Google Earth and Privacy

Google Earth is here to stay. No doubt its one of the most impressive job done by google folks. I loved its plethora of features from flying over the Karakoram range to reviewing my route from carbondale to St. Louis all with the few clicks. It has better resolution for some of the places and hope will improve as more and more places could be added. For example while looking for Katmandu in Nepal, it didn't have much to show, but for New Delhi's Parliament or for Rome or Chicago it has much more features to talk about. Infact for Chicago one can also enable the feature which gives you the perception of height. The other features lets you map your traditional map to the satellite imagery and it indeed make you appreciate the work Cartographers did before the advent of satellite imagery. The program requires a broadband internet connection and a Gig of RAM. Its still not available for Linux platform but for windows it works pretty good. Some people have started questioning about the privacy of certain locations, previously inaccessible to ordinary folks. Indeed I was surprised that Indian President would raise such an issue. Because it conveys ignorance on his part. The folks who need to obtains sensitive data can easily get it from other source and anyway from whom we are hiding this. With zillions of satellite in orbit and the whole earth photographed it would be ridiculous if anyone thinks that its an invasion of privacy. Kudos to Google.