Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps? | Hacker News Reader

Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps?

bbc.co.uk

34 pointscabotmoose34 comments

The authors hint that they think the photos are low resolution, to make it harder to see how many buildings got bombed in Gaza.

Which would indicate that the current politicians in Israel have some leverage over Google? (Which I find interesting.)

(Other nearby regions, eg Syria, are high resolution they write.)

The authors mention that, elsewhere, satellite photos were used to measure "the destruction of Rohingya villages by the military in Myanmar".

They wouldn’t need leverage over Google, only over the companies (or the approvals and regulations that govern the companies) that take the arial photos that Google uses.

Whether or not it was leverage related, I remember thinking the same thing when I saw that Google routinely placed me in Israeli settlements (e.g. Kiryat Arba, pop 700) when I was in Palestinian territory (Hebron, pop 215,000).

This seems to not be a new thing. It's illegal for US companies to release high-resolution images of Israel:

"In fact, all of Israel is shown in low resolution by all U.S.-based mapping services due to the Kyl–Bingaman Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 1997. Entitled "Prohibition on collection and release of detailed satellite imagery relating to Israel," the amendment requires the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs Agency to regulate the distribution of zoomed images of Israel. While a review of the Kyl-Bingaman amendment is said to be taking place, images of Israel stubbornly remain blurry."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment

The article says the KBA was dropped in 2020.

Ah, I see, the limit was revised from 2m to 0.4m, but not dropped entirely (and Wikipedia needs an update). There's still an Israel-specific restriction, but it's significantly less draconian:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/07/21/2020-15...

I've heard there are some pretty intense debates inside Google about mapping issues related to Israel/Palestine (what to label, where to draw lines, etc).

From what I remember, it's less of an "intense debate" over the political issues themselves, and more "how do we define and serve a world map in a non-political way, in areas of the world where the map itself is political" like Kashmir, Israel/Palestine, and a bunch of other places that most people who don't live there haven't heard of.

> areas of the world where the map itself is political

That would be everywhere. Even the most boring border in the world is political: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_areas_disputed_by_Ca...

Right, hence the team of lawyers and policy people that Google (and presumably Microsoft, Apple, and anyone else who runs a mapping product) pay to figure out how to craft a policy that at least APPEARS non-political.

> Even the most boring border in the world

US-Canadian border is definitely one of the more intense borders I crossed. And some of the horror stories I heard (e.g. Peter Watts) sound pretty bad. It might be the most boring US border though.

Really boring borders can be found in EU/Schengen where you drive by a sign announcing a different country and that's it. There are even more boring (and interesting at the same time) borders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau#/media/File:Baar...

I'm sure that neutrality is the ideal, and even that the ideal is usually realized. That said, I happen to know how things look inside FB's ME content moderation team^. The israel-palestine conflict is passion provoking, all over the world, in ways that Azerbaijan-Armenia, N. Cyprus or Crimea are not. I suspect that's the case on the maps team too.

That said, content moderation tends to employ people who are experts in the region, with academic backgrounds in history, politics and such. They're likely coming in with strong opinions. Cartography may different.

^Safety, or whatever name they use internally.

There is, but it's like that for lots of places. There are plenty of conflicting border claims in the world. The azerbaijan-armenia was a recent hot button, for example. Crimea probably will be, going forward.

The Israel-Palestine conflict tends to be unique mostly in the passion it draws, inside google maps teams, FB's moderation teams and nearly anywhere else. Any specific issue likely has coroleries elsewhere.

I suspect that being endlessly cited as a source of data in this conflict would make for frustrating public relations. It wouldn't surprise me if there are intense labelling debates that they would prefer to sidestep as well.

Most of the article spends its time on the results. For people looking for the actual answer to the headline question:

====================================================

Until last year, the US government restricted the quality of satellite images that American companies were permitted to provide on a commercial basis.

The Kyl-Bingaman Amendment (KBA) had been introduced in 1997 to address Israeli security concerns.

Although the ruling only referred to Israel, it was also applied the restriction to images of the Palestinian territories.

The KBA limited image quality so that an object the size of a car was just about visible as a highly blurred image, but anything smaller would be very difficult to identify.

"We [Israel] would always prefer to be photographed at the lowest resolution possible", said Amnon Harari, head of space programmes at Israel's Defence Ministry last year, reported by Reuters.

"It's always preferable to be seen blurred, rather than precisely."

It's not uncommon that sites such as military bases have been blurred - but the KBA was the only case of such a wide area being subject to such a restriction.

However, once non-US providers, such as French company Airbus, were able to supply these images at a higher resolution, the US came under increasing pressure to end its restrictions.

In July 2020, the KBA was dropped, and now the US government allows American companies to provide far higher-quality images of the region (so that objects the size of a person can be readily picked out).

====================================================

i.e. it's only been legal for US companies to take higher-resolution imagery for under a year, and Israel is certainly not going to allow the aerial photography that gets really high-resolution imagery in developed countries. Presumably over the next few years there will be enough overflights by high-resolution satellites, and companies like Planet Labs will no longer be charging their new-imagery premiums.

I was surprised to read this. Surely many countries allied with the US would prefer more of the publicly-available satellite imagery of sensitive parts of their territory to be low-resolution, but the US government gave special treatment to Israel alone.

Most countries only want this for specific places: https://fas.org/blogs/security/2018/12/widespread-blurring-o...

Letting Israel have something more extreme was a concession that cost the US very little, and came at a period of exceptionally good US-Israeli relations. Specifically, the US wanted to reward Israel for successive handovers of bits of the Territories to the Palestinian Authority, and staying out of the Gulf War.

It seems to me like it infringes on the first amendment rights of anyone who wants to make and distribute such imagery, though I imagine a court has found otherwise at some point. Limits on freedom of expression are no small thing from my perspective.

Space is... special. And national security is even more special. Regulating Earth observation is a standard bureaucratized function [1], and checks lots of boxes for getting leniency from the courts

[1] https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/CRSRA/

What about non-US companies like yandex, baidu etc? Why don't they provide higher resolution? Is there any company already providing them in higher res for free?

High-resolution maps could be used by militaries, for example, when targeting. Maybe it's just a way to stay out of the conflict.

The military (ours and others) have their own overhead imagery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofeq

According to [1] only 19 countries have military satellites. It's really difficult to hide a satellite launch but even if you assume the real number is twice that due to secrecy, that is very few countries and chances are none of them are particularly friendly with Hamas or Fatah.

Their useful not just for targeting but for tactics, strategy, and logistics. Even having access to freely available satellite imagery is a huge benefit to under-equipped armies and militias. Without them, effective warfare against a modern style military like Israel's, that depends on an independent command structure and rapid movement, is practically impossible without devolving into an insurgency. Hamas/Fatah likely have the resources to pay for a few commercial satellite shots using middlemen from sympathetic countries for up to date data for major offensives, but those shots often cost in the hundreds or thousands of dollars per sq mile. For day to day planning, even civilian imagery that updates once a year or two would be invaluable.

[1] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-number-of-m...

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