Bing’s satellite imagery shows a secret CIA training facility

Oct 11, 2012 07:46 GMT  ·  By

Satellite imagery tools have been around for a while (especially Google’s) and state authorities from all over the world closely worked with parent companies to censor specific images that aren’t supposed to be seen by everyone.

Bing’s satellite map service however apparently revealed what seems to be CIA’s secret Bin Laden training facility. In plain English, this is the place where the SEAL Team Six trained before eventually going after Osama Bin Laden.

The Atlantic Wire writes that Bing published an aerial photo of the Harvey Point Defense Testing in North Carolina that perfectly copies Osama bin Laden’s hiding spot.

Surprisingly however, Google has already censored the location and a simple plain photo has been published instead of the detailed shot revealing the training facility.

What’s more, CIA officials decided to destroy the compound after the Osama bin Laden mission came to an end, so an update of the Bing imagery should be enough to remove the detailed shots.

This isn’t however the first problem of its kind encountered by Bing’s officials. A few weeks ago, it has emerged that several British residents could spot their cars on Bing’s Streetside, as the service failed to blur the license plates.

Microsoft quickly issued a statement to explain that this could happen “every once in a while” because the blurring technology is fully automatic, but it admitted that it would manually censor reported content.

“We accept requests to blur or remove images of faces or persons, homes, cars, acts of violence, nudity and unlawful material. We have individuals that review every request. Depending on the content of the imagery we may remove it entirely, blur a portion of it or take no action if no identifying features remain visible,” the company explains.

Still no word from Microsoft on the CIA training facility, so we’ll update the story when we hear from the Redmondians.