Google users provided some classified locations for Maps

Aug 12, 2014 12:10 GMT  ·  By

Google is under fire in India for displaying some classified details on its Maps service, namely the position of military installations.

Back in 2013, Google created a “mapathon” project in India, where it offered people prizes if they helped the company to fill in the gaps and improve the service in the country. The company was then asked not to collect “classified data,” which basically means the locations of military bases.

The company, therefore, asked people to provide locations for businesses, major geographic features and some other points of interest, but no military bases. Even so, that information got in anyway.

“During their Mapathon 2013 exercise, they collected lot of classified data and we had approached them to refrain from doing so when we came to know about it,” said Surveyor General of India Swarna Subba Rao, Times of India reports.

He goes further, saying that Google is polluting the Internet with the coordinates of classified locations on the map. Google’s people have sought out a meeting with Rao, but he insisted that it would have to take place in his office, rather than some hotel they suggested.

The Survey of India, the mapping agency of India, has complained about Google to the police. The Delhi Police looked into it and handed over the case to the CBI because the investigation involved a company with headquarters in the United States.

It also seems like the mapping agency is not happy with Google because it didn’t ask for its permission before organizing the competition back in February and March 2013 when citizens were encouraged to provide details about hospitals and restaurants and other important places.

Alarmed by the mapathon and what this could mean, the survey organization demanded that the Internet giant share the information it collected from people and discovered several coordinates to military locations that are out of the public domain, but still ended up in Google’s maps.

“We are cooperating with the CBI's investigations and have submitted a detailed response to the queries that they have sent. We have nothing more to share at this point in time,” Google said on the topic, promising to continue communicating with relevant authorities and to take national regulations into account due to the security concerns.

This entire debacle will likely end in Google removing the locations from its maps and making sure to not include such data in the maps in the future, for India or other nations across the globe.