The CIA Is Sharing Declassified Maps | Hacker News Reader

The CIA Is Sharing Declassified Maps

smithsonianmag.com

194 pointsbane45 comments

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:

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

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.

Is that typical of all cities? How about Paris? Rio? Tokyo?

Have a link? I'd like to take a look.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov/30849056096/in/album-72...

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?

Churches are major landmarks.

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?

Probably the people who live in those neighborhoods do, which can be a useful reference if you're in those areas.

Asking people about churches in 198x USSR was probably not the wisest way to go around for a CIA spy. Better stick with libraries.

I was thinking more along the lines of "I'm looking for a shop near X."

Никогда ещё Штирлиц[1] не был так близок к провалу.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stierlitz

Or a useful reference point to call back to the artillery.

Recording information that is tactically useful for a ground battle would almost certainly have been a goal of the mapping program.

They are also long-lived ( on the scale of decades and centuries ) and have reasonably static names.

Yes, although in Soviet Union, they still often had other names and functions (as a movie theatre, or a grain warehouse, or whatever).

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.)

IIRC They're suppose to be protected under the Geneva Convention.

Churches are useful landmarks. Probably quite useful for navigation and even locating photography.

Oh my, thats some mighty detail! Guess communism wins, in this case :)

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.

What are the little planes on the San Francisco map? Surely there aren't 12 airstrips in the San Francisco bay. Unless that includes helipads...

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.

   Take a look here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_the_San_Fr...

  The Bay Area has 3 international airports, 2 federal airports, 8 General aviation towered airports and 15 General Aviation non-towered airports.

I'm really curious why this 14 mile strip of Antarctica is censored:

https://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...

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.

What. A telcon guy or gal here???

Fife Symington concurs. Although, "security" has nothing to do with it. You are either "in" or you're "out".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fife_Symington#Second_term_.28...

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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_map_images_with_miss...

Pretty sure you don't need to be uber-rich. Anyone can get their house censored if they ask nicely.

That's pretty spooky. It's most likely some military complex.

Surely it's related to communication interception? Either for the Pacific/Southern Ocean or on the Antarctic continent.

Or a giant ruse to divert attention from elsewhere.

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.

Secret military installations in Antarctica is not unfathomable. You should read this: http://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm

It could also be a mine or refinery. In this interview, Admiral Byrd says there are significant coal, oil and Uranium deposits (skip to 7m30s):

https://youtube.com/watch?v=czW0iRJuH1A

And where is the bulk or oil terminal? It's impossible to conceal that much shipping.

I love diplomatic shitstorms.

also censored on https://zoom.earth/#-70.166939,87.824707,11z,sat

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.

The maps: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov/albums

I'm a bit surprised that this one was declassified given the sensitive nature of the content.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov/5988128522/in/album-721...

Wait, was this actually classified to begin with?

If so, it's a case study in how that power is misused...

Rammo plays with a stick. For more information on the CIA, visit www.cia.gov.

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.

These are incredible. I'm especially impressed with how high res the scans are. Time for some new office posters!

Sweet planimeter a ways down the page at https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov/sets/72157674852500522

Have they been uploaded to Wikipedia (Commons)?

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