27
2009
Former American Vice President, Dick Cheney, was a big fan of secret surveillance and monitoring, but wasn't so keen on having aerial images of his house beamed all over the world, so it used to be pixellated out at very low resolution on Google Maps. With the new administration, however, Joe Biden has moved in and suddenly the house has become viewable again.
The change happened on Google Earth on January 18th, and rolled out to Google Maps on the 22nd. Google's official line? They didn't do anything - the images were displayed unaltered from the source - in this case, the U.S. Geological Survey. I'm inclined to believe them, though it's interesting that the White House remained in full view the whole time. For before and after pics, click over the jump.
Before:
After:
The Naval Observatory (via Valleywag)
Related posts: Google adds tube map to Google Maps | Google goes mega-high-resolution on Google Maps with the GeoEye-1 satellite
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The White House itself may be relatively high-def, but the whole area around it looks rather clumsily pasted into the rest of Washington, which suggests that this particular area was edited a bit. Sure, it's high-def - but you can be sure that the rooftops around the White House are not THAT featureless. The interesting stuff (sniper positions, SAM launchers) will have been edited out.
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