Google earth and area 51?

Question

area 51 is extremly private, and a secret area. so how does google earth fly over it to get the picthers? or for any other matter. how does mapquest or anything else get it?

Answer 1

There's no point in trying to keep it a secret.  Ever since Bob Lazar concocted his wacky UFO/alien story, it has been a focal point of UFOlogists.  They have rallies outside the gates.  But since no one except those who work there actually knows what goes on there, it probably isn't considered a high priority target.

Think about the Pentagon.  That's the hub of the entire US military.  It's right out there in the open, right across the river from Washington.  The CIA headquarters at Langley has big road signs directing people to it.

I would have thought that these places were protected by immediate air support in the case of an attack.  The 9-11 attack on the Pentagon should never have been possible.  That's one of the things that disturbs me the most about that whole incident.  We KNEW we were being attacked something like 45 minutes before the Pentagon was hit, and there was a missing plane which had taken off from Washington, headed west.  Well, I'll bet no commercial airliner will ever be able to do that again.  Militarily speaking, that was a disaster.  That plane should have been shot down over West Virginia.  I guess they never really prepared for such a situation.

Answer 2

Google Earth is a program that uses satellite pictures that users can fly to. it cant tell which area is private or not.

Answer 3

Pictures are from satellites. Don't know whose satalites though...

The main secrecy about area 51 is to stop foreign countries finding out just what the US is doing there.. As many of the "powers" that the US would be worried about have satellites anyway, steps will have been taken to disguise the purpose/function of buildings etc

anyway how do you know the pictures are really that of area 51?

If (and I do say IF) it really mattered to the US military, I'm sure most of area 51 looks almost exactly like the areas surrounding it. As far as I see it  there's absolutely nothing to stop google etc, serving up images or nearby areas, inside of genuine images of the area. So long as the pictures are close enough to what you can see from outside the restricted areas, you'd never know otherwise.

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Doesn't Google earth rely on some kind of map co-ordinates? It needs these to locate the correct image. If someone, with clout/legal backup, told them that an area wasn't allowed to be viewed, it would be TRIVIAL for google to prevent the viewing of that particular map coordinates. (all you do is reject any requests which brings a particular grid reference into view)

Prior to being published  it would/is likely that any building/vehicle that was likely to comprise national security/cause an international crisis would be airbrushed out of the images. Getting an image of area 51 which looks "right" doesn't attract much attention, but blocking the viewing of area 51 would likely make newspaper headlines!