• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Army chief concerned over Google Earth's images of key Indian installations

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

New Delhi, April 4, IRNA
India-Google-Army chief
Chief of Army Staff General J J Singh has said that Google Earth's images were posing a threat to India's security needs.

General Singh said that the pictures of a key airbase in New Delhi was posing a threat to the country's security and countries must join hands to stop such open access to their installations, media reports said here.

General Singh said the pictures gave broad but high-resolution layouts of New Delhi's international airport, which also has the Palam Air Force base, and gave a fairly simple advantage to anyone plotting an air attack.

"Yes, to some extent, anything which is appearing on the google.com on its site which is an image of a sensitive installation, it does give its layout in broad parameters. So for it being targeted from the air becomes simpler than what has been in the past. So to an extent it does give an advantage to someone who has access to Google pictures," said General Singh.

Google Earth reportedly also has satellite images of India's topline Sukhoi fighter jets at their base in Pune.

Last month, the search engine also put up satellite images of important air bases across north India on its website --
www.earth.google.com.

The high-resolution satellite images include those of airfields in Chandigarh, Ambala, Amritsar, Avantipura (Jammu and Kashmir), Srinagar and Leh. In several of the images, various types of aircraft can be clearly seen parked in the airfields.

In the case of Chandigarh, an IL-76 transport aircraft is seen parked in the airfield along with several AN-32 transport planes and an MI-26 helicopter. Many AN-32 aircraft can also be seen lined up at another end.

This is not the first time Google has posted such sensitive images. Some months back it had put up images of Indian ships and naval assets under construction, provoking a response from President A P J Abdul Kalam, who had termed it a serious matter.

The Indian Army has taken steps to counter the Google fallout as under the country's latest army doctrine a strategy has been laid out for such cases of satellite monitoring.

But General Singh has called for global efforts against such blatant infringement on their security rights.

Meanwhile, online search engine Google has rejected India's concerns that its satellite images of sensitive sites posed a threat to security.

Google said it was holding talks with the Indian government to dispel fears.

The website, Google Earth, contains pictures of military bases, offices of the prime minister and the president of India and nuclear facilities among other sites in the world.

2160/2321/1414