The obvious answer: A SHOTGUN
This is interesting. If you go to http://local.live.com/ and bring up D.C. (I went to 1600 Pennsylvania and scrolled Northwest, since I did not want to look up the Observatory address) there is a similar situation. The overhead aerial view is pixelated (I love the double meaning) for the Observatory Circle while the surrounding area is sharp. They did not do a perfect job. If you switch to “Bird’s Eye View” you can pretty much see what it there. The images all have “pixel” corners on thm, but you can see cars and the windows of buildings and so forth. (I was figuring they did not want anyone to know that the Observatory is still defended by a Nike Ajax site, but that does not appear to be the case.)
http://terraserver.microsoft.com also has The Observatory grounds fuzzed. On Terraserver, the White House grounds are clear, but the roof of the building and the adjacent government buildings have all been wiped out, replaced by a blank brown color and the interior courtyards of the adjacent buildings have been pixelated. (Which is odd, since you can see the roofs and courtyards on Google Earth™.)
It’s a large natural-gas tank in Dorchester, painted by the artist Corita Kent in the early '70s. It’s famous for the allegation that Ho Chi Minh’s profile was depicted in one of the colored stripes. See if you can spot it here!
So out of all the natural gas tanks in the country, this one is a terrorist target because of a funky paint job? 9/11 DID change everything. It made a lot of us nuts.
Maybe Google doesn’t have the rights to re-publish Corita Kent’s artwork.
Those terrorist have interesting targets. San Diego and Groton and even Pearl Harbor are in the clear. Not so with New Bedford.
Our codfish will be safe!
I don’t think that any of the satellite pics have been modified. It’s just that the Cheney cloaking device blurs all images. The Google Earth and Live Local pics are actually completely clear - we just think they’ve been pixelated. Of course, when he’s around the White House, he turns off the device so that he doesn’t give away the secret, so photos of him in the Rose Garden come out OK. Once he’s at home, though, the device comes back on and the entire area becomes blurry.
Actually, the fuzzed section of the New Bedford area is of a power plant. Google Earth is not consistent: the Perry Power Plant (nuclear) in North Perry, OH is fuzzed on Google (but not on local.live.com).
OTOH, neither of the coal fired power plants in Eastlake or downtown Cleveland are fuzzed and the Davis Besse nuclear plant East of Toledo (in Toussaint, OH) is not fuzzed.
Arkansas Nuclear One in Russellville is in the clear on Google Earth as is the White Bluff coal plant.
Lucky for us al-Qaeda can’t afford to rent a Cessna and take aerial photos of targets that are pixellated by Google.
Why, exactly?
Or just go to the naval observatory entry at wikipedia, where the first picture is an ariel view of the place.
Seriously, I can’t think of anyway that pixellating these locations would deter any but the most lazy of terrorists. The rainbow tank is literally just a big storage tank on a concrete pier, easily visable from the road. An unpixillated sattellite image wouldn’t tell a potential terrorist anything about it that simply driving up to it and looking would.
IMHO, I doubt we’re seeing real, detailed views of the White House and Congress and so forth. It would be easy to substitute a pre-conversion-to-antiterror photo…the band of goofball heroes in almost every thriller manages to patch in blank videotape so they don’t show up on security cameras, I’m sure the US govenrment can manage to replace a few photos.
The reason the Naval Observatory alone is blurred instead of replaced with a less-noticeable benign image is that its occupant WANTS people to know he doesn’t countenance anyone knowing anything about him. It’s a statement. People who like Cheney – well, no one’s his friend, they’re afraid of being shot in the face…people who like that he’s in charge admire a guy who effectively says “Get offa my lawn!” to Google and the American public.
Well, it’s a theory.
Sailboat
The photos of the White House and the Capitol did not come from government sources, they we obtained from Sanborn, a private sector mapping and imagery company.
Well, they could, but none of their pilots has learned to land, yet.
Guess they should have taken more than the crash course.
This would be my guess for the rainbow tank:
“Now guards protect the largest copyrighted art object in the world.” According to the article that Sal Ammoniac posted.
Boy it’s a good thing that other tools like MapQuest are also pixelated…whoops, someone better lock it down…