Use Case: Handle censored / intentionally vague map data

[AmeliaBR]

Talking with a colleague from South Korea, she mentioned that many facilities for security purposes will never show up as exact locations on digital maps.

Need to look into how that is usually handled in map data & so on.

[Malvoz]

Historically, it seems that it is not uncommon for countries to be requesting from map service providers that a particular site is to be blurred, blanked, pixelated, have images intentionally reduced in resolution or otherwise digitally obscured.

In some cases a country/government would not request to have a sensitive location obscured as it would identify that location.

[prushforth]

I think this is out of scope. Countries have censorship laws for all types of content, including maps.

One of the great things about the Web, is that it is like a great big book we can all contribute our perspective to, by creating content. Maps are no different.

Google has got rules whereby it must follow each country's laws about what the border of the country is. That doesnt mean that version is accepted by international treaty.

The author is free to publish their point of view, but they must be willing to take the heat thatmay arise in consequence. Maps are not different from HTML in this regard.

[NickFitz]

One example of a border anomaly is between Egypt and Sudan, seen here on Google Maps with both possible borders shown as a dashed rather than a solid line. The straight horizontal border dates from a political agreement of 1899 and the irregular border from an administrative agreement of 1902. Egypt recognises the former, Sudan the latter. The result is that the quadrilateral region south of the 1899 border, known as Bir Tawil, is claimed by neither country and thus belongs to no state.

And border issues also affected the time zone control panel in Windows 95: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823