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Google's popular Street View project may have collected personal information of members of Congress, including some involved in national security issues. The claim was made by leading advocacy group, Consumer Watchdog which wants Congress to hold hearings into what data Google's Street View possesses.

The Daily Telegraph has published satellite images of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's houses and of jails in the Stalinist country. The daily carried the images under the title "A bird's eye view of the prisons and palaces of Kim Jong-il's North Korea." Images show Kim's Sinuiju palace complete with a private train station as well as a residence with a large swimming pool near Pyongyang. Other images show Pyongyang Golf Links, the North's only 18-hole golf course in Mt. Taesong; Kim's yacht moored at nearby Lake Taesong; and an ostrich farm and a chewing gum factory in Pyongyang. "Looking...

Some people have discovered Islamic words and phrases encoded inside Google maps. For some strange reason someone has put Islamic words within the zoom of Google maps. Even stranger, some are found in very rural areas of America.

A new online global map could soon help scientists better track and predict outbreaks of infectious diseases like H1N1 much the same way meteorologists can study and forecast the weather. The "Supramap" application illustrates the spread of pathogens and key mutations across time, space and various hosts on a Google Earth map, researchers reported April 9 in the early online edition of Cladistics. Using data on the sequenced genetic code of H1N1 and other viruses, the evolutionary and geographic map enables tracking of how a virus moves from its origins to different hosts around the world. "Essentially, it's like a...

PACE, Fla., Authorities in Florida said an investigator used Google Earth to find a suspect in the illegal dumping of a 1-ton boat. The Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office said the boat, dumped in an undeveloped Pace subdivision, was missing its vehicle identification number and registration when it was found Feb. 23, the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal reported Tuesday. Marc Ward, a sheriff's office spokesman, said Deputy Gregory Barnes logged onto Google Earth for the investigation. "He used Google Earth to look around the surrounding area," Ward said. "He was looking for anyone who had that boat at the time...

Roberson didn't expect much back because of the limits of his jurisdiction, but Blizzard responded in spades. Online gaming offers you a new life: new friends, new face, new clothes, new home, new everything. It sounds like a perfect spot for a someone hiding from the law. But not quite perfect. Two weeks ago, an Indiana sheriff's deputy tracked down a fugitive by first locating him in the online game World of Warcraft The sheriff's department of Howard County had been searching for Alfred Hightower for two years without any luck, even with the help of U.S. marshals under Operation...

December 7th, 2009 3:29 pmDirective Number 9 During the Algerian war, the terrorists promulgated an order which with variations would provide the backbone doctrine for information warfare into the 21st century. Dr. Cori Dauber, the author of the SSI monograph “The YouTube War: Fighting in a World of Cameras in Every Cell Phone and Photoshop on Every Computer” describes the ground zero of the modern information Jihad. The Algerians’ “Directive Number Nine” argued that it was better to kill one man where the American press would hear of it than nine where no one would find out. What Khattab realized...

Google Earth is helping Jews in Israel and all over the world understand the miraculous victory of the Jews over Greek invaders 2,000 years ago thanks to the initiative of a rabbi who brings history back to life on the computer.

AN eagle-eyed security guard with too much time on his hands claims to have found photographic evidence of the Loch Ness Monster in satellite images. British security guard Jason, 25, told The Sun "I couldn't believe it. It's just like the descriptions of Nessie." Researcher Adrian Shine, of the Loch Ness Project, said: "This is really intriguing. It needs further study." Sightings have been claimed for centuries. The object, pictured to the right, can be found by entering co-ordinates Latitude 5712'52.13"N, Longitude 434'14.16"W in Google Earth.

To commemorate the 90th birth anniversary of Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space programme, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Wednesday unveiled its most ambitious people-oriented project yet. Bhuvan – Sanskrit for ‘Earth’ – is a remote-sensing 3D image portal that promises to take on the likes of popular virtual globe-mapping applications such as Google Earth and Wikimapia. What’s more, it is technically superior on paper! The most interested feature for users will be the ability of Bhuvan to zoom far closer than the aerial view from a chopper. While Google Earth restricts zooming to 200 metres...

WEBSITE Google Earth has launched a map to honour brave servicemen and women who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. Each yellow pin represents one of the 5,700 fallen coalition troops. A line around the globe connects their hometown to the place where they died. The site includes a picture and information on each hero, such as Corporal Bryan Budd, 29. The Belfast-born dad of two, of 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, got a posthumous Victoria Cross after he was shot saving pals in clashes with the Taliban in Helmand in 2006. Google engineer Sean Askay spent four years creating Map...

Gulags, Nukes and a Water Slide: Citizen Spies Lift North Korea's Veil /snip By EVAN RAMSTAD SEOUL -- In the propaganda blitz that followed North Korea's missile launch last month, the country's state media released photos of leader Kim Jong Il visiting a hydroelectric dam and power station. Images from the report showed two large pipes descending a hillside. That was enough to allow Curtis Melvin, a doctoral candidate at George Mason University in suburban Virginia, to pinpoint the installation on his online map of North Korea. Mr. Melvin is at the center of a dozen or so citizen snoops...

Want to get a sense of just how bad things are? Take a spin on Google Earth.The latest issue of International Economy, edited by FP contributor David Smick, has a clever graphic showing the depth of the economic crisis, so I thought I'd share.The above image, pulled today from Vesseltracker.com's Google Earth file, shows container ships languishing off the Singapore coast. Welcome to the  largest parking lot on Earth. International Economy explains: The world's busiest port for container traffic, Singapore saw its year-over-year volume drop by 19.6 percent in January 2009, followed by a 19.8 percent drop in February....

When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan ...Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities. The maps date back to the country's feudal era, when shoguns ruled and a strict caste system was in place. At the bottom of the hierarchy were a class called the "burakumin," ethnically identical to other Japanese but forced to live in isolation because they did jobs associated with death,...

Imagine if all the hospitals, schools, churches, and government buildings that appear on online maps were nothing but blurs. That would not only reduce the usefulness of things like Google Maps and Google Earth, but it would be a huge undertaking for Google and would probably violate the First Amendment. But that's exactly what California Assemblyman Joel Anderson, a Republican from El Cajon, is proposing in a measure dubbed "AB-255." The measure would apply to Web site operators and online services that make "a virtual globe browser available to members of the public" and fails to define what that is....

BRITAIN’S nuclear defence HQ could be under threat from terrorists using Google Earth. Close-up aerial views of the top-secret Naval base are on the computer program — available for free over the internet. It even reveals the longitude and latitude of the facility in Faslane, Scotland — home to the UK’s Trident-armed nuclear submarine force. And pictures clearly show two vast Vanguard Class submarines — each capable of carrying 16 nuclear missiles. Military experts warn that would make it easy for terrorists to launch accurate mortar or rocket attacks.

BRITAIN’S nuclear defence HQ could be under threat from terrorists using Google Earth. Close-up aerial views of the top-secret Naval base are on the computer program — available for free over the internet. It even reveals the longitude and latitude of the facility in Faslane, Scotland — home to the UK’s Trident-armed nuclear submarine force. And pictures clearly show two vast Vanguard Class submarines — each capable of carrying 16 nuclear missiles. Military experts warn that would make it easy for terrorists to launch accurate mortar or rocket attacks. One told The Sun: "A strike on our nuclear capability would...

I kicked up Google Earth to do some research and they had a notice that a new version was available. I've always liked Google Earth, but never really trusted the Google guys. Anyway, I downloaded it, and when I got ready to install it, a notice came up that said to continue using Google Earth I had to agree to their new terms of service, which includes allowing a Google updater to operate on my computer in the background. It said the updater would search my hard drive and update all Google products. I clicked on decline and dropped the...

Google has dismissed concerns that terrorists are using its free mapping technology to help them carry out attacks. The head of Google Earth said the program, which allows users to get a detailed bird's eye of practically any location on the planet, was not "tipping the balance in favour of the bad guys". It emerged last year that Iraqi insurgents planning attacks on a British base in Basra had used Google Earth images in which individual buildings inside the camp could be seen clearly. Google replaced the images with photographs that predated the construction of the base.

Beware of tripping over, sunbathing topless, cheating on your partner in public... - if there's a Google van passing by, the evidence will be forever set in a 360-degree photographic panorama and posted online for all to see. Google's ever increasing mapping applications are getting ever-increasingly closer to our personal lives. Suspicious minds won't need to bother with private detectives - they can simply log on to Google Maps and access the pedestrian-level view of the entire city - if they're lucky enough to live in Milan, Paris, or the majority of the US, New Zealand, Australia or Japan... Otherwise,...