This seems a bit asinine. We will remove your military installations from view, sure, but that means removing the whole 3D setup for everything. Really ?
The alternative is Taiwan notifying Google every time they build or move something sensitive, which does not seem like a great security model. Even in the absence of leaks, a would-be attacker would just need to look for flat patches in the sea of 3D to tell where the interesting stuff is.
I still don't understand. How does it work with normal maps when they blur or obfuscate sensitive information upon governments' requests ? Surely they don't remove the whole map.
Last year I was jumping around the world in Google Earth VR, standing on skyscrapers in Tokyo and such, when I decided to go have a look at Washington DC. Surprise: for miles around the White House, there was no 3D info, just flat, blurry satellite photos.
Well, yes, and that makes sense. They have an obfuscated area, which is what I would expect in this case too, instead of removing the option for the whole of Taiwan. Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan and Taichung are not exactly tiny villages where only a couple of geeky nerds used 3D, either.
Thank you. Very informative. Can't quite square the 'there's more than meets the eye' in Taiwan's supposed military might and preparedness from the article with the soldiers fumbling with missile systems and shooting one across the strait towards China by mistake a couple of years ago, but hey...
Edit : That one didn't reach the mainland, of course.