Google will censor just about anything if a government asks them to and claims it's for national security. Hell, they even do it for the uber-rich independent of government.
I'm pretty sure that any US person or organization that doesn't comply with matters supposedly pertaining to national security will go the way of Joe Nacchio and Qwest.
Then in case of countries, those which allow Google to operate on their territory will often threaten Google to prevent it from operating there if Google doesn't censor certain parts.
Here is a list of known censored bits on satellite maps:
I'm not sure that's censored, at least by Google, I think it's just bad data. The copyright at higher zooms is shown as NASA, which would have used Landsat. In the Landsat archive, there are numerous satellite images for that region, though low quality: https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/viewer.html
Seems likely nobody at Google has taken the effort to do anything about it because who uses Google Maps to look at antarctica?
To those saying it's a military installation or SIGINT thing, I very very seriously doubt it. The Antarctic Treaty explicitly forbids military activity and an installation might be blockable by Google Maps but no one country has a monopoly on imaging satellites. It'd be seen and start a diplomatic shitstorm.
I would guess that this was a gap in coverage from one source of data, that was filled in with data from another. The edges just try and blend the two sources together.
Related is the story of Soviet maps. The Soviets had engaged in a monumental effort to map the world and then during the collapse in one of the republics the classified stack of maps got in the hands of Westerners:
1980s CIA album has map of central Moscow. On it, subway stations and embassies are marked (that's the expected), gas stations (okay) and also churches (what's weird).
Nothing more, just embassies and churches. Would like to hear a story here.
Baghdad's 2003 map has basically the same set of POI.
If it's a tourist map then probably so, but I assume CIA would like to see something more substantial on their map. They're not in for the sights are they?
Some are - they are absolutely everywhere in all cities I've lived in or visited, and yet I couldn't tell you the names of more than a couple. Do people really know the names of a significant portion of them?
Most of CIA's work is at the ground level. Stuff relevant for tourists is highly relevant in the field. (Meet this source next to the statue of St. Something, next to the kiosk across from the children's zoo entrance #3.)
I own a couple of these maps covering the area I grew up in (Western Norway). In some respects, the Soviet general staff mapping is more detailed than the maps from the Norwegian mapping authority - they even showed a pile of wood in our back yard! (Presumably misidentified it as an outhouse)
An educated guess is they simply bought a set of the commercially available mapping, then compared it to satellite imagery and added their own points of interest.
I've flown out of 5 of them - SF, Oakland, San Jose, Palo Alto, San Carlos. You can't land a 747 on all of them but they're definitely airstrips. There might even be more than mapped.
The dog is probably one of the bomb-sniffing dogs that work at a CIA building or campus. Any information about the security for CIA locations, I'm assuming, is going to be very well protected information so this is going to include any pictures of the security forces. The picture is just a dog chewing on a stick but the dog is part of the security force and therefore the picture becomes classified. It probably didn't need to be classified. We aren't using some sort of super advanced, secret machine to detect bombs, it's a regular yellow lab. It was probably included in a bunch of pictures that included information regarding the tactics or tools available to the security forces or pictures of secured areas (that aren't generic grassy areas) so the whole group was classified.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadhttps://www.google.com/maps/place/70%C2%B010'04.0%22S+87%C2%...
Satellite map images with missing or unclear data:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_map_images_with_miss...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fife_Symington#Second_term_.28...
Here is a list of known censored bits on satellite maps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_map_images_with_miss...
Or a giant ruse to divert attention from elsewhere.
Seems likely nobody at Google has taken the effort to do anything about it because who uses Google Maps to look at antarctica?
To those saying it's a military installation or SIGINT thing, I very very seriously doubt it. The Antarctic Treaty explicitly forbids military activity and an installation might be blockable by Google Maps but no one country has a monopoly on imaging satellites. It'd be seen and start a diplomatic shitstorm.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=czW0iRJuH1A
https://www.sovietmaps.com/
Here is a longer article about it:
https://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-cold-war-maps/
And also the map of San Francisco from the 80s:
http://i.imgur.com/SdmmFUd.jpg
Nothing more, just embassies and churches. Would like to hear a story here.
Baghdad's 2003 map has basically the same set of POI.
Have a link? I'd like to take a look.
If it's a tourist map then probably so, but I assume CIA would like to see something more substantial on their map. They're not in for the sights are they?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stierlitz
Recording information that is tactically useful for a ground battle would almost certainly have been a goal of the mapping program.
An educated guess is they simply bought a set of the commercially available mapping, then compared it to satellite imagery and added their own points of interest.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov/5988128522/in/album-721...
If so, it's a case study in how that power is misused...