Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos

Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos
Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus 2003-12-17

Call it the case of the missing White House. Users of Mapquest's free aerial photo database recently noticed that details of several Washington D.C. government buildings were no longer discernable in overhead images of the U.S. capital.

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-18
J.F. (2 replies)

I think it's a good idea to obscure critical locations such as those discussed in the article. The Whitehouse is somewhat of a hard target to locate from the air. I think thats why the Pentagon got hit instead. Hopefully as time goes by the unobscured photos will drift away. ...

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-24
Anonymous

Two problems with your statement, the White House was hit by a plane in the late 90s, so its hardly a hard place to find from the air. The other problem with what the USSS did is that this information was already available, so trying to obscure the aerial photos afte the fact is like stuffing the ...

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Re: Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2006-07-10
Anonymous

uh, it's perfectly visible on google earth....

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-19
Anonymous

Maybe next they'll start leaving out whole areas on Washington city maps, like the USSR did with maps of Moscow.

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-19
Louie

I think it's a good idea. But no matter what you do, you could still find the pictures off the web. Other thing if you remember durning 9/11 at the white house you had the snipper on top of the roof of the white house looking out for anything.

Today they still do plus I hear that they have bette...

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-21
Anonymous

It would probably only be effective if they also stop people from driving or walking near by, within viewing distance of the buildings, allowing estimations of distance. Banning tourists, and the associated tourism collateral would probably be more effective.

How many people work at these buildin...

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-22
Anonymous (3 replies)

I don't know how many times I have heard this, and now I am going to say it.

"Security through obscurity IS NOT security"

Obscuring the photos doesn't do any good. It does take a highly intelligent person to figure out what the white house looks like, and where it belongs on the arial photogr...

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-23
Anonymous (2 replies)

Maybe the next phase would be to blur the pictures of all of the "important" people in this country....

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-23
Tony Montana

A great idea! And a great place to start would be obscuring George W. Bush's face.......

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-26
Anonymous

Nah. The next step is to blur the constitution and citizen rights....

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-23
Anonymous

Ummm, despite the mantra, "obscurity" IS one part of a comprehensive security program. No, it's not the end-all-be-all of security, just like no one part of the entire program is, but that's not to say it can't be helpful.

As far as "obscurring the buildings only leads to drawing more attention"...

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-24
Anonymous

I don't know how many times I have heard this, and now I am going to say it.

"Security through obscurity IS NOT security"

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This isn't "Security By Obscurity". There are a lot of other controls in place to defend these places -- modifying the photo...

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-25
Anonymous

I recently went looking for the "light of democracy", it was no where to be found, but then someone told me it had been hidden in a hole in the ground...hiding and skulking in the shadows is hardly an honorable way to last, it's the act of the guilty and paranoid breathing their last gasp.

Those wh...

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-25
Anonymous (1 replies)

The importance of knowing wether images are sound is that a public person knows wether the information it works with, is correct.

Members of the public may have an unlikely UNFORESEEN major interest in having correct pictures. Strategic places may of course be protected against any unlikely unfores...

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Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos 2003-12-29
Anonymous

>If there is a practice to obscure elements out of a any given picture

Ahh, but, these aren't "any given picutures", they're pictures of specific installations that have obvious value.

Besides, if you want to see what it looks like, go take a picture yourself, or hire someone to do so. It's ...

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