[HN Gopher] Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?
___________________________________________________________________
Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?
Author : vanusa
Score : 536 points
Date : 2021-05-17 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| egrljerg wrote:
| I find the comments here to be very anti-semitic.
|
| Can we please leave the politics off HN?
| haecceity wrote:
| Why do re-education camps have soccer fields? What kind of weird
| soccer related torture are they performing??
| Permit wrote:
| A small discussion from yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27178589
| fjerljkl wrote:
| I know the twitter lynch mob doesn't understand many things but
| just to reiterate - homosexuality is a crime in Palestine. They
| will kill you for it. You still want to support them?
| bawolff wrote:
| Im kind of confused - they're saying its a problem for reporters
| and people trying to investigate, but also that other providers
| provide high resolution imagery.
|
| I feel like both those things can't be true. How can it be a
| problem if you can just get the needed images from non usa
| companies?
| yomansat wrote:
| They're available but not always free.
| whymauri wrote:
| Probably price as a barrier. Or the background knowledge to
| know which providers are reliable, etc. You could imagine the
| pricing being inaccessible to certain markets (where currency
| is really weak, say Venezuela), whereas Google Maps is free for
| almost all uses.
| willcipriano wrote:
| You expect reporters to go deeper than the first page on
| Google?
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Up-to-date high resolution imagery is quite expensive. Most of
| Google maps imagery is generated from an older database of
| images. Businesses like Maxar (formerly Digital Globe) that
| provide Earth imagery will sell a database of old out-of-date
| imagery for much cheaper. But more recent imagery is much more
| expensive because it is much more valuable. These companies
| will often provide free images that are up to date to help with
| disaster and recovery efforts but that doesn't mean it has been
| put in to Google maps yet, a lot of it just still an old
| database of imagery.
|
| In Summary:
|
| - Old out-of-date imagery: $
|
| - Newer up-to-date imagery that has been captured: $$$
|
| - Tasking a spacecraft to request image of a specific area:
| $$$$
| ideashower wrote:
| random question, but where would one acquire old out of date
| imagery of this part of the world?
|
| For example, I know through Google Earth's timelapse feature
| that Gaza has been consistently scanned by satellites over
| the last 3 or so decades. But the images on Google Earth's
| timelapse feature are of very very low quality. But viewing
| the timelapse is evidence enough that this information is out
| there.
| boringg wrote:
| Like all data -- new and high def data costs a lot more than
| something a couple years old. Data ages out.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| There are a lot of tools built for Google Maps/Earth, and it is
| far more accessible. For a reporter/investigator with an
| unlimited budget, sure, but for most of the real world, if it
| isn't in Google maps it is essentially out of reach.
| canada_dry wrote:
| Organizations/NGOs heavily rely on satellite imagery (i) to
| assist in delivering many humanitarian efforts. It would seem
| useful for the UN to strongly prohibit the diminishing of such
| capability.
|
| (i) www.hotosm.org
| randompwd wrote:
| Lol. In what world would anyone accept the UN dictating this?
| bitcurious wrote:
| Should the UN intend for satellite imagery to be available to
| NGOs they can fund the creation and distribution of such
| images, rather than trying to seize the images acquired by a
| private entity. It's not that expensive.
| munk-a wrote:
| That might actually be a really good role for the UN to take
| - satellite imaging and GPS tracking are security issues for
| most countries and companies trying to leverage that data
| have been hit with a lot of regulations and surprises in the
| past. Niantic had to specifically bow to a lot of concerns
| about military personnel being trackable through pokemon go
| when it first came out and private satellite imaging
| companies need to comply with a long list of deadzones issued
| by the US Government and other governments across the world.
| panarky wrote:
| The UN does not have this authority.
| munk-a wrote:
| The UN is less a legislative body and more of an
| international treaty negotiation forum. If all of the UN
| member states agreed to such a thing then it certainly could
| be ratified - it sounds like it might vaguely fall under the
| purview of the first committee DISEC (Disarmament and
| International Security) and Israel might object to it but
| usually there's some bargaining involved in these sorts of
| things.
|
| To my knowledge, there is, in fact, no strict limit on the
| authority the UN can have - but there may be some specific
| carve outs to other international bodies (i.e. laws of the
| sea - the division of antartica), however I think these carve
| outs were mostly made affirmatively by the UN to empower
| other organizations.
|
| There is a separate question on whether the UN has the power
| to enforce legislation it passes, but that's a pretty
| simplistic reduction that can be applied to pretty much any
| governmental body and will almost always result in the answer
| of "It depends".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there is, in fact, no strict limit on the authority the
| UN can have_
|
| There is no strict limit to the authority I can have. That
| doesn't mean I can prohibit Google from doing squat. I
| could theoretically get the U.S. government to pass a law,
| but that's not the same thing as authority.
| pnt12 wrote:
| Google doesn't give a damn about you, but Google would
| very much care about discussions within UN to pressure
| modification of its products.
|
| That's the difference. You can go on technicalities, but
| being technically correctt is the worst kind of correct.
| munk-a wrote:
| I feel like I made a pretty good call out to this in the
| last paragraph of my comment but just to elaborate. The
| UN is an organization with essentially no organic power -
| it has no citizens, nor a tax base, nor an independent
| army. It does collect "mandatory" fees from members that,
| if halted, would likely suspend the membership of the
| nation in question, however even those are only enforced
| by various nation's desires to be a part of the UN. It'd
| be like me selling a Netflix disruptor that collected a
| monthly subscription fee for you to have the prestige to
| be a member and then sending you a card informing you of
| how to sign up for Netflix - literally nothing the UN
| does wasn't possible before the UN, it just centralizes
| where this is all happening. That all said, for smaller
| nations in particular, the membership can come with real
| benefits in terms of peacekeeping forces along with
| financial and humanitarian aide.
|
| At a basic philosophical level laws and police have no
| power, nothing can stop you from committing murder. The
| only thing we can essentially do is give you pain in
| reaction - that pain could be pre-emptively acting guilt
| or fear of the consequences, it could be moral regret, it
| could also be physical restraint or torture. Given
| diseases like alzheimer's and essential tremors or a
| plethora of other physical and neurological ailments the
| list of people who can absolutely control your actions
| might be an empty set[1].
|
| That all said, the UN has been granted some pretty wide
| authority to pass treaties that are generally
| acknowledged across the world - those treaties are
| generally respected and the US might hit you with a big
| stick if you violate them. So, honestly, I think the
| comparison in authority to an individual is pretty thin.
|
| 1. I think that by definition if we're talking in
| absolutes then it is always an empty set because there
| are actions you can't voluntarily execute, like, for
| instance, willing your heart to stop. But let's just
| assume that "absolute control" is a level of control
| achievable for most people at some point in their
| lifetime.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Does the UN have any authority?
| cdot2 wrote:
| The security council does
| sigzero wrote:
| Not where Google is concerned.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Do they really depend on google maps in particular?
| carstenhag wrote:
| No. Bing Maps allowed to use their satellite views when
| editing OpenStreetMap.
|
| To view the datasets with satellite images, you still need
| another provider (which Google maps isn't)
| fireeyed wrote:
| Because it's a dump ?
| zokier wrote:
| tldr: Israeli-US agreement limited resolution until July 2020,
| and Gmaps hasn't gotten around to updating the imagery since.
| SilasX wrote:
| And the US is emperor of pointing satellites at the Middle
| East? There aren't other satellites outside US/Israel
| jurisdiction that can fill it in? Or they're not allowed to
| pass it on?
| lbotos wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27187416
|
| Google being a "US Company" they are following that law.
| skissane wrote:
| KBA doesn't actually apply to Google.
|
| KBA applies to operators of imaging satellites, Google's
| suppliers such as Maxar. In practice, it doesn't apply to
| distributors, only acquirers. (The text of KBA talks about
| issuing licenses for "dissemination" of satellite images,
| but you don't need a license to resell satellite images, or
| buy them then give them away for free like Google does.)
|
| Legally, there is nothing stopping Google from using a non-
| US imagery supplier to get higher resolution images of
| Israel into Google Maps.
|
| In practice, they probably don't want to. It is walking
| into a political minefield, and Google doesn't really gain
| anything for themselves by walking into that minefield.
| vanusa wrote:
| The bigger question of course is why the "agreement" was made
| with the Israelis, and not with the Palestinians directly.
| buserror wrote:
| possibly because the israelis already have all the imagery
| they would want anyway, and the blurring is only a problem
| for people who don't?
| duxup wrote:
| As far as Gaza goes, Hamas rules Gaza but they're not the
| recognized government.
|
| I'm not sure who you would ask to make policy in such a
| situation.
|
| Just Hamas because they rule that area by force? That sounds
| a lot like asking Israel for the same reason.
|
| I don't think there's a good/ automatic answer for these
| situations.
| zinekeller wrote:
| > As far as Gaza goes, Hamas rules Gaza but they're not the
| recognized government.
|
| It's definitely more complicated by that, there is some
| evidence that people in the Gaza area have definitely
| supported Hamas, but of course they're rejected by the PNA
| (which rules over West Bank) and Israel.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > there is some evidence that people in the Gaza area
| have definitely supported Hamas
|
| Such as when they were elected.
| windthrown wrote:
| Playing the devil's advocate, if the US is willing to
| negotiate with both the Taliban and official Afghanistan
| government directly, why not Hamas and Israel?
|
| (I am not trying to equate these groups; just compare the
| official vs force relationships)
| tifadg1 wrote:
| Because they can't win in Afghanistan and are planning a
| retreat, whereas gaza is this way due to historical
| reasons, but mostly because they don't pose a real
| threat.
| zokier wrote:
| Because Israel has more deeper pocketed lobby groups in US?
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Should they have negotiated with the Palestinian Authority,
| which only partially controls the West Bank, or with Hamas,
| which took control of Gaza and proceeded to murder leaders
| from other Palestinian political parties? It is kind of hard
| to know who the "official" representatives of the Palestinian
| people actually are due to the failure to establish a
| functional Palestinian state or government.
| elmomle wrote:
| I wish the recent history of Palestine were different too,
| but it seems unkind to use language that implicitly blames
| Palestinians as a people--or the factions that now hold
| power--for these issues. Literally any people on Earth
| would probably have a similar history, and be in a similar
| (or worse) place with respect to government, if they faced
| similar pressures for such an extended period of time.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| How did I blame the Palestinian people? The fact is that
| they do not have a functioning government, and the
| government they have is not in a position to negotiate on
| their behalf when it comes to Gaza. The faction that
| controls Gaza is not even recognized as legitimate by the
| PA (which is supposed to represent the Palestinian
| people).
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Do you have any examples for that?
| Udik wrote:
| > Hamas, which took control of Gaza and proceeded to murder
| leaders from other Palestinian political parties
|
| You appear to be misinformed. Hamas won regular elections
| (considered such by international observers, who also
| reported obstructions _from Israel_ ). Hamas then kept
| respecting the ongoing ceasefire with Israel and started
| softening its stance towards it, offering a permanent
| ceasefire, while on the other side Israel campaigned to put
| the Gaza strip under the strictest embargo. On June 8th,
| two days before the end of the ceasefire, Israel killed an
| Hamas official in an air strike.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislativ
| e...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Gaza_cross-border_raid
| sigzero wrote:
| Hamas didn't keep the ceasefire. Hamas was behind the
| Qassam attack in early 2006. That's from one of your
| links by the way.
|
| https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3257913,00.htm
| l
| tayo33 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Hamas_political_violen
| ce_...
| rowanseymour wrote:
| > the failure to establish a functional Palestinian state
| or government.
|
| Wonder whose fault you think it is that the Palestinians
| who currently live under what HRW and several Israeli human
| rights organizations consider apartheid, don't have a
| state.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| I think it is the fault of Hamas, which derailed the
| peace process 15 years ago after running a political
| campaign that delegitimized the peace process itself
| (they claimed that it was actually terrorism, not
| diplomacy and negotiated deals, that had caused the
| Israelis to withdraw from Gaza). As I said, their first
| move after taking control of Gaza was to murder political
| opponents. They fought a civil war against Fatah that
| almost caused a total collapse of the PA, and ever since
| the PA has been barely functional.
| mtrovo wrote:
| Sure, because life on Gaza strip on 2006 was all
| moonlight and roses. Hell even going back 30 years ago
| you wouldn't find much difference [0]. I wonder what
| political force or nation could be benefiting from this
| constant chaos.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_(comics)
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Might makes right, as always ...
| dijit wrote:
| USA is the only country on earth that recognises all of
| Israel's territory claims.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Not just that.
|
| https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf
| devmunchies wrote:
| $38 billion. woah. if US continues to give Israel
| unconditional aid then it will start to look like a
| vassal state
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal_state
| alisonkisk wrote:
| The US needs an ally in the Middle East that is more
| reliable than any of the Arab nations are. Better than
| being even more beholden to Saudi Arabia.
|
| US interests also benefit quite a lot from Israeli
| industry, from Intel to Cellebrite
| iskander wrote:
| It's primarily a subsidy for American weapons
| manufacturers (from whom the Israelis have to make
| purchases), mixed with a hefty R&D budget for new
| military technology like Iron Dome.
| iDisagreedEar wrote:
| 127$/US citizen tax to murder people you never met.
|
| It's worse than that, you can't even travel as an
| American without people thinking you support murdering
| people.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| While that at a glance looks likr a thorough source, you
| might want to mention that most of that aid was a result
| of the after math of the 1973 war, which led to a
| stabilization of the Suez region militarily, friendly
| relations between Egypt (which also got annual aid from
| the deal) and U.S., the Camp David Accords, and an
| enduring peace that's nearing half a century between
| Egypt and Israel.
| wernercd wrote:
| Because there's never been a country named "Palestine" and as
| such it's hard to make agreements with a country that doesn't
| exist.
| zinekeller wrote:
| ... in the US Government's (and some of its allies')
| perspective (NB: there are definitely some caveats and the
| most "Israel-only" policy is in the Trump era but in
| practice this is how it works). Most Arab countries (for
| some, until recently) have the inverse: they only recognize
| the Palestinian government and never the Israeli
| government. Some governments choose a more pragmatic "both
| Israel and Palestine exists but their land borders are
| definitely not defined well".
| wernercd wrote:
| in the US perspective? Please, show a map that has ever
| had the country Palestine...
|
| I love how a simple statement of fact is getting voted
| down: You can't make an agreement with a non-entity.
|
| https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/139168
|
| > In fact, historically, there was never an independent
| country named Palestine.
|
| > So, the historical record says that Palestine was never
| a country, and was rarely ever an intact entity.
|
| Recognition of... what? a "government" of a country that
| never existed? People can vote me down more but facts
| remain that the country never existed as a real entity.
| Angostura wrote:
| The US seems to manage OK forming relationships with
| Taiwan, for example.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Taiwan has a working government.
| wernercd wrote:
| And, I'd argue, it's willing to negotiate in good faith.
| The PLO, over the decades, has turned down anything that
| doesn't give it 100% of what it wants (basically, the
| destruction of Israel).
| wahern wrote:
| The United States helped establish and continues to
| recognize the Palestinian National Authority, which is the
| recognized governing body of what ostensibly would become a
| Palestinian state. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palest
| inian_National_Authority
|
| The U.S. also recognizes passports issued by the PNA,
| though w/ caveats given the lack of nominal statehood.
| LegitShady wrote:
| The PA has no control over Gaza - in fact they were
| kicked out of gaza by hamas.
| wernercd wrote:
| "what would become" and that changes my statement that
| Palestine has never existed how?
| wahern wrote:
| The point is that the U.S. is fully capable of having a
| political relationship with entities it doesn't recognize
| as a sovereign state.
|
| Take Taiwan as another example. Both the context and
| details are completely different from that of the PNA,
| but it nonetheless contradicts your premise in the same
| manner.
| toast0 wrote:
| Mandatory Palestine certainly existed. Although you may
| argue it wasn't a country, because it was under the
| administration of the British.
|
| The current State of Palestine exists, and is recognized
| in many forums, although not by all participants; but it
| doesn't have de facto sovereignty as it's essentially
| occupied.
| _delirium wrote:
| Perhaps pedantic, but it wasn't an agreement per se, just a
| regular domestic U.S. law, although Israel did indeed lobby in
| favor of the law. See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment
| iDisagreedEar wrote:
| I wouldn't mind other countries paying us bribes (lobbying)
| if that money went to the taxpayer, but instead it goes to
| the politician that can brainwash us with that same money.
|
| Side note, does anyone have any great works of political
| theory that talks about how to deal with bribery?
| saltmeister wrote:
| because fucking jews
| deadalus wrote:
| Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet?
| If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?
| manquer wrote:
| Technical issues apart , there are whole host of privacy issues
| with that kind of data. Stalking, theft to national security
| problems.
|
| Imagine if there is real time /continuous feed of your house,
| it would be very easy to know when you are there and not by
| just looking for cars parked in the driveway.
|
| Controlling access would be quite challenging.
| tpmx wrote:
| Maybe Starlink satellites should also feature a camera? They've
| already got the connectivity. You'd need a large constellation
| and this one seems like it will become huge.
| wongarsu wrote:
| They could do something like Sentinel's 10m/px, but looking
| at those images [1] I don't see the advantage of updating
| that more often than the once every few days we already have
| from Sentinel.
|
| To make near-realtime interesting you need something closer
| to 1m/px where you can clearly make out cars. But at that
| point the optics and camera take more mass than a normal star
| link satellite. They would become earth observation
| satellites with an internet uplink, not the other way around.
|
| 1: https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah, I guess it would require a breakthrough in
| optics/lenses to become feasible. Sentinel-2 is ~1000 kg,
| and each Starlink satellite is approx 250 kg.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| At 1 px/m2, the Earth's surface is 5x10^14 pixels, so with
| the full constellation of 10,000 satellites and 1 fps that'd
| be 5x10^10 pixels/satellite/second (about a
| terabit/satellite/second uncompressed). If you can shoot 30
| images per second, you'd need a 1.6 gigapixel camera.
|
| It's technically possible but not feasible.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "It's technically possible but not feasible."
|
| Not to mention that earth imaging satellites require
| approval by the government and, I believe, compliance with
| international regulations.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Why downvote?
|
| It's really frustrating to see people downvote a factual
| statement (as opposed to opinion) without giving any sort
| of correction to that information. If I'm wrong - show
| me! I don't need this sort of crap after working all day
| at a job I hate where my voice is basically worthless and
| a legitimate debate can't take place.
| tpmx wrote:
| It would be quite useful at lower resolutions too, I think.
|
| Edit: The uncompressed bitrate comment is a bit like saying
| 1080p network video streaming will take decades to become
| feasible, because the incompressed bitrate is 1.485
| gigabit/s...
| bhouston wrote:
| We will have this eventually. Piggy baking on STarlink next gen
| or similar should make this possible.
| mvanaltvorst wrote:
| planet.com can get you a ~12 images per day [1] for a
| reasonable price. If cost really isn't an issue, I'm confident
| you could strike a deal with planet.com to place their next few
| new satellites into the specific orbit you want to up the
| frequency even more.
|
| [1]: https://www.planet.com/pulse/12x-rapid-revisit-
| announcement/, as of June 2020.
| rsync wrote:
| What is that reasonable price? It is not given on the page
| you linked...
| op00to wrote:
| Are you looking at a 7-8 figure upside to your deal? It's
| reasonable. Are you looking for fun? Unreasonable.
| johnmcelhone wrote:
| I believe 3m res data from them is around the $2 per square
| kilometre mark, however varies wildly depending on scale
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| Clouds would be a challenge.
| zacharycohn wrote:
| Zoom.earth is great for weather.
| billfruit wrote:
| Even for emergencies like flooding where it is very important
| to know which areas are flooded and which are not, I think
| presently there is no satellite based system which can give
| this information anywhere near realtime with anything close to
| the required resolution. So in the absence of such I assume the
| information will have to be gathered from ground reports and
| areal surveys, which I would think will be extremely time
| consuming and labour intensive to gather and collate and form a
| full picture of the flooding.
| casefields wrote:
| Even the biggest of floods is a localized problem. A fleet of
| drones can give you live feeds of the entire thing. The
| caveat is of course the military has the best ones, and
| there's an uneasy balance of allowing military use on home
| soil.
|
| Baltimore has been leading the charge on aerial surveillance:
| https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-
| aerial-p...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://planet.com
|
| (planet customer, no other affiliation)
| 5etho wrote:
| >contact sales
|
| thank you company, I'm gladly calling to check your services
| now
| [deleted]
| ajcp wrote:
| I think OP was asking more for a live-stream type service,
| where this appears to be static imagery.
| shalmanese wrote:
| This is the best that's currently available.
| ajcp wrote:
| No doubt, a great resource, was just trying to help get
| to the meat of the comment :D
| paxys wrote:
| Not really feasible at a usable resolution. The number of
| satellites required to do this as well as the data bandwidth
| needed far exceeds our current capacity.
| aeroman wrote:
| One other thing to add - the Earth is really pretty cloudy. If
| you care about the clouds, new geostationary satellites are
| pretty good - (e.g. https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/).
|
| If you care about the surface, a lot of places are really
| cloudy, including some that are cloudy basically all the time -
| https://www.cloudsandclimate.com/blog/where_is_cloudiest_par...
| Cd00d wrote:
| Think of each pixel. If you want 1m resolution, you need at
| least one pixel for every meter of the planet. And, satellites
| can't be told to stay over land only. So, how many satellites
| do you need in your constellation to keep a 1s refresh time?
|
| The earth is 200 million miles^2 surface area.
|
| So, no. I sorta remember 4 day refresh at 3m resolution was the
| "wish I could get to" goal.
| grayfaced wrote:
| Rough numbers, back of envelope calculation: 500 trillion
| square meters on earth * 50 pixels per square meter * 3 byte
| pixel depth = 75 petabytes uncompressed. Assume 90% image
| compression and remove the 71% of earth that is oceans and
| you're down to a little over 2PB.
| codeecan wrote:
| this exists for city-wide using planes,
|
| from 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4BQ1XzwDg
|
| from 4 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRa-AucbN6k
|
| makes you think what they're doing today
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| In addition to cost, there are various national laws that
| restrict satellite imagery with resolution better than various
| thresholds.
| yaml-ops-guy wrote:
| Which the article indicates, at least as it relates to the US
| and her companies, is no longer the case:
|
| > In July 2020, the KBA was dropped, and now the US
| government allows American companies to provide far higher-
| quality images of the region (so that objects the size of a
| person can be readily picked out).
| skissane wrote:
| KBA wasn't dropped, it still applies. The law is still on
| the books.
|
| KBA gives the regulator (NOAA) the authority to set a
| resolution limit for images of Israel. They are supposed to
| set it to be the best resolution commercially available
| from non-US providers. In 1998, NOAA set it at 2 metres. In
| July 2020, NOAA dropped it to 0.4 metres. NOAA had been
| dragging their feet about that - in 2018, evidence was
| presented to them of commercial availability of sub-2m
| resolution images of Israel from non-US providers, but they
| didn't accept it. Their argument apparently was that even
| if sub-2m resolution was commercially available, it wasn't
| "commercially available enough". One factor that changed
| their mind this time is widespread resale of foreign
| imagery by US resellers (the KBA only applies to sale of
| US-acquired imagery, US companies are legally free to
| resell foreign-acquired imagery.)
|
| KBA still limits US providers to a 0.4 metre resolution of
| Israel. When foreign commercial providers start offering
| better than 0.4 metre resolution of Israel, NOAA may drop
| the limit again. But they may drag their feet that time
| too.
| yaml-ops-guy wrote:
| I appreciate the clarity and correction offered!
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| That's one such agreement between two governments; there
| are numerous other laws and agreements that would impact
| anyone attempting to provide real-time imagery of
| substantial portions of Earth.
| yaml-ops-guy wrote:
| I thought the KBA was an amendment to US statutory law,
| not an 'agreement' between nations? What are the other
| laws and agreements to which you're alluding to, but
| weren't referenced in the article?
| hhjinks wrote:
| How far into the atmosphere does a nation's air space
| stretch? Would I be breaking a country's law by picturing
| said country from orbit?
| wongarsu wrote:
| That's an unsettled question. I think most would agree that
| a nation's airspace extends at most up to the Karman line,
| which is 100km above sea level (except in the US, where
| it's 80km or 50 mi). But there is no international treaty
| or anything that settles this.
|
| In practice, as a satellite operator you are bound to the
| laws of the country where your company resides, the country
| where you launch from, the countries where your ground
| stations are, and any country that has political sway in
| any of the previous ones.
| caymanjim wrote:
| The short answer is no. High-resolution imagery comes from low-
| orbit satellites, which make a complete orbit about every two
| hours, and image long, narrow strips with each pass, taking
| days to image the whole planet. There are many of these
| satellites: commercial, non-military (publicly-accessible)
| governmental, and governmental (secret), of varying
| resolutions. These are also supplemented by aerial (plane)
| imagery.
|
| The net result is that updated-daily imagery exists, but real-
| time does not. While I'm not privy to the capabilities of the
| US military, the kind of real-time planet-wide surveillance
| that movies like Enemy of the State suggest doesn't exist
| planet-wide.
|
| The highest-resolution images on e.g. Google Maps are from
| planes, rather than satellites, and aren't imaged anywhere near
| daily. The only way to have constant, real-time imaging of a
| fixed location is with a geostationary satellite, which will be
| so far away (22,000 miles) that the resolution will be low.
|
| Given an unlimited budget, a huge constellation of hundreds or
| thousands of satellites could come close to real-time planet-
| wide imaging, but even then, you'd be getting views at
| different angles as various satellites took images, and you
| wouldn't ever have a clear directly-overhead view of people
| walking around.
| notJim wrote:
| Couldn't starlink do something like this theoretically? Seems
| like it checks several of the boxes.
| [deleted]
| yabones wrote:
| There are also surveillance blimps, which I believe would be
| closest to a real-time feed. Some can apparently stay up for
| 30 days at a time. These have been tested for domestic
| intelligence, and radar (rather than optical) systems have
| been deployed overseas.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/blimplike.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethered_Aerostat_Radar_System
| manigandham wrote:
| A fleet of drones that stay airborne can provide real-time
| feeds of a regional battlespace for military use. Cheaper,
| lower latency, higher quality data - but vulnerable to enemy
| airpower.
| Macuyiko wrote:
| Since you know what you're talking about. Say I'm willing to
| accept the updated-daily or even weekly high-res imagery of
| the whole planet. Any idea what the cost would boil down to?
| How many parties are involved?
|
| Just wanting to learn more about this.
| johnmcelhone wrote:
| Want medium res (10m), Sentinel-2 imagery is your best bet.
| Won't cost you a penny. https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-
| browser/
|
| Looking for higher resolution (3m), the only viable option
| really is Planet. Even at that, they're pretty iffy with
| their pricing models and distribution. I think they range
| around the $2 per square kilometre mark.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| for the whole planet, the jump between $0 and around
| $2/sq.km. is, what, $1 billion/update difference?
| s0rce wrote:
| Sentinel imagery is weekly and is quite good. I use it to
| see snow melting in the mountains when planning hikes.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| There's a company called PlanetLabs (or just Planet) which
| aspires to this.
| CallMeMarc wrote:
| I'm no expert but there was an Ask HN about new APIs[1]
| recently. One answer linked to Albedo[2] which seems quite
| interesting.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27067945 [2]
| https://www.albedo.space/
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| What limits the field of view of these LEO satellites? Why
| can we not have high resolution images of wider swaths? Is it
| something like the number of "receptors" on an imaging cell,
| or would wider angle lenses significantly distort the
| imagery?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The curvature of the earth is gonna be a limiting factor
| for satellites in LEO. IIRC at 500 miles up you can only
| see (roughly) 1500 miles away. And realistically your range
| will be less than that because something that far away will
| be at a very oblique angle, which means more atmosphere in
| the way and more distortion
| therein wrote:
| Even though it would be neither covert nor cost-effective,
| couldn't you use a constellation like Iridium and add some
| auto-compositing capabilities?
|
| The resolution and angles for your point of interest will
| change but you should be able to keep a near-constant
| coverage.
| 7952 wrote:
| Obviously different to optical images. But I wonder if this
| kind of live view would be more possible with SAR at higher
| orbits. And with enough signal processing may actually be
| more useful for automated analysis than cloudy images.
| [deleted]
| berkes wrote:
| And even with such a budget: geostationary satellites over
| the poles are not possible[1] and really hard anywhere but
| over the equator, really.
|
| So that means most of the south and north part of the earth
| cannot be covered with such a constellation; they would need
| to be orbiting satellites, which makes "real time" even
| harder, because it would require an enormously complex
| choreography to ensure there's at least one satellite
| covering each square meter, at all times.
|
| [1] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/71582/is-it-
| poss...
| munk-a wrote:
| But, we could always construct a dyson sphere around earth
| and rely on the rigidity of the structure to provide
| accurate polar images.
|
| That said, it would be really difficult and quite likely
| not at all worth it.
| recursive wrote:
| > But, we could always ...
|
| That's a very bold claim with no support provided.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Should be feasible at very high altitudes where gravity
| is low.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Pun aside, this is the more in the realm of
| "theoretically possible" rather than possible right now.
| And people don't consider sun-sized Dyson spheres
| impossible, so a planet-sized one should be a piece of
| cake.
|
| Though the live imagery would now need night vision
| cameras, as we blocked out all our light with our camera
| support. But one has to take the good with the bad ;)
| munk-a wrote:
| Hey, you asked me to solve your mouse problem. How was I
| to know you were allergic to cats!
|
| I think most accepted approaches to constructing a sphere
| involve first building a series of structural components
| to form a stable net - as such we could stop the process
| when we've got just enough structure in place for
| stability and not so much that we need night vision
| cameras buuuut... I typed that before buying a bunch of
| night vision stock so please disregard the first portion
| of this paragraph - we would absolutely need night vision
| cameras from every angle.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Molniya orbits[0] can provide continuous coverage of the
| poles if you've got a couple in orbit. The orbit has an
| extremely high altitude apogee and low altitude perigee.
| The high altitude apogee gives it a long dwell time (from
| the perspective of the ground).
|
| It wouldn't be the most practical orbit for narrow FOV
| imagery but for polar weather, communications, and
| monitoring for things like over the pole missile launches
| they're pretty useful.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Disagree. The Iridium phone constellation covers the entire
| planet (which means it has line of sight to the entire
| planet) and has for about two decades. Starlink will, soon,
| as well. They've already solved the choreography issue you
| mentioned.
|
| The entire globe has about 500 billion square meters. 24
| bit uncompressed imagery is thus 1.5TB per global image.
| With some modest compression, you could get a video stream
| of that from the Starlink network, although the current
| design of Starlink would make it hard to have room for an
| aperture with better than, say, 3 meter resolution.
| riffic wrote:
| are your examples geostationary?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Starlink is not geostationary. It is a very high density
| low altitude system.
| jandrese wrote:
| You aren't taking high res imagery from Geo sats--they are
| much too far away.
| cryptoz wrote:
| It seems like the answer is actually yes, then? Seems like it
| would be expensive but that is no issue with this thought
| experiment. OP didn't require High-res or directly-overhead,
| some caveats you added which constrain the problem more. But
| either way, it totally seems possible.
|
| Heck, put up 100,000 satellites and use the same kind of tech
| Apple/Google/MS use in their 3D views of cities (it, they do
| take airplane and satellite photos at various angles, and use
| software to stitch together the separate pieces).
|
| Seems totally possible to meet OP's request given money not
| being an issue.
| panarky wrote:
| Starlink is seeking approval for tens of thousands of low-
| earth-orbit satellites. Each one will have high-bandwidth
| network connections. It doesn't seem intractable to put
| cameras on each one and stitch their feeds together for
| imagery that's maximum 30 minutes old for any arbitrary point
| on the globe.
|
| And the market for near-real-time imagery might be even
| larger than the market for internet connectivity.
| adolph wrote:
| The next generation of LEO ground imaging satellites will
| be significantly larger than Starlink units.
|
| _Now, with the resolution relaxation from the United
| States Government that went into effect on February 21,
| 2015, you have access to an even clearer view of the ground
| with 30-centimeter resolution commercial satellite
| imagery._
|
| https://spacenews.com/a-detailed-view-of-the-ground-
| with-30-...
|
| _WorldView-3 is the industry's first multi-payload, super-
| spectral, highresolution commercial satellite. Operating at
| an altitude of 617 km, WorldView-3 provides 31 cm
| panchromatic resolution, 1.24 m multispectral resolution,
| 3.7 m short-wave infrared resolution, and 30 m CAVIS
| resolution. WorldView-3 has an average revisit time of less
| than one day and is capable of collecting up to 680,000 sq
| km per day, further enhancing the Maxar collection capacity
| for more rapid and reliable collection._
|
| https://www.maxar.com/constellation
|
| WorldView-3: Mass: 2800 kg (6200 lbs) Power: 3.1 kW solar
| array, Altitude: 617 km
|
| Starlink: Mass: v 1.0: 260 kg (573 lb) Power: 6 kW solar
| array, Altitude: 550 km
|
| https://lilibots.blogspot.com/2020/04/starlink-satellite-
| dim...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Constellation_design
| _...
| [deleted]
| redfern314 wrote:
| This is more or less the business model of Planet [0],
| which is imaging the whole Earth every day with around 200
| satellites. (No affiliation, but I previously worked for a
| different smallsat company.) It would be possible to get a
| higher visitation than that with more satellites, but it
| may not be cost-effective (e.g. someone might be willing to
| pay $X for a subscription to daily images, but not $(48*X)
| for half-hour images).
|
| I also doubt you could just slap a camera on Starlink
| satellites. Even ignoring payload size/weight, power
| consumption, etc, you're typically fighting 3 different
| constraints when you decide which way to rotate your
| satellite (sun exposure for power, antenna direction for
| high-bandwidth network, payload direction if you have
| cameras or other directional sensors). They're not going to
| want to try to deal with that for the first iteration of
| their fleet.
|
| [0] https://www.planet.com/products/planet-imagery/
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I can't help but be excited by the possibilities of tech
| like Planet, so many interesting applications for their
| data.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Excited? Maybe I'm just getting old but it terrifies me.
| klyrs wrote:
| Agreed, and the terrifying use-cases aren't hypothetical,
| they're the raison d'etre. There are some good
| "plowshares" type projects out there, but I'm not sure
| those ends justify the original and ongoing ones
| csteubs wrote:
| I'm the founder of a company working to solve this exact
| problem. Revisit rate of Planet's 200+ Dove satellites are
| quite good (multiple/day) but are comparatively low-res
| compared to their Rapideye satellites, of which there are
| fewer. There are a slew of others (Maxar is the next biggest
| name that comes to mind) but the thesis is low earth orbit is
| getting crowded, satellites are incredibly expensive even
| with off-the-shelf parts and falling launch costs, and
| hardware capabilities are locked-in at launch.
|
| We're taking the approach of using "free energy" in the form
| of 100,000+ daily commercial/freight/general aviation
| aircraft to crowdsource aerial imagery using mobile phones to
| start. Passengers who opt-in are rewarded with free in-flight
| wifi (where equipped), and we use the device to do
| orthorectification and photogrammetry at the edge before
| transmitting it back down via satellite internet. I'm
| glossing over much of the actual process, but this frees up a
| ton of computing that would otherwise have to be done on the
| ground. In the event the flight is not internet connected, we
| cache previous images based on flight path and upload the
| difference after comparing old vs. new on the device once
| signal is restored. End result is a massive boost in both
| temporal and spatial resolution at a dramatically lower cost.
| Think Google Maps, updated every few minutes.
|
| We're on IG @notasatellite if you're interested in looking at
| some samples.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| https://zoom.earth/
|
| not quite real time (I'm not sure if that's even possible) but
| this is quite up to date. I used to to check out the smoke from
| last year.
|
| edit: you get pictures every 10 minutes of the whole globe, but
| the resolution is pretty bad, good enough to check the cloud
| coverage though
| Toxygene wrote:
| YMMV, but I just checked my neighborhood out and the
| satellite image is ~5 years old.
| kylebarron wrote:
| Once you pass a certain zoom (looks like zoom 11.5 here)
| the imagery is no longer recent. You can see the copyright
| statement change to "Microsoft", where it presumably just
| loads data from Bing maps.
|
| At lower zooms, where the copyright is something like
| "GOES-East", that's more real-time data because it comes
| from geostationary satellites that can take (low
| resolution) images every few minutes.
| erk__ wrote:
| There is also https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-
| playground/ which seems to be a bit higher resolution, I
| think they are imagin the whole earth every other day.
| kylebarron wrote:
| The two Sentinel-2 satellites together cover all land area
| of the Earth every 5 days, but are only 10-meter pixel
| resolution.
|
| > 10 days at the equator with one satellite, and 5 days
| with 2 satellites under cloud-free conditions which results
| in 2-3 days at mid-latitudes
|
| https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions/sentinel-2
| nikisweeting wrote:
| The imagery on here is 5-10 years older than the imagery on
| Google Maps for much of Quebec, not sure about other areas.
| grawprog wrote:
| >but this is quite up to date.
|
| It's up to date zoomed out, but zoomed in seems to be similar
| to what google maps provides. The picture of the area I live
| is the same 10 year old picture on google maps, complete with
| a house that hasn't existed in almost as much time.
| yosito wrote:
| One of the closest public things you'll find to this is
| https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
|
| It's only medium-range and only updated once daily, with some
| missing spots due to the coverage of satellite tracks, but
| there are hundreds of different data layers which can be really
| interesting to explore.
| tareqak wrote:
| The article mentions the Kyl-Bingaman Agreement [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl-Bingaman_Amendment
| Juntu wrote:
| Smoke is telling the truth that blurred on gg maps can be fixed
| by an update.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's usually called satellite imagery, but isn't most of the
| high-resolution, closest photos actually aerial imagery, not from
| satellites? In that case I would understand if there isn't that
| much coverage.
| ska wrote:
| These days a lot of it is satellite. Sub-meter commercial
| imagery from satellites became first avaiable some time in the
| 90s I think, and pretty cost effective in the last decade or
| so.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| No; at least per the providers, actual low-orbit satellite
| imagery is available to the (paying) public at 50cm resolution.
| jtsiskin wrote:
| That's a little scary. If those covered the globe, you could
| see and track anyone anytime they left their house. This gets
| dystopian fast. Imagine the ad targeting. Or "sorry, we
| notice you haven't been to the gym all month, we have raised
| your insurance premiums 10%"
| ska wrote:
| The temporal resolution isn't great, and you don't have
| much control over timing. Also 50cm is too coarse for much
| people-sized activity to be really identifying.
|
| So; great for seeing how a property has been developed over
| time, not so great for seeing who is going the gym or not.
| Cd00d wrote:
| These scans don't update with much frequency.
|
| That's like using Google Street View and noticing an
| unknown car in your driveway and assuming your partner is
| having an affair. Much more likely, the image is old, and
| that car belongs to the previous tenant.
| Laforet wrote:
| You don't even need satellite to track people, the FBI has
| been getting really good results with a small fleet of
| Cessnas.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/fbi-
| surveill...
|
| Not to mention you already carry a mobile phone with both
| Bluetooth and wifi turned on. You gym plus others _knew_
| you have not been there since February.
| avdlinde wrote:
| 50cm is not really good to identify a person. And it's not
| real time at all. You'd be better off calling the gyms
| directly.
| aembleton wrote:
| Google already knows this if you have an Android phone.
| beerandt wrote:
| It's _available_ , but by far the actual high quality (<1m)
| data used/publicly available was taken by aircraft, not
| satellite.
|
| This is usually a result of the data set already being paid
| for, either via the local assessor's office or the USDA. This
| doesn't mean it's always available for free, but that the
| economics means it's usually available for less than the
| actual cost.
| aembleton wrote:
| I don't they'd be able to get high resolution photos of
| Pyongyang without using satellites.
| avipars wrote:
| Also look at the azrieli mall in tel aviv...
|
| there is a huge military base there which is blocked/blurred
| mgerullis wrote:
| I am curious and looking but I cannot find it, you think you
| can drop a pin and share that link?
| azernik wrote:
| Look here. The pin is at the western side of the base.
|
| It's IDF headquarters, used to be bigger (from an old British
| camp, back when Tel Aviv hadn't grown to swallow it up), but
| the army has been steadily selling off the valuable urban
| land and relocating functions to less central locations.
|
| I'm not seeing any notable degradation in satellite imagery,
| specific to that area, though.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mahane+Rabin+(HaKirya),+Te.
| ..
| azernik wrote:
| Blurring military bases is pretty common - also done in the US,
| for example.
| vultour wrote:
| I've never seen a US military base blurred on Google Maps.
| DSingularity wrote:
| The motivation should be obvious to everyone here: to stop the
| public from directly seeing the Israeli war crimes. That way the
| propaganda machine coming from the American authorities can
| continue to be swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| This makes no sense whatsoever, regardless of what side you are
| allowed with. Satellite imagery is inferior to simple cameras
| at documenting what's happening in Gaza, war crimes or not.
|
| You are not improving the reputation of Palestinian concerns
| with your post, so you if you want to help them, rethink your
| approach.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Satellite imagery can be damning when it comes to documenting
| genocide. See this article for a modern example[1] or this
| article for another example from WWII[2].
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-
| report/muslims-...
|
| [2] https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2020/01/holocaust-
| evid...
| azernik wrote:
| This is the result of historical blurring of _all of Israel_
| and _all of the Territories_ , by US law. The goal was
| preventing intelligence gathering against Israel in general,
| not anything specific to Israeli action in Gaza and the West
| Bank.
| slim wrote:
| Is there an alternative (european?) source with higher definition
| ? Even outdated imagery would be useful
| einpoklum wrote:
| tl;dr: Because Israel wants this, and the US has forced that wish
| on commercial companies like Google.
| devmunchies wrote:
| > US has forced that wish on commercial companies like Google
|
| Not necessarily. Google has R&D in Israel[1]. Sergey Brin and
| Larry Page are both Jewish. Not that all Jews support Israel,
| but typically the case.
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multinational_companie...
| manquer wrote:
| There is perhaps an interesting machine learning application
| here.
|
| There are higher resolution images available at lower frequencies
| and low resolution images possible with high frequency.
|
| Would it not possible to "zoom and enhance" a low resolution
| image to higher resolution one using historical high res data of
| the location and learning from object types and classification?
| agnokapathetic wrote:
| Yes: https://medium.com/the-downlinq/super-resolution-and-
| object-...
| gruez wrote:
| You're basically letting an AI to hallucinate details, which
| looks good in most cases but in edge cases may cause
| unintended results:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650
| jjgreen wrote:
| Kind-of anticipated by Antonioni in _Blow Up_.
| vinhboy wrote:
| Yo. That was crazy. So the whole "zoom and enhance" thing
| they do on TV is no longer science fiction. That meme is
| dead judging by what I am seeing in that thread.
| fwip wrote:
| We can get computers to make things up, sure. But usually
| when they "zoom and enhance" on TV it's because they want
| to see what's really there.
| gruez wrote:
| Yeah, if you used this sort of upscale AI on a pixelated
| picture of a suspect, you'll just end up arresting some
| guy who's face looks most common in the training dataset.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Would it not possible to "zoom and enhance" a low resolution
| image to higher resolution one using historical high res data
| of the location and learning from object types and
| classification?
|
| Sure. Probably provide pretty convincing high-detail images.
|
| For the cases of most interest--i.e., when the new activity is
| unusual and unexpected--it will often be detailed, convincing,
| and _completely wrong_ , though.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It is absolutely possible and there are plenty of ML and non-ML
| solutions for this or similar problems.
|
| A set of useful keywords would be "image sensor fusion".
|
| Of course there would be limitations and most of the image
| updates would be boring (all the buildings and streets are
| still there) or lacking enough information to retrieve anything
| (new set of cars parked on the street) so you'd end up with
| highlights and uncertainties for changes overlaid on top of
| high confidence existing infra.
| qart wrote:
| I zoomed into random areas like Chekka, Lebanon and Kumasi,
| Ghana. I hadn't heard of these places before today, but they
| looked big enough on Google Maps. Zooming in, the mosaics
| appeared as if they were shot years apart, with noticeably
| different resolutions. Could Gaza just be one such scan, rather
| than something sinister?
|
| > "Considering the importance of current events, I see no reason
| why commercial imagery of this area should continue to be
| deliberately degraded,"
|
| Yeah, no. That does not answer the question right before it.
| What's with these sinister edits?
| areoform wrote:
| It's one of the most heavily imaged areas in the world - on the
| ground, as it's an active conflict zone. In space, satellites
| will pass over the region every X hours no matter what.
| Planet's satellites have a fresh, high resolution map of the
| Earth ~3.5 hours. Google had, at the very least, 7 satellites
| imaging the Earth in 2017,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySat.
|
| The question isn't whether the data exists. It does. The
| question is, why isn't it being displayed?
|
| Correction: Google now consumes data from Planet -
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/googl...
| qart wrote:
| > The question isn't whether the data exists. It does.
|
| What is your basis for this claim? However many satellites
| Google has, why are the regions I named blurry too? Lebanon
| isn't that far away from Gaza. Cars at Chekka looked like
| specks. Across the sea, in Cypress, I could make out the
| front and rear windows of cars.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| >> The question isn't whether the data exists. It does.
|
| > What is your basis for this claim?
|
| This is a really surreal response, given the part of _that
| same comment_ that you seem to have forgotten to read:
|
| >> In space, satellites will pass over the region every X
| hours no matter what. Planet's satellite have a fresh, high
| resolution map of the Earth ~3.5 hours. Google had, at the
| very least, 13 satellites imaging the Earth in 2017,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySat . It is unclear, to
| me, how many space assets they do have, but I'm guessing
| they image the entire globe every week, at the very least.
| qart wrote:
| I asked another question too. Why not answer that, then
| we can discuss surrealness. Ironically, my second
| question was right after my first question.
| azernik wrote:
| If the data exists for one place at a similar latitude,
| then it exists for every other place at a similar
| latitude, by the simple laws of orbital dynamics.
| qart wrote:
| You have a completely wrong idea of the laws of orbital
| dynamics. If satellites don't want to keep burning tons
| of fuel, they will orbit the center of the earth, not its
| axis. The only situation where your comment could apply
| is if the satellite is orbiting only above the equator.
| All of this, completely disregarding the economics of
| satellite mapping, their operational limits, etc.
| azernik wrote:
| Note I said "at a similar latitude".
|
| A satellite at a given inclination will trace out a
| ground path oscillating back and forth between D degrees
| north and D degrees south, where D is its inclination,
| with latitude varying sinusoidally with time. So it will
| spend different amounts of time at different latitudes,
| hence choice of inclination depending heavily on
| observation/communication target.
|
| However, for any given latitude it will spend an equal
| amount of time at each longitude (east-west location) as
| the Earth rotates under its orbit. See e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_track
|
| So for example, any satellite that images Georgia (the US
| state) or Taiwan will spend an approximately equal amount
| of time over Lebanon and Israel.
| slg wrote:
| >The question isn't whether the data exists. It does. The
| question is, why isn't it being displayed?
|
| I just took a look at the Google Maps for Midtown Manhattan
| and they appear to be from around August 2019. Google surely
| has newer satellite images available for NYC. What is the
| reason they aren't updating them?
|
| I think current events are making everyone a little too
| paranoid here. The images were required by law to be of lower
| resolution until mid-2020. The law changed and Google hasn't
| gotten around to updating the images yet because there is
| always a lag in imagery being updated. No real conspiracy
| theory needed.
| garmaine wrote:
| Because until very, very recently it was illegal to provide
| commercial high resolution images of this area:
| https://spacenews.com/u-s-government-to-allow-sale-of-
| high-r...
| merth wrote:
| my guess would be that they dont want clear image of slow
| destruction and take overs also before after pictures.
| [deleted]
| azernik wrote:
| In Gaza? There are no takeovers there, just a DMZ and
| periodic shooting.
|
| The original Israeli ask, accepted by the US Congress, was
| for _all of Israel_ , including the Territories, to have
| degraded satellite imagery - as a defensive measure against
| foreign intelligence-gathering and targeting.
| [deleted]
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The article mentions the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment once around the
| middle, that's the main reason. The wikipedia article is short
| and covers it well enough, but in short:
|
| > The Kyl-Bingaman Amendment (KBA) prohibits US authorities
| from granting a license for collecting or disseminating high
| resolution satellite imagery of Israel at a higher resolution
| than is available from other commercial sources, that is, from
| companies outside of the United States. An exception exists if
| this is done by a US federal agency, or if it is done in order
| to abolish the secrecy of such recordings.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Not really related to the article at hand, but I've been on a bit
| of a Google Maps binge the past couple weeks. I learned a few
| interesting facts, blurry Israel being one of them.
|
| Another strange thing I found that might not be super well known
| (I didn't know about it) is that all GPS data in China is offset
| by a nonlinear psuedo-random amount. If you turn on the satellite
| view in Google Maps and look at various cities in China, you'll
| see that the road and business overlay is off by anywhere from
| 50m to 500m. And the strangest thing is that it's not a
| consistent offset from place to place.
|
| Turns out this is very intentional, and China uses a different
| geographic coordinate system than the rest of the world. WGS-84
| is the most common coordinate system, but China uses GCJ-02,
| sometimes called Mars Coordinates. Part of GCJ-02 is an algorithm
| that obfuscates the results. So applying any GCJ-02 coordinate to
| a globe using WGS-84 coordinates gets distorted like a funhouse
| mirror.
|
| It's easy to find open source libraries to convert WGS-84 to
| GCJ-02 and vice versa. But Google Maps doesn't do it, for
| political reasons I suppose? I've read that if you open Google
| Maps within China the mapping data is correct, but have no way to
| test that.
| js2 wrote:
| Recently, I discovered Street View sometimes captures car
| crashes:
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/kJdgWQUU3eUMReUE8
|
| https://ibb.co/x18fy3s
| robotastronaut wrote:
| Nitpicky, but useful for anyone interested in spatial data:
| WGS-84 is not a "GPS standard" but rather a geographic
| coordinate system and is usually paired for consumption with a
| projection like wgs 84 web mercator to view those 3d
| coordinates on a 2d plane. Super interesting stuff and
| reconciling these standards across the globe is a really fun
| problem, and one you'll likely run into if you ever find
| yourself dabbling in remote sensing pipelines.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I don't know if I would call it nitpicky for this example :P
| Thanks for correcting me, I've edited the comment.
| randomluck040 wrote:
| I'm also working in the field and the Friar thing that came
| to mind was https://ihatecoordinatesystems.com haha
| qwertox wrote:
| I hate them too. It's the worst to have to reproject an
| image or GeoJSON and overlay it onto a map. Very satisfying
| one you've managed to do it, but it's a pain nonetheless,
| at least if you don't work in the geospatial field and
| rarely use tools like GDAL.
| gsich wrote:
| Openstreetmaps works correctly.
| mayli wrote:
| See the explanation on Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| My memory says that US government GPS at one point
| intentionally introduced reduction in accuracy/resolution as
| well, but they stopped, which was part of what led to the
| commercial GPS revolution (along with cheaper tech of course).
|
| Let's see... Wikipedia seems to confirm:
|
| > During the 1990s, GPS quality was degraded by the United
| States government in a program called "Selective Availability";
| this was discontinued on May 1, 2000 by a law signed by
| President Bill Clinton.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System
| tomerv wrote:
| Interesting to note that the removal of selective
| availability enabled the creation of Geocaching (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching#History ).
| askvictor wrote:
| There were already workarounds in place before they
| switched off SA - the introduced error was consistent
| within a given area, so provided you had a fixed location
| that broadcast its coordinates, you could correct for the
| error. I believe there were products and possibly even
| standards that did all of this; would have been even easier
| in today's world of mobile internet. I have suspicions that
| this was a large reason for disabling SA - your enemy can
| work around it, so it's not much use, but if you get your
| enemy hooked on it without the work-around, you can turn SA
| back on in a war situation.
| yborg wrote:
| It also enabled the modern mobile navigation industry. I
| was working on automotive navigation systems in the early
| 90s and SA was a killer for the product, options were
| various dead-reckoning and inertial sensors or differential
| GPS, both of which ended up being cost-prohibitive. But you
| can't do usable route guidance with a 100m CEP in an urban
| area.
| londons_explore wrote:
| With modern high powered CPU's, more detailed maps, and
| particle filters (which require all that cpu), dead
| reckoning has become much more viable.
|
| I suspect you could go hours driving round a city with
| the GPS and WiFi location turned off before losing your
| position - simple wheel speed, gyro and compass is
| sufficient for most stuff.
| acomjean wrote:
| When I was a civil engineer last century gps accuracy was an
| issue because people wanted to use gps for surveying. They
| came up with a system that would use 2 receivers and a radio
| between them to get much higher accuracies.
|
| https://www.e-education.psu.edu/natureofgeoinfo/book/export/.
| ..
|
| I think the US Government can also shut it off at a moments
| notice.
| karmicthreat wrote:
| Those two radio systems are still used. Just that many
| states have CORS sites that post correction information.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| They could, but multiple governments now publicly broadcast
| from similar constellations, so it wouldn't have nearly as
| much benefit for them to do so.
|
| Modern dirt cheap receivers can pick up European, Chinese,
| Russian, etc. constellations for location just as well as
| the American one.
| nurgasemetey wrote:
| As I recall, it was due to plane crash and US had decided to
| make precise GPS available to public
| khuey wrote:
| After KAL007 was shot down by the Soviet Union in 1983
| Reagan announced the fuzzy GPS signal would be publicly
| available. The US government didn't turn off Selective
| Availability until the late 90s.
| liversage wrote:
| I've heard that just before Operation Desert Storm began in
| 1991 the reduced accuracy that affected civil GPS was
| temporarily turned off. This was a result of not being able
| to procure enough military grade GPS devices for army
| vehicles etc. If this is true it may also have had an effect
| on the decision to completely turn it off.
| klyrs wrote:
| Circa 1999, I was a member of a search and rescue team
| through the explorer scouts. We got to carry milspec GPS
| devices on a hike once, because the forestry service wanted
| accurate maps of some trails. We were under strict orders not
| to deviate from the trail or tamper with the devices. Very
| fun cloak&dagger atmosphere for what was otherwise a lovely
| walk in a park. Hilarious that the need for such missions was
| obviated a few months later
| joshuaheard wrote:
| Yes, when it first came out, it was a boon for cruising
| sailors such as myself who were using radio-based Loran up to
| that time. If I remember correctly, the civilian resolution
| was originally 50 meters, then lowered to 10 meters. I
| believe it is 1 meter today.
| captainmuon wrote:
| I've found that the maps match the GPS of my phone exactly, but
| the satellite pictures are shifted.
|
| Does that mean: 1) My GPS module also gives out obfuscated
| coordinates when in China or 2) Google uses shifted satellite
| images?
| gruez wrote:
| Neither. The satellite images are accurate, and so is your
| GPS readout. What's shifted is the official data that the
| government provides (eg. location of roads).
|
| more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10964450
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I've found that the maps match the GPS of my phone exactly
|
| I can use OpenStreetMap fine in China. But that's not Chinese
| data.
|
| If a Chinese person sends me a location marker on WeChat, the
| marker will show up (for me, in WeChat) at some other,
| unintended, location; I can't use that feature at all.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I wish I had saved some of the links I had found, one source
| I read said that the non-satellite map data was actually
| correct, and it was the stitching of the satellite imagery
| that was incorrect. I had no way to test this and no other
| source mentioned this, so I ignored it. But it's funny you
| mention this, #2 might be the case.
|
| robotastronaut also corrected me that it's not actually the
| GPS that is being obfuscated, but the map coordinate system.
| So your GPS device is probably receiving correct results, but
| on an improperly projected map.
| azidemakes wrote:
| When I last went in late 2018, it was not corrected for on the
| satellite maps. Google maps was still usable for walking
| directions, however.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Have you checked out South Korea?
| varenc wrote:
| South Korean on GMaps feel likes a snapshot of 2009. Whereas
| the rest of Google Maps has switched to something vector
| based, South Korea still has tiling based map images with
| different images for different zoom levels and the place
| names just baked into the image. Any idea why? Apple Maps is
| great in comparison.
| xxpor wrote:
| It's a similar law to what's discussed here. The
| justification is protection from NK.
| ryandrake wrote:
| My understanding is that all agreements with Chinese map data
| providers require that map software implementors only display
| data projected into the "obfuscated" coordinate system, and the
| agreements forbid un-projecting back into "real world" WGS-84,
| regardless of how simple the algorithm is. So, it's more of a
| business agreement and less of a political thing, but with
| China there isn't much of a difference.
| freewizard wrote:
| What I learned a few years back about this is the official
| (un)obfuscating implementation was distributed to licensed
| companies in binary .dll/.so/.a , and not allowed to be
| redistributed or reverse-engineered. Licenses are only given to
| local companies, and foreign companies may only buy service
| from them. That's why if you reverse engineer Google Map or
| Apple Map app, they all make real time API calls to do the
| conversion on servers. Those contracts may also limit the end
| user who can consume these APIs to be in China, hence foreign
| users will see the shifts of roads/etc.
|
| The open-sourced implementation one may find on the internet
| are probably thru sth like curve fitting by sampling many data
| points. It may have good enough approximations but may not work
| one day if the gov agency decides to change the algorithm.
| Changing algorithm is a backward compatibility hell but not a
| big problem for the industry actually, because most Map apps
| are owned by big corp which has resource and motivation to
| comply.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| > distributed to licensed companies in binary .dll/.so/.a ,
| and not allowed to be redistributed or reverse-engineered
|
| Such irony in CCP using licensing to protect their IP
| seniorivn wrote:
| only if you have misconception about what ccp and other one
| party states actually are
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| Indeed, there's a Half As Interesting video talking about this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Di-UVC-_4
| xikrib wrote:
| So that Israel can draw its own borders without the criticism of
| 'international treaties' or 'human rights'
| sequoia wrote:
| Tangentially related but where does this come from and why is it
| so widely repeated (as in this article):
|
| > ...Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world
|
| I've seen this claim (both in the "one of the most..." and "
| _the_ #1 most... " forms) many times and I don't know where it
| comes from. What am I missing?
|
| Here[0] wikipedia says Gaza Strip has ~5,046/sqkm. I thought
| maybe Gaza City was meant, it's density is 13,000/sqkm[1].
| Neither of these come close to ranking on wikipedias list of
| cities by population density[2], and I haven't been able to find
| any "most populated places" lists that list anything below 15,000
| people per square kilometer, which Gaza city is well below.
|
| Is the BBC just plain wrong here or am I missing something? I
| hope it's me because if it's the former, that says something
| really bad about their fact checking and would suggest that BBC
| is not a reliable/trustworthy source, at least on this topic.
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_City 2: https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density
| jcranmer wrote:
| You're probably missing this listing:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
|
| Where Gaza listed as its own country, it would be one of the
| densest, since it's basically a city and its urban sprawl and
| nothing more (like the other densest entries on the list). Of
| course, Gaza is itself arguably only part of Palestine, but the
| West Bank itself is pretty dense (see how high Palestine ranks
| on that list).
| sequoia wrote:
| Looking at the country list, I see Israel is the #5 most
| densely populated country in the world. And Bnei Brak is the
| #5 most densely populated city, far more densely populated
| than Gaza. Bnei Brak was hit by rockets this week.
|
| Can you link me to some articles that refer to "Hamas firing
| rockets on Bnei Brak, one of the most densely populated
| cities in the world"? Or "on israel, one of the most densely
| populated countries"?
|
| If not, my question for you is: why do we see this phrase so
| commonly in reporting on Gaza but not on other _more_ densely
| populated areas?
| golergka wrote:
| Same reason that this conflict always gets the same optics
| in international media -- jewish lives are worth less. At
| first, as you don't want to believe it, you argue, you
| investigate, you really try to find any sane reason that
| while these things are happening on ground with you and
| your family, everybody else still sees a different picture,
| and then you just come to realisation that there's no other
| explanation for it.
| djhn wrote:
| That sounds like "technically correct with caveats".
| Kranar wrote:
| So does OPs entire post. Gaza is, by all reasonable
| accounts, among the most densely populated areas in the
| world. There's no real reason to start questioning the
| credibility and trustworthiness of a news organization over
| the fact that Gaza is referred to as such, it's a very
| bizarre thing to fixate over.
| sequoia wrote:
| Your point about my argument regarding BBC's credibility
| based on this one point is fair, I can see how my
| argument can reasonably be considered overstated.
|
| Your point about "fixating" (assuming you're referring to
| me) is not fair. If you want to accuse someone of being
| fixated on this point, please direct your critique at the
| BBC and other media outlets who repeat the phrase about
| Gaza _and only Gaza_ (not all of the other more populous
| places) constantly.
| tryonenow wrote:
| Palestinians and supporters of their side of the conflict have
| incentive to exaggerate their plight, as does Israel. When the
| media is sympathetic to one side (as it has been increasingly
| and especially during this latest conflict), it will rarely
| fact check its own. So certain white lies and embellishments
| are repeated and collectively they distort reporting without
| necessarily being outright false. This is not unique to
| reporting on the West Bank. And it's a major problem with US
| media especially - but you're not likely to find any
| "reputable" sources on the subject.
| exegete wrote:
| It must just be something that gets repeated without
| verification at this point. For comparison Gaza City has a
| slightly higher population density than NYC (but less than
| Hoboken, NJ) while the entire Gaza Strip has the same
| population density as Boston (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L
| ist_of_United_States_cities...).
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > For comparison Gaza City has a slightly higher population
| density than NYC (but less than Hoboken, NJ) while the entire
| Gaza Strip has the same population density as Boston
|
| Comparing Gaza to Boston is a bit misleading. Boston is
| closely integrated into an entire metro area, and the city
| limits of Boston are artifacts of history. Comparing to NYC
| is even less meaningful, because NYC is part of an integrated
| tri-state area and also the geographical center of a larger
| connected megopolis that contains 1/6th of the population of
| the entire US.
|
| Gaza, on the other hand, is a strip of land the size of
| Queens (New York), and it is entirely cut off from everything
| around it (both land _and_ sea). People who live in Gaza
| never leave, and nobody else enters. There 's no "commuting"
| to or from Gaza.
| mhb wrote:
| So maybe the wordsmiths in the media could select a more
| descriptive adjective than _most dense_.
| exegete wrote:
| I'm sorry if I came across as trying to minimize the dire
| situation those who live in Gaza are in. You're right -
| people in NYC don't have a foreign power controlling their
| airspace and shoreline as well as the numerous other
| differences. I was responding to the idea that it has a
| higher population density than most other cities and giving
| some comparisons solely on that metric.
| Kranar wrote:
| Can you find a single reference stating that it's the most
| dense city or area in the world? I tried looking for one but
| failed.
|
| There are well over 10,000 cities in the world and Gaza City is
| likely among the top 500 for population density, which would
| put it in the top 5%.
|
| Do you generally call things out as being untrustworthy for
| claiming that the top 5% is among the highest in a rank?
| sequoia wrote:
| Here is a single reference:
| https://www.middleeastobserver.org/2016/07/12/pcbs-
| reports-g...
|
| "Do you generally call things out as being untrustworthy for
| claiming that the top 5% is among the highest in a rank?"
|
| The reason I consider this claim "misleading" is that I never
| see the "one of the most densely populated..." phrase on
| stories about Paris, Kathmandu, Seoul or any of the hundreds
| of more densely populated areas, yet I _constantly_ see it in
| reference relatively much-less-densely-populated Gaza. When I
| start seeing news stories that read "The mayor of Hoboken
| NJ, _one of the most densely populated areas of the world_ ,
| opposes a measure that would increase affordable housing..."
| then the phrase won't make me scratch my head anymore.
|
| Why does this phrase always come up in relation to Gaza and
| not the hundreds of other cities/regions that are more
| densely populated?
|
| If we're trading references, can you show me some where the
| BBC refers to Paris as "one of the most densely populated
| places in the world?"
| stormbrew wrote:
| Are Paris, Kathmandu, Seol, or Hoboken under blockade by a
| government that claims their land but makes the people on
| that land stateless, and also periodically bombs their
| urban infrastructure?
|
| It's possible that the density of gaza is in some way
| relevant to the current events taking place there in a way
| that it might not be for the other places you've listed.
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| > Are Paris, Kathmandu, Seol, or Hoboken under blockade
| by a government that claims their land but makes the
| people on that land stateless, and also periodically
| bombs their urban infrastructure?
|
| neither is gaza lol
| sequoia wrote:
| There are plenty of stories where this would be relevant.
| "Many refugees are landing in suburbs of Paris, _one of
| the most densely populated_... " "...rural Korean
| population is flocking to Seoul, _one of the most_... "
|
| Anyway it's clear that Gaza is a densely populated area.
| I still consider the _highly selective_ use of the "one
| of the most" phrasing curious. For the record I think
| it's bad to drop bombs onto (or fire rockets into)
| civilian areas even if they are only sparsely populated,
| for what it's worth.
| stormbrew wrote:
| > There are plenty of stories where this would be
| relevant. "Many refugees are landing in suburbs of Paris,
| one of the most densely populated..." "...rural Korean
| population is flocking to Seoul, one of the most..."
|
| I mean, is it? The suburbs of Paris and Seoul are
| relatively unbounded in size, if nothing else. Gaza has a
| hard line on how many sqmi it is in a way very few other
| jurisdictions do. The density of Gaza is _particularly_
| relevant because the situation makes that density a
| _problem_ in ways it isn 't really for Paris or Seoul, as
| they are not being bombed, blockaded, or subject to
| limitations on when they even have power or water.
| trainsplanes wrote:
| They're referring to the fact Gaza/Palestine is one of the
| densest countries in the world.
|
| Gaza is also completely surrounded by sea and another
| country, so it's an incredibly dense place with no room to
| grow. Seoul and Paris are also dense places, but you can
| keep walking and eventually you see it thin out without a
| clear border on city limits. Put a fence around Paris city
| core and fire a missile on the city center--news will talk
| about one of the densest places on earth being blown up.
| ifdefdebug wrote:
| Gaza actually has borders with two countries.
| idownvoted wrote:
| You're missing the intention of those pushing this claim:
| Painting Israel as running a prison intentionally bad, or vice-
| versa making Gaza the new Warsaw-Ghetto.
|
| If other commentators can't note the rediculousness of putting
| Gaza next to Tokio, Singapur or Hong Kong, I will: A place with
| virtually no economy outside of NGOs, the Hamas and UN-Orgs vs.
| economic beacons that draw talent from all over the world.
| avip wrote:
| Gaza would have ranked 5th on population density, or 3rd if you
| remove places with tiny population (i.e take a "pop > 1MM"
| threshold).
|
| It's basically after Singapore and Hong-Kong.
| sequoia wrote:
| Can you walk me through your thinking here? I don't quite
| follow. I _am_ listening and open to being wrong.
| avip wrote:
| Thinking? I didn't do any. I divided the #pop by #area in
| units I can relate to (Km^2), then looked at the table and
| figured out it would be #5.
| smolder wrote:
| It's maybe worth noting that objective metrics of population
| density are generally by land area and subjectively, density is
| about floor space or even volumetric. Building size could have
| a big impact on what is perceived as population dense.
| Trias11 wrote:
| The questions are:
|
| - Does Google deliberatly blurring Gaza strip?
|
| - Who benefits by artificially degraded quality of Gaza maps?
|
| - Does Google quietly taking political sides?
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| You forgot:
|
| - Did I fix my tinfoil hat?
| oogabooga123 wrote:
| JIDF in action, ladies and gentlemen
| DSingularity wrote:
| - Yes.
|
| - Israel.
|
| - Yes, see how they took a position on the heart of this issue
| -- the occupied territories themselves. They literally erased
| Palestine from the map.
| slg wrote:
| >- Yes, see how they took a position on the heart of this
| issue -- the occupied territories themselves. They literally
| erased Palestine from the map.
|
| The US government doesn't recognize Palestine. Therefore
| displaying the occupied territories as a distinct state would
| be the _more_ politicalized option compared with displaying
| them as they currently do. Either way, it just goes to show
| that the idea of a company being apolitical becomes more
| difficult as it grows and eventually becomes impossible when
| you reach Google 's size. There is no potential choice here
| that isn't going to be viewed politically.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Google did not erase Palestine. You can search "Palestine" on
| Maps and be shown Gaza Strip and West Bank, areas that were
| named before Google existed.
| shaya wrote:
| Well, you actually don't know the facts. Palestine is a land,
| it was called that way even when the time of the British
| mandate, before WWII. Are the arabs that lived there are
| Palestinians? Yes. But what you don't mention is that also
| the jews that lived there were called Palestinians. The land
| of Israel and Palestine are exactly the same thing. There are
| arab Palestinians and jew Palestinians. They were not so
| smart to not take the UN partition plan for Palestine, which
| the jews accepted. So, right now the entire land is part of
| Israel :) Here's an explanation of past Israel prime minister
| Golda Meir, which has a statue in Manhattan.
| https://youtu.be/lhjB9W8UEgk
| f430 wrote:
| Not sure about sides here but if you launch rockets into cities
| indiscriminately and then the building where you keep your
| weapons, communication center using human shields after warning
| residents well ahead of time that the building will be blown
| up, actually gets taken out who is at fault here?
|
| Why are people even defending Hamas???!
|
| Does Israel not have right to defend itself? Is Israel like
| South Korea who gets attacked regularly and does nothing and
| opens itself up escalating levels of attack?
| anonymousDan wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/17/palest.
| ..
| f430 wrote:
| curious but how many alt nick accounts do you have on this
| website?
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Huh? The parent seemed to be oblivious as to the reasons
| why some people would have sympathy for the Palestinians.
| I posted an article giving the perspective of a
| Palestinian in the midst of the situation.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| This is an unnuanced take that ignores the complexity of the
| issue and provacative actions taken by Israel.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Forgive me the joke, but maybe it is because the borders are
| dynamic.
| [deleted]
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