Recently, James Fallows wrote in the NYT about GoogleMaps and left a teaser in his story about a location in the U.S. that was so secret, it was obscured even from the satellite views in GoogleMaps.
Today he lets the rest of us on it:
Now, a promised final word about Google’s aerial views. Last month, I mentioned that one small part of the American land mass was obscured in an unusual way. It’s not the headquarters of the C.I.A., which is there in such detail you that can tell the color of cars in the parking lots. Nor is the mystery zone a dam or a power plant. Some are clearer than others, but the differences result from varying quality of satellite photographs from place to place.
True, the roofs of the White House and two neighboring buildings have been Photoshopped, to conceal whatever protective systems may be up there. And the view of the United States Capitol grounds is blurry, though the contours of the main buildings are distinct. But to see what real camouflage looks like, zoom in on the satellite view of 1 Observatory Circle in Washington. That’s where Dick Cheney lives.
(Hmmm … makes we wonder whether, a la call blocking “services” sold by the telcos to rescue us from the telemarketing nightmare they have at least partly created, Google is someday going to be able to start charging us if we want them to turn off the searchable images of our personal lives ….)
For Canadians, here’s another address worth checking out ….