Google Earth Raises Privacy, Security Issues
Essam Al-Ghalib, Arab News

JEDDAH, 27 March 2006 — When a permit was issued allowing motor-powered passenger gliders to fly during Jeddah’s annual summer festival, it came with strict instructions as to where flying was permitted. Only two places were designated — the Corniche with flights over the waters of the Red Sea and further inland, over the desert. At no point, were the gliders to fly over inhabited parts of the city.

“That’s so we don’t fly over people’s homes and palaces. This culture closely guards its privacy. Many would be unsettled by the thought of uninvited eyes prying from above,” the expatriate pilot of one of the craft told Arab News two summers ago.

Last summer, when Google launched Google Earth, concern grew over how much it allowed anyone with an Internet connection to view and download satellite and aerial images of the Earth from above for free…

In Saudi Arabia, privacy is a major social value. Practically every free-standing house has a 10-12 foot wall surrounding it. What happens outside the wall is public; what happens inside, though, is utterly private.

Google Earth–as well as any other satellite photo–has the threat of breaching that privacy, as this Arab News article makes clear. But if one goes to the Google Earth site and looks at Saudi Arabia, detailed pictures are unavailable. Past a certain level of zoom, everything just becomes a blurry mass. [Google Earth is a downloadable application that runs from your computer and its Internet link.]

The article quotes a Google spokeswoman as saying that this lack of detail is not the result of any request by the Saudi government, but simply because no more detailed photos are available. I find this plausible for two reasons. First, some countries do ask that certain areas of photos be degraded for security reasons and Google seems happy to comply. Second, even some areas in the US–not security related–lack high resolution coverage. My city in Florida is partially available in high resolution; other parts fail at about the same resolution as the Saudi photos.

I must admit that I’ve had fun tracking down all the individual buildings in which I’ve lived around the world. I was successful in most instances, with failures in Saudi Arabia and Syria–and a couple of places that no longer exist in their prior form.