains - could Google Earth make things easier for terrorists? Technology is like Pandora’s box, once it is opened there is no going back. I suppose the only thing we can do is to react and improve security to ensure that existing data becomes useless.

Update 8 March 2009: To clarify, the issue at hand is the location of buildings within the facility, not the location of the facility.

Source

In the words of the Scout from team fortress two....

There goes your secret s*** dumbass!

nigel · 03-09-09

there is a train track that runs just behind that factilty, and you think that people on the would not have seen it yet.

Bluescreen_Of_Death · 03-09-09

I'm seriously getting tired of hearing "terrorist this" and "terrorist that" and "terroristic attacks" and all that other bull:turd:.

If your government isn't able to conceal something like a nuclear base on something like Google Earth, then it deserves to be seen.

For real, I honestly dont care. If you cant intercept the images and blur them then shoot your intelligence team.

Evostance · 03-09-09

Apparently the UK Government is worried that terrorists could potentially launch missile attacks to those target areas with the exact coordinates readily available on the Internet.

We have 3 subs loaded with nukes that could be anywhere in the world at anytime. If someone wants to attack MoD site, they're pretty retarded

thenutty1 · 03-09-09

When you make things easier or release some interesting new information technology to the general public, you are obviously making the same tools available to terrorists, criminals, and other bad people. It can't be helped.

So you really have to look at whether the positive use outweighs the negative. Should we ban cell phones because terrorists could use them to communicate and coordinate attacks? No, because they are extremely useful for non-terrorists as well.

And really, it comes down to the fact that Google is an information collection business. If something can be picked up from satellite, its not hidden very well. If your in the business of secrets, and your secrets are on Google Earth, your not doing it right

Pheatton · 03-09-09

It would not surpise me if there was a policy in place to keep them blurrred and some one at Google decided to leave that out of the last update. Google has a way of constantly pushing the limit of what can be done.

Higgins · 03-09-09

This kind of thing is the same as banning guns, no matter what you do, people who want something will get that something regardless of any law in place.

Besides that, i don't understand why the media has to publish these kind of stories. This doesn't negatively affect any citizens except the people who forgot to re-blur things. More good would have come out of the journalist going to the British government and Google than publishing this story. The SAS camp and missile base are (were) top secret for a reason.

neonlazer · 03-09-09

Um...it is me or is this just a UK naval base? "Her Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde is one of the Royal Navy's three operational bases. It is the service's headquarters in Scotland and is best known as the home of the United Kingdom's Trident-armed nuclear submarine force." LOL...

**DuckieHo** · 03-09-09

A couple of things.....

Everyone knows where the bases are.... just not where the individual building are until now.

Google uses publicly available data for its maps. What Google is doing is NOT providing any new insight or data.... it is making the data more accessible and the crowd-sourcing is finding these anomalies.

Villainstone · 03-09-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bluescreen_Of_Death

I'm seriously getting tired of hearing "terrorist this" and "terrorist that" and "terroristic attacks" and all that other bull:turd:.

If your government isn't able to conceal something like a nuclear base on something like Google Earth, then it deserves to be seen.

For real, I honestly dont care. If you cant intercept the images and blur them then shoot your intelligence team.

Unfortunately this is the world we live in. Terrorist are among us and we need to know about it. Having friends from WTC disaster, I can speak out about the terrorist and their terrible ways. They do not need to see these bases, or any other sensitive info. According to the local news Iran is within a year from making weapons grade plutonium, and less than 2 years from an actual weapon. I am not sure where you live but if are influenced by the western way of live then that should worry you. These crazies hate us all that are westernized, and wish death to us all even if it mean given their own life. I have a little boy and another child on the way. They are innocent and do not deserve any harm, do you think those terrorist care. Iran would not think twice about selling their munition to terrorist, and them terrorist won't think twice about dropping a bomb on any one of us. The bomb we dropped on Hiroshima had a 2 mile blast radius today's nuke are 10x more powerful, and America has more than 30,000 stock piled. It is not a pretty picture to say the lest. I too am sick of all this crap but it is as real as your B-Day my friend.

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[Tech.Blorge] Hide and Seek! Google Earth uncovers top secret UK missile silo!

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