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Google Earth - An Illegal Mapping Service Threatening the National Security

The downloadable mapping application may be banned in China

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

28th of March 2008, 08:08 GMT

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The Mountain View-based company, Google, is now encountering new problems regarding the imagery provided by Google Earth, as the Chinese authorities seem to be ready to ban lots of mapping services including Google's. What's interesting is that the Chinese officials labeled these solutions as 'illegal' because they show sensitive information which should be hidden from the public eye.

According to an article published in China Daily, the Chinese

experts revealed that there are no less than 10,000 online map services in their country, the majority of them showing way too many details to the users. Obviously, Google Earth and Google Maps are two important names in this matter, but we're still expecting to hear the search giant's reaction to the Chinese campaign.

Min Yiren, deputy director of the SBSM, told the China Daily that some websites will be shut down while others will have to make major changes in their content otherwise will have to be closed down as well. "Some websites publish sensitive or confidential geographical information, which might leak State secrets and threaten security," the Chinese official told the mentioned source.

Although similar things happened in the past, Google's reaction is quite an important thing, because the Mountain View company has to choose between creating a special image collection for China or getting banned in the entire country. Sure, there are multiple ways to access the restricted pictures even if they're banned, because Google Earth provides an important function which would allow users to add their own photos without too much effort.

A Google Earth Blog reader made a really interesting comparison between this case and McDonald's evolution in India. As he wrote, the fast-food restaurant was forced to change their recipes in order to remove the beef from their hamburgers as the Indian tradition does not allow residents to eat this kind of meet. Because of that, Google may have to comply with the Chinese requirements as the local laws may force them to remove certain images or change the existing ones.

TAGS:

google | earth | china | ban | censorship

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