Terrorists Use Google Earth in Terror Plot

Over the past weekend many major news outlets were dominated by headlines of a foiled terrorist plot at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, in which four suspects were accused of planning to blow up jet fuel tanks and supply lines.

Court documents were released today stating that Abdul Kadir, one of the men charged in the plot, encouraged the rest of the group to use Google's online map service, along with the Google Earth software, to obtain highly detailed images of J.F.K. airport, according to The Smoking Gun. This comes less than a month after the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency told Associated Press that the U.S. Government should seriously consider censoring satellite images.

"If there was a situation where any imagery products were being used by adversaries to kill Americans, I think we should act," said director of the NGA, Robert Murrett in an interview with The Inquirer earlier this month.

Google released a statement today to The Smoking Gun saying, "we have paid close to attention to concerns that Google Earth creates new security risks," adding "these images are widely available from numerous sources."

Later in the day Google released another statement saying, "additionally the imagery in Google Earth is not real-time but rather anywhere between six months and three years old... Indeed, anyone who flies above or drives by a piece of property can obtain similar information."

According to an unnamed FBI informant who posted the court documents to The Smoking Gun, Kadir said an airport surveillance video they had already made was "not sufficiently detailed for operational purposes", and recommended using Google Earth.

Meanwhile, a new addition to Google Maps which allows users to obtain 360 degree views of some US cities has started to find itself under similar criticism. However, this isn't the first time Google has had to defend itself from such attacks.