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Journalism of Courage
India is no stranger to the pervasive feelers of Google Earth, the eponymous firm8217;s brilliantly controversial software programme that lets anyone navigate the earth using satellite photographs that are bizarre in their details.
On November 30, the UPA government announced that it had shot off a letter of protest to Google Inc., indicating that the depiction of Kashmir on the programme was an insult to the political status quo. And this itself came just weeks after President A P J Kalam said the availability of such detailed maps was a threat to national security.
But here8217;s something that kicks sand in the face of the conservatives. The Register, London8217;s outlandishly irreverent and humorous technology journal, with signature abandon, recently invited users to submit images of the world8217;s most top secret strategic installations containing as if to egg them on, black helicopters available legally through the programme. And rising to the occasion, the underbelly of Google Earth8217;s voyeurism-crazed subculture responded with finds that would, to borrow a phrase from the magazine8217;s own lexicon, take the mickey out of the powers that be.
To be sure, the satellite images are not real-time, but the conservative word is out8212;anything that could help a terror plan is dodgy stuff. Nevertheless!
User Jesse Hamilton8217;s winning entry is a startlingly detailed aerial shot of the Y-12 facility, a maximum-security installation where the US enriches all its uranium for use in nuke submarines and missiles of mass destruction. The big cahoona if there ever was one. Another winner from a Googler Tim is a howl8212;a beautifully symmetric shot of one of America8217;s three Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile ICBM stations at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota.
Ooh, that8217;s gotta hurt. The 8220;Google will end civilisation as we know it8221; club gets bigger. Stephane Willaert has rushed in his enigmatically blurred entry of the Atsugi air base in Japan, Washington8217;s most sensitive and only forward-deployed naval air wing. Craig Gleason startles with a picture-perfect grab of an unnamed North Korean military setup. But most other entries were a virtual yahtzee of American bases. From the the impossibly guarded NSA Headquarters in Maryland to the nuke sub marine base at Norfolk, a rare F-14 Tomcat careening over the sea off North Carolina, to Atomic City in Idaho. It8217;s all there, and in alarming detail.
The best of all was Matthew Llandt8217;s perceptive grab of the Linear Particle Accelerator at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, engaged in creating frighteningly new systems. The photograph, taken after the US government blurred the surrounding areas, even has a minute explosion if you look carefully. Powerful stuff.
Ok, so the fellas at The Register were just out for a laugh. I mean, what the hell, this is legal stuff. This is evolution that feeds our indubitable will to look at what we mustn8217;t. Go where we know we cannot.
But then on the other hand, you8217;ve got the traditionalists screaming that all gizmos are a two-way street, they8217;ll work a Frankenstein on you and turn your whole world upside down. Ah, technology.
