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Comment by PoignardAzur | Hacker News Reader

I'm no sympathizer to the CCP, but I don't think this argument makes sense in our time.

There's a big gap between a private individual looking around, and lots of private individuals coordinating to look at everything all the time.

Modern technology is making that gap larger year after year.

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That argument would be more appropriate if OSM was about something other than where the streets went.

Sadly anything can be politicized these days.

USSR/Russia also had a very long history of restrictions on accurate maps (of just about anything!), on the basis that it is a national security threat if the country ever gets invaded. Street-level maps were broadly available but deliberately falsified:

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/03/world/soviet-aide-admits-...

Detailed (<1:2500000) topographic maps were automatically classified as a state secret, and restricted on a "need to know" basis outside of the military until 1989.

A detailed article on this explaining how and why they went about it: http://www.hundzor.org/lj/10postnikov.pdf

funnily enough correct and detailed maps of ussr were available in nato countries

True, and people knew it. I used to travel on the bicycle with the help of USSR maps made in early eighties (due to unavailability of other options), and yes, what you saw on the map was sometimes very different from what was in the real life, especially if you were close to the external border.

Until 2000, the US reduced the accuracy of GPS for civilian applications. The UK removed street signs and railway station names in anticipation of German invasion in WWII. Kuwaitis removed street signs when Iraq invaded in 1990.

'Where the streets go' is strategically valuable information.

My understanding is that the resolution of commercially available satellite imagery is restricted by the US. I don't recall details, just passing references from the show "What on Earth?"

Commercial satellite operators licensed in the US are restricted to no more than 25 cm imagery resolution. Of course that limit doesn't apply to foreign operators. And it doesn't apply to aircraft either; many of the "satellite" images you see on Google Maps were actually shot from airplanes.

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