{"id":585,"date":"2007-04-13T08:03:53","date_gmt":"2007-04-13T08:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/?p=585"},"modified":"2011-01-24T21:17:39","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T13:17:39","slug":"google-maps-singapore-restricted-zones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/computers\/google-maps-singapore-restricted-zones-585","title":{"rendered":"Google Maps - Singapore restricted zones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was looking for an address in Singapore's <a href=\"http:\/\/www.streetdirectory.com\/\">Streetdirectory.com<\/a>, and was surprised to see many portions of the satellite view were hidden by a message that says:<\/p>\n<p><img src='\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2007\/03\/street.jpg' alt='Streetdirectory' \/><\/p>\n<p>Their maps are supplied by Google.<\/p>\n<p>But this is strange because over at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=singapore&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=13&om=1\">Google Maps<\/a>, there are no such restrictions and you can see the whole island.<\/p>\n<p>Significance? This is a Mindef (Ministry of Defence) facility. The Singapore government has put a lid on Streetdirectory.com showing those areas, but you can see those areas so easily elsewhere. Seems to me like a rather ineffective way to hide - in fact, it draws attention to those places. <\/p>\n<p><b>Footnote:<\/b> I modified this post (by removing some images before publishing) after reading a blog post on the same issue (not longer available) where the authors of Streetdirectory.com write:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>With regards to why the images are blocked on Streetdirectory.com. Yes, thats the requirement from our local authorities here.<\/p>\n<p>Google is not a Singapore based company but we are. So we have to play by the rules even though it does seems funny and weird.<\/p>\n<p>I suggest that u guys dont publish anything that have sensitive information. Law is law \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And that, folks, is how self-censorship works in Singapore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"alt\">See the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/computers\/google-maps-singapore-restricted-zones-585#comments\" id=\"comms\">3 Comments<\/a> below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Singapore has strict laws concerning photos of protected and restricted places. It means that a local online street directory cannot show all Google satellite imagery of the island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[125],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}