[Novalug] [OT] Google takes heat for using pre-Katrina imagery

[Alan McConnell]

On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 12:33:43PM -0400, Michael Stone wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 31, 2007 at 08:29:05PM -0400, Alan McConnell wrote:
> >	Pete, you are very ready to jump on the Congress for getting
> >	after Google.  But I would first ask: why did Google switch
> >	from a depiction of the present state of affairs -- which AFAIK
> >	continues shamefully bad -- to a pre-Katrina depiction. 
> 
> Why should we ask that?
	<LOL>  Because it takes a certain amount of political programming
	for such an obvious question not to spring to mind.

> More importantly, where is congress' constitutional authority
> to question a private business about what content it chooses to
> display on a free web site?
	We all have a copy of the Constitution, right?  Check 
	Article I, often subtitled, Powers of the Congress.  A hint
	as to the Section: its number is a power of the only even
	prime.

	Perhaps a more relevant question is: why should Congress
	take a look at what Google is doing?  my answer to this --
	and I give it sadly -- is that we are in a new era of
	privatisation.  Our government is privatising all kinds
	of things; we are renting out our highways, renting out
	the care and feeding of our military forces, etc etc.
	Do you(Mike and others) not know that many of our
	governmental functions depend on information about
	where things are?  and AFAIK the government has not set
	up an online agency with capabilities similar to those
	of Mapquest and Googlemap.

	Should the government privatize?  the present "conservative" 
	philosophy is: Yes!  the Private Sector is much more able
	than the government.    But if we are
	going to let the Private Sector do things essential to 
	government activity, the government, especially the Congress,
	had better exercise due oversight over said private sector.

> >	So let's find out first who leaned on Google to airbrush history.
> 
> And why on earth, other than rampant paranoia, would you believe that 
> somebody did that?
	Well, Mike, you present for us your theory about why Google
	should display the present devastation in New Orleans, and then
	recall this display to show how New Orleans used to be.  Is
	your theory that someone at Google did this on their own 
	recognizance(like e.g.  Douglas Feith doctored up the intelligence
	on Iraqi WMD on his own)?

	As for paranoia, I plead guilty.  Paranoia on the part of
	private citizens is, these days, the citizen's highest duty.
	If anyone reading this isn't paranoiac, then they are in a
	cocoon somewhere.

> neighborhood are years old), how they decide which to use (weighting age 
> against resolution), whether it is at all plausible that a human makes a 
> decision about every square foot of coverage (no, it's not--it must be 
> automated), and whether it's reasonble to expect that the people writing 
> the automation software special case things based on potential 
> congressional stupidity (it's not).
	I don't know what this is all about.  If you don't think New
	Orleans is a "special case", that's your right.  Most people
	view New Orleans as the preeminent natural disaster -- in terms
	of property damage, lives shattered, etc -- that the U.S. has
	been hit with in at least the last several decades.

Caveat:  I personally do not know New Orleans; I was there once for a
conference many decades ago.  And I am certainly not familiar with
what Google has done.  But a billion-dollar enterprise like Google,
in depicting the New Orleans disaster, should certainly make every
effort to make what it is depicting as accurate as possible.  Does
anyone quarrel with that statement?  And if Google is portraying
the remnants of a once great American city as it was before the
disaster struck, I'd say: damn right I want Congress to complain.
And the rest of us, the people who elect the Congress, should too.

Best wishes,

Alan

-- 
Alan McConnell :  http://patriot.net/users/alan
    "He lies.  He spies.  He wants us to ignore
    His war . . ."   Impeach him!