Apple Maps Accidentally Reveals Secret Military Base In Taiwan

redletterdave writes "After one Taiwanese newspaper snapped and printed a satellite photo of a top-secret military base from the new Maps application running on an iPhone 5, the defense ministry of Taiwan on Tuesday publicly requested Apple blur the sensitive images of the country's classified military installations. The top-secret radar base, located in the northern county of Hsinchu, contains a highly-advanced ultra-high-frequency long-range radar that military officials say can detect missiles launched as far away as the city of Xinjiang, which is located in northwest China. The radar system was obtained via U.S.-based defense group Raytheon in 2003, and is still being constructed with hopes to be completed by the end of this year. 'Regarding images taken by commercial satellites, legally we can do nothing about it,' said David Lo, the spokesman of Taiwan's defense ministry, in a statement to reporters. 'But we'll ask Apple to lower the resolution of satellite images of some confidential military establishments the way we've asked Google in the past.'"

Re:Uh, maybe...

[heypete]

Indeed.

More seriously, though, China has its own spy satellites and certainly has detailed aerial imagery of Taiwan probably in excess of the quality available to commercial imaging satellites. This information being known to the public isn't really going to change anything -- it's not like the average person is going to be able to do anything to a radar installation on a military base.

Re:Probably weren't even looking for it.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's called diplomacy: You pretend that you haven't build a secret military base just across the potential enemy's street and the potential enemy pretends that he has no knowledge of it.