[Talk-in] Police investigating Google's mapathon

Ravi Kumar ravivundavalli48 at yahoo.com
Sat Apr 6 06:07:42 UTC 2013


Debate about mapping and it's veracity let alone by people or Govt can never end. Bring in the security dimension into this, the debate becomes endless. We can have endless debate on what is to be shown and what not..

What is the shelf life of a City's map ?
Can we map and update frequently without people participation ?

To answer the above is not easy.. But we need a map for driving around, for development, for NGOs to help the poor, the flood hit, the Famine hit etc etc.. So Map, we will by all means, with a reasonable restraint not to jeopardise security.

This is all part of evolution towards transparency.  




________________________________
 From: Arun Ganesh <arun.planemad at gmail.com>
To: OpenStreetMap in India <talk-in at openstreetmap.org> 
Sent: Saturday, April 6, 2013 2:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Talk-in] Police investigating Google's mapathon
 

I did read about an opposition party MP raising concerns about this, but was not aware of what is happening. The whole citizen mapping treading on SOI's territory has been a concern at the back of my mind and I'm curious to know what comes out of this. 

I find three interesting perspectives to the issue:
Authenticity
If you are crowdsourcing map making, how do you guarantee it is accurate? You can't! 
Imagine the military or any security establishment using a crowdsourced map for the basis of its operation, it would be silly without doing an independent ground survey to authenticate the data. Google maps or even OSM are never going to be authentic maps endorsed by an official source. At the end, SOI, Google Maps and Openstreetmap are all going to have different maps, so which one do you trust? The one from the government funded by tax money, or the one from a bunch of unpaid citizens who can do whatever they want?

Security
The main concern is obviously maps being used as a resource by an enemy to compromise a target. If one were an enemy of the state, which maps would you use for your evil mission? 
SOI: They hide military areas, but they also have accurate information on a lot of other areas including topography and the data is verified by the Government.
Google and OSM: Maps created using citizen volunteers who can only collect what is already publicly available. There is limited moderation and verifying of data. This raises questions about accountability and accuracy of the dataset and there is nobody who can guarantee it. Would one use a crowdsourced map or an official map for a critical operation?

Monopoly
Planning of most human activities requires some sort of geographic information and in India, with so many people, it's going to be extremely valuable information. History has shown us that those with better maps stays in control, and we are having this dogfight of who control's the better map - the government or the people?

;
I find the whole Citizen Mapping vs Security argument laughable. If the security establishment is compromised because of information that can be gathered from the public domain from unverified sources, where exactly is the security compromise? It looks like the State has just been caught sleeping with it's old cash cow while the world has moved on.




On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 10:56 PM, Ishan Chattopadhyaya <ichattopadhyaya at gmail.com> wrote:

Its companies like Google that defame community mapping efforts like ours. First they try StreetView, which turns Govt. suspiscious about their motives and then whatever they do is eyed with suspicion. Anyway, I am not overly disappointed or sad; Perhaps, I'm just happy.
>
>
>
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>On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 10:29 PM, Pradeep Mohandas <pradeep.mohandas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>The similarity exists in that OpenStreetMap also has people, ordinary people, collecting this data and uploading it on OpenStreetMap. The modus operandi is similar. 
>>
>>Also, the Delhi Police is acting on a complaint lodged by the Survey of India that exerts its right as the sole map maker in India. Isn't that in conflict with what we're doing on OSM too? 
>>
>>I learnt and contributed to Google Maps before I did to OSM. It was on Google Maps that I learnt about OSM. I feel kinda sad with this community taking this approach. Mappers must be able to contribute to any platform that they wish to. I think this case sorta threatens that freedom.
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>>Anyway, that's just me.
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>>warm regards,
>>Pradeep
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>>On 5 April 2013 22:19, Shekhar Krishnan <shekhar at topomancy.com> wrote:
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>>This is about Google's private data collection efforts, not OSM's public map-building. No need for us in OSM to worry about the Delhi Police. :)
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>>>
>>>S.K.
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>>>
>>>On Friday 05 April 2013 10:05 PM, Pradeep Mohandas wrote:
>>>
>>>hi,
>>>>
>>>>Are people on this list carefully avoiding discussing this? -
>>>>http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/internet/Delhi-Police-investigating-Google-Mapathon/articleshow/19398857.cms
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
warm regards, Pradeep
>>>
>>>
>>>>-- How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________ Talk-in mailing list
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>>>>
>>>-- 
>>>
>>>Shekhar Krishnan
>>>Topomancy LLC
>>>
>>>http://shekhar.cc
>>>http://topomancy.com
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>-- 
>>How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
>>
>>
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-- 

Arun Ganesh
(planemad) 
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