Like everyone else in the universe, I've been having fun today with Google Maps' new satellite imagery feature. I can't remember where I saw it mentioned first, but it's everywhere by now. I love how Google doesn't have to make product announcements; they have a huge grass-roots advertising department made up of all the nerds in the world that appreciate good interfaces and high usability.
Anyway, so I'm looking at the Google Maps satellite view of the white house (pull the zoom slider all the way to the top for this) and I notice some interesting things.
Examine the (brownish) roof of the white house and the two near-identical greenish-roofed buildings to the either side of it. They are totally featureless and monotone. Compare with the roof of any other building nearby. These images have clearly been edited to remove the content of these three roofs.
Also, check out the interior courtyards of the two greenish-roofed buildings. Look a little pixellated to you? Me too. Apparently there's something there that is both visible at this resolution and worth concealing from the general public. I imagine the Secret Service has their hands in this, exerting some influence on any company (in the US, at least) that has the technical capability to produce satellite images of Washington.
So feel free to speculate on both the content of the wiped roofs as well as the courtyards. Personally I like to think that the presidential escape pod, in the shape of a Big Boy™, is in one of the courtyards.
Now I'm hunting around Washington for assorted other touched-up images. Join in the fun.
* The entire national capital and assorted nearby buildings are pixellated out...
* No idea what this is... (though it is just east of the Russian Embassy...) Update: It's the US Naval Observatory, ostensibly where the Vice President lives. I guess that's why it is blurred out. Or may be it's all those ATOMS in that clock messing with the satellite...
* Well here you have it. Looks like I got them all. Woo...
The more I think about this, the more it seems like this is just a cover-your-ass policy move by the SS*. There are about a million ways to see what's on the White House** roof, not limited to nearby buildings or a plane flying into/outof IAD. After all, them damned Russkies surely had the "Comrade" edition of the Eye In The Sky Satellite, and I get the impression that the hawkish types in DC didn't let their guard down after their Sworn and Only Credible Enemy, the USSR, was rolled over on its side so it wouldn't choke on its own vomit.
I say: it's pixelation for policy's sake, and little more. WHAT SECRETS ARE HELD IN THE PRESIDENT'S COURTYARD??
Well, perhaps, the President's dog's poops.
* Schutzstaffel not included in Secret Service play set.
** .com
Hrm, and yet all of the NTS is quite visible if you're into looking at craters, instrumentation trailers, etc. LANL is pretty off the map at higher magnifications. Fun stuff.