As Dennis Miller would say, I dont wanna get off on a rant here...
..but I'm going to.
Of course its safe, its a military base for god sakes.
Lets think of it this way, shielding the general public from seeing installations is retarded, none of us are a threat to anything.
The people who are threats to said facilities are the ones who dont need something as lame as google earth anyway. Other countries have lots and lots
of satellites if they want to look at our facilities.
If a terrorist wants to attack a base it does't matter in the least that it's pixelated in google. There's no substitute for actual on the ground
in person recon. Sorry thats just how it is.
For example, the bluring out of the nuclear power plants.. For what?, if someone's going to fly a plane into one does it not make sense he's chosen
the spot in advance and is not relying on his co-pilot giving him directions through google earth, or worse if he did, directions into the 2300 ft
pixelated area and hoping they can find the big giant plant once there?.. where's the common sense. And speaking of which there's something called
eye on security that has tons of stuff thats been blured in resolutions much higher than they originally were blocked at.
The only logical reason I see for things like this is to hide things for which the american people can, would, and should take issue. I have no
specific examples, but lets use nike missile sites as an example, the security on them was lax, they were on public lands for the most part, and
someone might have said, HEY..why is this nuke 300 feet from my house. But obviously even if they were widely known, the threat to them would never
come from americans anyway and hence hiding them from us doesn't mean that the soviet union didn't have that spot pushpin'd.
I like that you posted that little semi-secret but in plain site base in the UK. Think of it now, if your like me you've problably google earth
driven your route to work before. Lets say you like the other 50 thousand people drive that route everyday and just assume its a little civilian
runway, odds are that plain sight approach has thwarted 99.99% of people from taking any interest in it.
On the other hand now your googling your route to work and you notice that this very specific area is blured to an insane amount and done with
meticulous precision. Most people still go meh, ok, whatever, but if your like me, now you decide to pull over on the freeway and just have a look
over that gate and see whats going on. And if your like me your going to take your 10 megapixel dslr and post lots of images on the internet of this
super secret base simply because you would like to know what it is. Now instead of 2 meter satellite imagery that wouldn't get 2 blinks, you've got
a bunch of pictures taken with a 300mm telephoto lense from 800 feet away that you can read the personnel's nametags and tattoo's off of.
Nellis obviously has a lot of natural barriers working for it so there's no need to try to hide anything from the public, nothing your going to see
from the air no matter what you interpret it as is of any quality or detail to be a threat to anyone.
Take the photographing of that nuke sub's propeller; navy policy says cover it, but when its out they didn't care. So what if the basic design is
clear from 85 miles in space, all you really know about it is its aproximate size and how many blades it has. To the civilians its useless, to the
forign sub designers its useless. Can anyone reproduce that from that picture? That's like reproducing an engine from nothing but a photograph taken
from a passing aircraft.
Space is good for troop movements and possibly tracking subjects, anything more is anecdotial. Its fun to look for paterns and things in the sand sure
but if you really believe there's anything out there get on your hiking gear and take a look. I gaurantee you there's not sensors all over the
range, they require batteries