Google Earth - A "Threat" to Indian Security???

The front page of The Time of India screams “Google Earth Exposes IAF Bases”. The article goes in length to explain, that after acquiring satellite images of the three Indian cities, viz Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, our national security is at risk.

The article said how one could use Google Earth, zoom in on Bangalore and view the airport, Yelahanka Air Base and HAL factory. It said that our fighter planes and helicopters are clearly visible, along with their camouflaged hangers.

Then the article speaks as to how one can zoom into Delhi, our national capital and see the Rashtrapati Bhavan or the Palam Airport. Moving over to Mumbai, the news article claimed that one could zoom into the port and see various naval ships. It claimed that INS Virat could be viewed clearly.

So according to The Times of India, the Indian national security is at risk, due to these satellite pictures.

After reading the article, the first thought was that if such things are possible with Indian cities, then it should be true for other cities as well. I was shocked to read in the paper, that US Government had blacked out the photographs of White House, so the first thing I did was to check it. I found that the claim was false.

The White House was seen with better resolution that The Rashtrapati Bhavan, all the lawns, trees, the fountain in front of the building, everything was seen clearly.

To prove that the report by The Times of India is nothing but a false rumor, I searched for Langley Air Base, one of the oldest and important Air Bases in the US. The images that I got are as shown below.







It’s a shame that a newspaper like The Times of India, choose to publish such an article. This was never expected from a paper which is more than a hundred years old and is the number one news paper in many cities. What did the paper think would happen if Google published such images? Our enemies would use it to strike us?

Our enemies which has the capability to strike us already have every square inch of the country mapped using spy satellites, others would have got the required information from such countries. They would have better images of the facilities than the ones given by Google.

I am wondering what the editors were doing. Did they find this news so disturbing that they had to put it in the front pages of their publications? If the US or any other country had no problem in such photographs being shown on Google Earth, then why should India have any issues?