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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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

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.

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