Is Google Allowing Syria to Play Politics With Google Earth?
By Andrew Cochran
I received this comment from William, a loyal CTB reader, referring to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross' post on Palestinian extremists' use of Google Earth to help determine their targets for rocket strikes:
I was just reading about the use of Google Earth by the Palestians and others regarding the use of this program to determine targets in Israel, and the feeble excuse that Google gave, on Counterterrosism blog. I decided to look up Israel and Syria, and lo and behold, if you type in Syria,then zoom to about 66 miles and in the Golan Heights and click on the 'Al Qunaytirah' red dot, it actually says, "Houses destroyed by Israel", and when you click on it, it shows a picture of house that has been hit by some type of weapons ordinance.
I looked up all over Israel for something saying, "Houses destroyed by Hezbollah, Syria, or Palestinians", and guess what the startling conclusion was, as far as I can tell. Yep, you guessed it, nothing of the sort.
The feeble excuse given by Google that, "anyone can fly over or drive by" the Israeli military installations and other government bodies as a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why they are allowed to show these close up is so shot down by this simple fact that they actually would say, and allow, you to see a picture of one house, supposedly destroyed by Israel.
This is why I absolutely refuse to use Google products of any kind, including their search engine.
P.S. Also, try to zoom in on places in Iran...for some amazing reason, the images are much more blurred than those in Israel.
Whatever happened to Google's promise to "Do no evil?"
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://counterterrorismblog.org/mt/pings.cgi/4541
