[KarlInOhio]

Terrorists have push-button access to minute details of the buildings' exits, windows, facades, access routes – even rooftop vents, he said.

Other than the rooftop vents, what can these "terrorists" get that they couldn't just by driving by and videotaping their target? Put the camera equipment in a van with dark windows and no one will ever notice it. Did the terrorists on 9/11 need a detailed satellite photo of New York to figure out where the World Trade Center towers were? Is the idiot assemblyman in California going to require companies producing GPS mapping equipment to put in intentional errors much as Soviet maps had errors in them?

[NonValueAdded]

No need to disguise the van, simply ride around as if you were the Google truck. You could get the same or better quality of information. Or you could buy your images from L'il Kim once he gets his kaputnick satellite up there.

[Sigurdrifta]

I’m of two minds on this. I did find it somewhat disconcerting that in another version of this (Mapquest?) that had photos, I could pick out individual fighter jets on the flight line of my son’s base in NC.
Of course, our potential state enemies have all kinds of resources (satellites) to get those photos, but I have felt that more “local” terrorist types could use such images to, for example, lob a few mortar rounds at the planes from a hidden location in the forests that surround three sides of the base, and then get away relatively easily.

One has to assume they could also measure ranges pretty accurately.

This was a few years ago. I noticed later that the pictures had disappeared.