Just What Does Google Think They're Hiding?

I was playing around on Google Maps trying to find different land marks and found the White House with a mask obliterating details on the roof.



Out of curiousity I went into Google Images to see if I could find pictures of the roof, and sure enough, there are lots of photos.





Some photos even show security people and snipers on the roof.





And yet a building like the Pentagon has no masking and you can see the construction work being done from the terrorist attack on Sept. 11.



I just don't understand the reason behind Google covering the White House and the two buildings on either side when you can easily get the images elsewhere within their own search engine.

I'm also curious if other members have found places that are masked out and who is pulling the strings to have this sort of censorship put there in the first place.

Does the government have control over what images are displayed in Google maps???

maps.google.com...

I find it interesting that the two buildings flanking the white house look like the number 8. H is the 8th number of the alphabet, many far right groups using 88=HH=Heil Hitler.

Not that I think that there is anything in this, but you know, fits in with the swastika buildings, and that is what made me think of it. I guess what it really shows is that you can find meaning in everything if you try hard enough.

To answer your original question, I have no idea

Surely no one could get near enough to the place to use whatever information they got from google? Maybe there was a "sports model" parked up on the secret roof landing pad at the time.

[edit on 24-10-2005 by Implosion]

I wondered what those two other building were that are shaped like 8's so I went back to Google:




I hope there's no Nazi connection to the Treasury Department on one side and the old executives that occupy the other building.




EDIT>>>> I just took a look at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, Canada. I see our Prime Minister doesn't get any masking to cover his roof. It looks like it might be copper that is oxydized green.



I think I'll check around for other world leaders, maybe Tony Blair if I can find his house.

[edit on 24/10/2005 by anxietydisorder]

Uh, I'm fairly certain those are NOT snipers. Snipers are supposed to be concealed, that's they're skill, other than marksmanship. I highly doubt they'd be standing in plane view, on the roof of The White House, using a tripod to hold up their gun. It looks like a camera.

i don't know what your malfunction is, but i just pulled up google earth and this was the image of the white house...


as you can see, nothing is concealed, and all is seen. stop jumping to conclusions.

Sniper implies proactive, those people are most likely trained in the ideas of counter-sniping such as locating the shooter or finding places a shooter is likely to setup at. And as for the tripod it looks to be an optical device, most likely with a laser range finding attachment.

Wow, that image from Google Earth is great.
The image of the White House that I posted was from Google Maps maps.google.com...

I had no idea that there was such a difference between the two services. The resolution in the picture you posted is really good.

I still wonder why the Google Map service has the masking in place.

stop jumping to conclusions.

I've yet to draw a single conclusion on this thread. I'm just questioning an anomally I noticed.

[edit on 24/10/2005 by anxietydisorder]

Originally posted by astroblade
i don't know what your malfunction is, but i just pulled up google earth and this was the image of the white house...


as you can see, nothing is concealed, and all is seen. stop jumping to conclusions.

I'm not sure why you had to get all snippy like this. You can go to Google maps and see for yourself that the image a.d. posted above is exactly what they have, and it is concealed. I don't see that a.d. jumped to any conclusions whatsoever. His whole point was that - AS YOU HAVE PROVEN CORRECT - you can find pics of the roof of the White House so why conceal in the Google Map satellite shot? And then he simply ask - is the government requiring certain shots be doctored?

Now, really, in light of a review, do you think it called for ridiculing replies?

Sheesh I heard of many toys from those guys maybe not the roof guys or maybe. Anyway air testors for every damn thing as well as water. I forgot how often they test but picture any threat possible bio via air,bio via water etc etc they seem to have the device.

I suppose its possible that, when the Google Maps pick was taken, there was something going on on the roof, say a new system installed, or was being worked on, or was more visivible than usual, for a short time. And while the Google Earth pic was taken, there was nothing classified or a security risk being done.

Originally posted by Nygdan
I suppose its possible that, when the Google Maps pick was taken, there was something going on on the roof, say a new system installed, or was being worked on, or was more visivible than usual, for a short time. And while the Google Earth pic was taken, there was nothing classified or a security risk being done.

Interesting point, but having all three buildings masked seems strange.
Those three stuctures are very large and I find it hard to believe that something was being done to all of them that would require this.
But who knows, the Government is up to all kinds of stuff.

I don't have access to Google Earth, but looking at Google Maps for Camp David the best resolution you can get is this:


The Parks Services web page has a good map of the park with all the details except one - Camp David. They make no reference to the Presidential retreat so I put a red circle in the approximate location.



If astroblade or other members that have Google Earth could take a look and post your results, I'd like to see what kind of picture you can get of Camp David.
(I'm on dial-up and Google Earth system requirements say I need high-speed to use it)

The airfields where I work are masked as well.
To get a picture of them, we googled the nearby town and then moved to the airfields by the arrows. They aren't masked that way.

I don't actually know why, but I can make a few educated guess's.
It could be that a good topdown view of the Whitehouse and such is considered a security threat-bad guys could use it to target.
I could be to conceal defence weapons-guns, and missle inplacments-again-don't want bad guys know exactly what and where.

A couple years ago I've seen on TV the missile launchers on top of those buildings. I can't remember exactly whether I saw that in the news or some kind of documentary show on Discovery channel or something. Google is a little late for censoring the pictures, the cat is already out of the bag.

My hypothesis would be that Google were not forced to hide anything, maybe they simply made some sort of cynical joke on purpose. You know, the symbol of democracy and freedom being censored, meaning the US Constitution is going down the drain. Time to flee the United States before they close the borders. I'm just kidding of course, but you never know, Google did prove that the moon is made out of cheese.

Bandwidth saving maybe..?? Same source data but maybe they've done the blocking on maps to save some bandwidth.... Could be a security thing or a license issue with the source provider to block landmarks. I wouldn't doubt that Google pays a per use fee for the hi-res sat images....

My bet is that the Google Maps version was edited by the "source" and not by Google. The Google Earth version is clearly from a different source.

Maybe i can post some interesting information regarding rooftops of the whitehouse. I had a friend who visited DC last year and when he got to the white house a sniper on the roof showed up and had one of those tripod thingies.

Here is where it gets weird. He said when he tried to take a picture of the sniper pointing the rifle at him the camera shpwed nothing up there no guy in black just the tripod itself. I believe him becuase I heard of technologies that the government has that can affect the mind from far away.

The guys with tripods are not snipers, it is surveillance equipment.
I would imagine your friend was mistaken, if that sort of technology exists then it would not be an appropiate application considering the high number of photo oppurtunities and the high chances of it making it into the public eye.

It would also serve no logical purpose in my opinion, not in this case.
If he had taken a picture and people had showed up on it that weren't there when he looked with his naked eye then that would be more appropiate.

[edit on 25-10-2005 by AgentSmith]

I wonder if those things that look through walls will work from a distance?

Also what is it infrared to see bodies like in the back of a box truck hiding etc etc

I still like to think they just point them at your head and check your pulse,tempature make sure your not nervous and about to do something heh well tempature is probally possible but pulse maybe asking for a bit much.

What other wild toys can we think of?

You are thinking of thermal imagers. Click this link for a fun Flash comparison between thermal view and eyesight.
www.thermal-eye.com...

Firefighters use those cameras to find a source of fire behind a wall. I must point out that they can't see any distinguishable shape behind the wall, they only go for the warm spot.

Even military grade thermal imagers can't see throught walls, don't get fooled by movies. For example, the cameras mounted on AH-64 Apache helicopters can see humans shape at 4 miles away in total darkness, but they can't see throught glass windows. The US military snipers owns Ghillie suits that goes undetected by thermal cameras.

The customs are using x-ray to see inside freight containers without opening it, but the device must be very close to the object. It's impossible to use that to zoom far away.

Another toy I can think of is some guy's homemade camera capable of photographing landscapes from 12 miles away. He can zoom inside a hotel room from 2 miles away. The dude used film magazines salvaged from U2 spy planes.
www.ethanzuckerman.com...