Google Earth Uncovers Secret UK Nuke Base 240
thefickler writes "Gone are the days when governments could easily hide top secret bases. These days it's a weekend pastime to see who can find top secret facilities using Google Earth. Now it's the UK government's turn to be outraged after a secret facility was revealed by a British tabloid. The facility is said to be located in Faslane on the River Clyde in Scotland. This nuclear base was previously blurred out by the request of the British Government. However, with the latest update provided via Google Earth, many of the blurred out locations were accidentally revealed."
Update: 3/08 at 14:24 by SS: Multiple readers have pointed out that the issue here is not the location of the base — it's simply that details of buildings and objects within the base (such as the location of a pair of nuclear submarines) are accidentally visible after the UK government specifically requested they be blurred out.
Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
SPOILER ALERT: Faslane is not a "secret" facility. It's the level and quality of imagery that's the problem. Good old /. editing at its finest, I had to actually check for a second that it wasn't actually another kdawson...in any case this "news" is at least a week old.
The actual article in The Sun (Score:5, Informative)
so secret they have their own public website! (Score:5, Informative)
WTF? Hidden? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The actual article in The Sun (Score:2, Informative)
As usual, El Reg [theregister.co.uk] has useful commentary
Also from US military (Score:5, Informative)
There are better pictures courtesy of the US military
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/~cannon/medports/Faslane/HMNB_picture.html [navy.mil]
Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You think the submarines are still there? (Score:3, Informative)
There's a permanent protest camp just outside it.
This is about an article from the Sun
Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices" (Score:4, Informative)
And who in their right mind thinks that a foreign nation doesn't already know the existence, location and layout of various bases around the world?
It reminds me of the story (reported in various tech journals but not so much in the MSM) back in the 1970s about the US DoD funding a study by some university people of what could be learned about US military sites and activity from public sources like newspapers, libraries, etc. The story was that a couple of profs (i.e., their grad students) spent a year perusing such public information sources, wrote up their report, sent it in - and with a few days, it was classified Top Secret.
When I read that, I did wonder how many offers of employment the profs (and their grad students) got from various foreign governments. It seemed to me that it could become a viable career path for a small number of people. But I never read any followups.
Now I wonder how much you could learn by just googling for the information. And if you sent your summary report to the DoD, how quickly would it get classified?