After India's financial capital, Mumbai, was targeted by terrorists just recently, the Government is forced to focus on satellite images of its strategic installations being made available in the public domain by internet search engines like Google.
The well planned terror attack that struck Mumbai last month proved that the terrorists made the best use of new technology available.
Now, a Mumbai-based advocate has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in Bombay high court seeking a "complete ban on Google Earth and similar sites like Wikimapia". The PIL states that the websites gave minute details and provided viewers with photographs and "extremely accurate navigational coordinates'' as well.
In the past too, former President A P J Abdul Kalam had voiced serious concern over Google Earth, the free-mapping program available on the Internet, which includes high resolution images of sensitive locations like the Army headquarters, Parliament House, Rashtrapati Bhavan and other defense establishments.
In April 2007, Google Earth was banned in Sudan after atrocities were reported at its Darfur region.
However, the presence of technology has also played an indispensable role as most Mumbaikars and the rest of the world learnt about the well-planned terror strikes from microblogs like twitter, which not only helped in getting first-hand information but also forewarned many of us.
Source: http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=96241&cat_id=643
