How to Lie with Maps: When Open Source and National Security Collide (Linux Journal)

The critical word in that comment was "need". They don't *need* to have a photo, or video, or stand there in person, or get someone else to do it. It probably doesn't even help that much. What do you think they did? Adjusted the bomb design to better blow up the building? Highly doubtful when "slap another 1kg on" will solve all those problems for you, and the information gathered from such exterior photos is *miniscule* (design, construction, thickness, material, it doesn't help you discover anything about the *actual* structure of the thing you're photographing, except possibly layout).

And, let's not be thick now... the bombmaker could happily stroll past any building they wanted and notice enough to do their deed (i.e. layout) to the same level, getting picked up on every camera along the way... it doesn't mean that anyone *knows* it's the bombmaker ("Oh, look, this man wandered past three months before the bombings and paused briefly to tie his shoe - PRIME SUSPECT!").

The point is that anybody using Google Maps and/or some third-party photographer (who could well be innocent - I could *hire* a photographer to photograph a building, I took a photo in London the other day of my friend in front of a famous London landmark - do I now need permission from the Goverment to do that?) to provide *vital* information without which they could not attack is either a) extremely incompetent and thus going to be detected/hindered in a million and one other ways or b) doesn't exist. I'm going for B here.

This information is already in the public domain. How do I know that? Because I just walked past a building and I could see it. It's like the "analog hole" for real-life. If I can see it, I can see it. I don't need to photograph it. I can even see it from down the street with a child's pair of binoculars, or from a mile away with a suitable telescope (both of which are "more risky" than just casually walking past but the day when people start getting banned from owning binoculars or telescopes because they might use them to spy on buildings, we have bigger problems that Google Maps...). Until you can restrict *those* methods of image capture (i.e. force people into blindfolds for public buildings, put up a big, black wall around every sensitive installation, etc.), blocking photos or aerial maps is a waste of time.