This past week, there has been a bit of online discussion about California Republican, Joel Anderson, who is attempting to censor imagery available online from Google Maps, Virtual Earth, etc. (California AB-255). The proposed law would ban hi-res images of facilities such as schools, churches, government buildings, hospitals, schools, etc.

CNet have just published an interview with Mr Anderson here.

A point that is often made, is that the real threat is the motivation of the people looking to commit terrorist acts, and not the technology they use. Otherwise, we should also ban cell phones, road maps, and cars. Anderson's reply:

"I'm not against the technology; it's fantastic. But we're in an evolving world and we have to change our course as it changes. I'm all for online mapping, but knowing where the air ducts are in an air shaft is not necessary for me to navigate in the city. Who wants to know that level of detail? Bad people do."

Of course, so do employees and contractors of the state of California - and they use services like Google Maps.

I've also used hi-res aerial imagery on a couple of occasions to map student field data on the University of Dallas campus. (Last year: Virtual Earth, and a few years ago using a scanned aerial photo and SVG). Both situations would be banned.

It isn't currently on the banned list, but I would just love to have similar imagery for the Costa Rica project. Count-the-cows resolution for old imagery, and sub-tree level for recent imagery! We could do some real survey work before the students go out there, and site visitors could visually see the tree diversity changing.

As for military installations, it is well known in the UK that attempting to keep top secret installations off the paper maps is a complete waste of time. Everyone knows where places like Aldermaston (nuclear weapons lab) and HMNB Faslane (nuclear submarine base) are. This is because main roads go right by them and they're usually signposted to boot. If a huge set of hangars is marked as an empty field, then you know there's something "secret" going on...