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Tuesday Map: Iraqi insurgents use Google Earth to target Brits

We’ve all wasted hours playing with Google Earth and wondered what amazing things it might be useful for. Iraqi insurgents, however, have put the technology to a more sinister purpose. British troops operating in southern Iraq have found printouts from Google Earth showing their military bases during raids on insurgent hideouts. The information (including extremely ...

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604206_camp_cherokee_05.jpg

We've all wasted hours playing with Google Earth and wondered what amazing things it might be useful for. Iraqi insurgents, however, have put the technology to a more sinister purpose.

We’ve all wasted hours playing with Google Earth and wondered what amazing things it might be useful for. Iraqi insurgents, however, have put the technology to a more sinister purpose.

British troops operating in southern Iraq have found printouts from Google Earth showing their military bases during raids on insurgent hideouts. The information (including extremely precise latitude and longitude values) could be used to target mortar attacks far more accurately than would be possible otherwise. Insurgents could dial in coordinates for specific points within bases, for instance. Today’s Tuesday Map, a supposedly abandoned British base in Basra that took less than 15 minutes to find on Google Earth, is just another example of the unintended consequences of the march of technology.

Tags: Iraq, Middle East and North Africa, Science and Technology, Strategic Intelligence

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