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Comment by hengheng | Hacker News Reader

It's the same with military sites in France, where satellite images are blurred but you still get street view, and if that doesn't exist, you can still look at ground level photos, like so https://maps.app.goo.gl/Kr2822pASFRPLJHR7

Compliance is fun.

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France tried in the past to censor information about their sensitive facilities on Wikipedia, too. In 2013, their intelligence agency detained a random admin who was a French national, and forced them to use their credentials to make an edit in front of them,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503354 ("French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Article (wikimedia.fr)", 191 comments)

The military site in that dispute was

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pierre-sur-Haute_... ("Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station")

> "As a result of the controversy, the article temporarily became the most read page on the French Wikipedia, which was noted as an example of the Streisand effect.")

Another weird French one

https://www.google.com/maps/place/46%C2%B046'51.6%22N+56%C2%...

French as in language alone...

Residents of Saint Pierre and Miquelon are French (and EU) Citizens, not Canadian citizens.

This downvoted comment is factually correct—this is actually France; not Quebec or anything. (I didn't know this either!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon ("overseas collectivity of France in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, located near the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador")

It's probably this small jail,

https://www.google.com/maps/@46.7812199,-56.1705941,3a,46.7y...

Aerial images that look down to the inside courtyards etc of a location are different than Streetview which just shows the same view someone could get walking by.

They also do that for their civilian nuclear power plants unfortunately

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gravelines+Nuclear+Power+S...

What caused France to seemingly start this practice in 2020? ESRI's 2020 August basemap includes a 50cm unblurred Maxar WV02 image of Gravelines Nuclear Power Station captured on Aug 17, 2016.[1] In their 2020 September basemap revision, the same image from Maxar WV02 is then blurred.

The image chosen by ESRI (and since blurred) for their basemap until they switched it to a Jun 3, 2023 Maxar GE01 alternative image was:[2]

Catalog ID: 1030050053F98A00 Sensor: WV2 Resolution: 50 cm Min Resolution: 0.57593 Max Resolution: 0.60326 Acquisition Date: 08-17-2016 Acquisition Time: 11:18:32.379526 UTC Off-Nadir: 29.8° Sun Azimuth: 165.3° Target Az. Min: 0° Target Az. Max: 0° Target Az.: 0° Sun Elevation: 52.0° Cloud Cover: 5% Band Count: 8

If someone were to order and pay for this specific archived satellite imagery through a reseller, would it be blurred? What about newer imagery that ESRI etc haven't added to their basemaps(s)? Seemingly the blurring is being done by the likes of Google, ESRI, etc who supply public basemap imagery, and not by the organisation/company collecting the imagery off the satellite constellation?

With the expansion of China's fleet of optical and radar satellites (such as Siwei Gaojing-1 at a claimed 20-30cm resolution), is there an agreement amongst China, US, Europe, Japan (and other countries) that China will blur French power stations, and Europe will blur Chinese power stations in return? If not, I suppose anyone that cares for it will use American/European satellite imagery providers for imagery of China, and Chinese imagery providers for imagery of the US/Europe.

[1] https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=2.13709%2C...

[2] https://imagehunter-api.apollomapping.com/static/img/preview...

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