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

Re:Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps? by Zak on Monday May 17, 2021 @07:51PM (#27189792)

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.

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Re:Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps? by azernik on Monday May 17, 2021 @08:47PM (#27190115)

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.

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Re:Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps? by Zak on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @11:44AM (#27196197)

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.

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Re:Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps? by azernik on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @03:50PM (#27200117)

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/

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