Further to my post last week. Note that "the entire aerial footage of
Hereford, home to
the SAS [Special Air Service], has been fuzzed out". Hereford is a city
with a population of more than 50,000:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/20/wgoogle20.x

ml

Google blots out Iraq bases on internet
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:07am GMT 20/01/2007

British military bases in Iraq have been "blotted" out from Google
Earth
maps at the request of the Government to hinder terrorist attacks, it
can
be revealed.

Sensitive installations such as the Trident nuclear submarine pens in
Faslane, Scotland, and the eavesdropping base at GCHQ Cheltenham have
also
been obscured, a search of the site shows.

Google was first alerted to the security breaches after personnel at
the
British headquarters at Basra Air Station in Iraq were astonished at
the
clarity with which all their positions were shown on the popular
internet
site.

The pictures, which were either aerial or satellite shots, showed the
large
number of vulnerable tent locations, vehicle parks and were clear
enough to
show tank tracks.

After coming under almost daily mortar barrages, including one
round that hit the divisional headquarters where the British general
in
charge of troops in Iraq is based, the Army contacted Google to have
the
pictures of the camp blurred so that details were obscured.

Following negotiations, Google agreed to blot out British bases in
Iraq
after the company was persuaded they would be helpful to terrorists.

But it was not done early enough to stop insurgents obtaining copies of
the
pictures which, with the longitude and latitude given, help them
co-ordinate mortar and rocket attacks.

As revealed in The Daily Telegraph last week, an insurgent arrested by
British troops in Basra was found with a Google Earth map of the Shatt
Al
Arab base, home for 1,000 soldiers.

The satellite photographs show in detail the various buildings inside
the
bases including vulnerable areas, such as tented accommodation,
lavatory
blocks and where lightly-armoured Land Rovers are parked.

An intelligence officer said: "This is evidence as far as we are
concerned
for planning terrorist attacks. Who would otherwise have Google Earth
imagery of one of our bases?

"We have never had proof that they have deliberately targeted any area
of
the camp using these images but presumably they are of great use to
them.

"We believe they use Google Earth to identify the most -vulnerable
areas
such as tents."

One soldier has been killed in the last six months following a mortar
attack and there have been several injuries.

There have also been reports that the images were being sold to members
of
rogue militias in the marketplace in Basra.

Google said it had opened channels of communication with the military
in
Iraq "but we will not go into the details of those conversations".

"Google gets information from third-party providers so all the pictures
are
publicly available," a spokesman said.

"We do of course listen to requests from government but we don't
comment on
the details of any of those discussions."

It takes just 30 seconds to log on to the Google Earth website and look
for
sensitive locations.

Research by The Daily Telegraph has provided some interesting images.
In
addition to Faslane and GCHQ the entire aerial footage of Hereford,
home to
the SAS, has been fuzzed out. But the Special Forces Support Group
headquarters, which provide additional troops for the SAS, in St
Athan,
Wales, is shown vividly with airstrip and barracks. Similarly, pictures
of
the Royal Navy base in Portsmouth show with some clarity aircraft
carriers,
frigates and destroyers in the harbour.

Other clearly visible sites that could be useful to terrorists include
MI6
headquarters in London.

One website even set up a "Spot the Black Helicopter" competition
where
users were asked to find sensitive military bases using Google Earth.


*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose
use
has not
been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made
available
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the
included
information in their efforts to advance their understanding of crime,
intelligence, terrorism and arms trade activities, for non-profit
research
and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair
use'.







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]