Cartographic censorship
Cartographic censorship is the deliberate modification of publicly available
History
The renowned map historian, J.B. Harley, wrote in 1989:
Throughout the history of modern cartography in the West ... there have been numerous instances of where maps have been falsified, of where they have been censored or kept secret, or of where they have surreptitiously contradicted the rules of their proclaimed scientific status.[1]
The early policy of secrecy proved difficult to enforce and soon maps became subject to censorship and falsification. Cartographic disinformation has long been a weapon in political propaganda, military counter-intelligence and covert diplomacy.[2]
Maps are weapons of war and the falsification of maps is a legitimate ruse de guerre. However, such Machiavellian arts were not confined to wartime, particularly in an age when there was very little peacetime. Fake maps were a weapon for all seasons, to be used against all rivals, political and commercial.[3]
North America
In October 1941, before the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that he had "a secret map" of South America titled "Luftverkehrsnetz der Vereinigten Staaten Süd-Amerikas Hauptlinien". He said the map had been "made in Germany by Hitler's government" and that it showed that the Nazis had designs against the United States. It was a fake map, probably created by British intelligence agents, but Roosevelt may have thought it was genuine.[4]
Europe
In the Age of Discovery there was a premium on geographic information: ports of call for wood and fresh water, deep natural harbours, shorter passages and straits.
Germany
Censorship of maps was also used in former East Germany, especially for the areas near the border to West Germany in order to make attempts of defection more difficult.
Netherlands
The Dutch East India Company, or VOC, had a mission to censor cartographic knowledge of newly explored regions. It complained when ships owned by its rival, the Australische Compagnie, entered the Pacific by a new passage round Cape Horn, named the Le Maire Strait. The VOC persuaded the Dutch government to prohibit the publication of this latest geographical information. However, the injunction was lifted after twelve months and Willem Blaeu and other cartographers were permitted to publish revised maps.[5]
Portugal
The German cartographer Henricus Martellus made his famous mappamundi (World Map), soon after the Portuguese navigator, Bartolomeu Dias, sailed round the southern tip of Africa. The map is based on a Portuguese prototype (which has not survived), but the coast of southern Africa is greatly extended and dislocated. Some scholars have suggested that this distortion is a result of misinformation circulated by King John II. His purpose was to pretend that the new eastern sea route to Asia and was far longer than it actually is, in order to discourage foreign interlopers from profiting from Portuguese discoveries.[6]
Christopher Columbus may have consulted Martellus' map (or a copy) before leaving Spain in 1492 to find the western route to Asia.[7]
Russia
In 1765, the Swiss geographer Samuel Engel, accused the Russian government of deliberately falsifying maps by extending Siberia 30° eastward. Its purpose, according to Engel, was to exaggerate the length and difficulty of the Northeast Passage along the arctic coast, in the hope of discouraging rival European merchants from attempting this route to the Pacific and China.
United Kingdom
Francis Drake
When
Captain Cook
The British Admiralty sent
Cook has been accused of making "major mistakes in his charting", such as depicting "Stewart Island as a peninsula, and the failure to determine the insular character of Tasmania".[8]
However, Cook was the greatest navigator of his day and too experienced to make such errors. During his three Pacific voyages, Cook was on a mission to keep secret any strategic discoveries he made such as off-shore islands and deep, natural harbours. He would report such prizes to the Admiralty when he returned to London, but meanwhile he would omit them from his journal and charts. Cook's program of disinformation was first proposed in the book Lying for the Admiralty: Captain Cook's Endeavour Voyage (2018).[9]
In 1770, Cook found Sydney Harbour by walking overland from Botany Bay, along an Aboriginal track connecting the two inlets. He also identified Bass Strait which separates Tasmania from mainland Australia. However, off-shore islands can provide a base from which operations could be mounted by a hostile power so he concealed Tasmania's insularity. Similarly, Cook depicted New Zealand's Stewart Island as a peninsula, concealing Foveaux Strait.
Captain Cook's fake maps were not fake enough for the Admiralty. It wanted even greater concealment of politically sensitive discoveries when it commissioned Dr. Hawkesworth to write the official account of Cook's voyages. Thus the Admiralty's engraver deliberately altered and refined Cook's manuscript charts when preparing them for printing. Hawkesworth's "Journals" was a bestseller in Europe, and the Admiralty's fake maps misled Britain's rivals for decades. [10]
Cold War
In the United Kingdom, during the
False altitudes
A variant of censorship of maps is putting in false altitudes. This can be important for predicting
Modern use
Censorship of maps is today still often applied, although it is less effective in the age of satellite picture services. A "dead map" is a term often applied to sensitive government maps that show the location of top secret facilities and other highly sensitive installations within a country. Russia, the United States and Great Britain all have such maps.
Google Earth censors places that may be of special security concern. The following is a selection of such concerns:
- Former high-resolution pictures of sensitive locations in India.[11]
- The military installations that could possibly be used by North Korea.
- Operators of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney, Australia asked Google to censor high resolution pictures of the facility. However, they later withdrew the request.[13]
- The government of Israel also expressed concern over the availability of high-resolution pictures of sensitive locations in its territory, and applied pressure to have Israeli territory (and the Occupied Territories held by Israeli forces) appear in less clear detail.[14]
- The Vice President of the United States' residence (.
- From June 2007 until January 2009,USGS aerial photography from the spring 2002, while the rest of the District of Columbia was shown using imagery from 2005.[17]
Censorship of maps is also applied by Google Maps, where certain areas are greyed out or areas are purposely left outdated with old imagery.[17]
In
Similar cases
Lists of air traffic obstacles may not be published by many countries as many of them are strategically important (chimneys of power stations, radio masts, etc.)
Example
See also
- Cartographic aggression
- Cartographic generalization
- Cartographic propaganda
- Paper street
- Phantom island
- Phantom settlement
- Restrictions on geographic data in China
- Satellite map images with missing or unclear data
References
- ISBN 9780801870903.
- ISBN 9780226435923.
- ISBN 978-0-6480-4396-6.
- ISBN 0195085663.
- ^ Koeman, Schilder, van Egmond, van der Krogt (2007). Commercial Cartography and Map Production in the Low Countries, 1500–ca. 1672, in Woodward D. (ed.) The History of Cartography vol.3. University of Chicago Press. pp. 1350–1351.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ISBN 9780131426627.
- ISBN 9783319768397.
- ^ Skelton, R.A. (1954). "Captain James Cook as a Hydrographer". Mariner's Mirror. 40: 115.
- ISBN 9780648043966.
- ISBN 9780648043966.
- ^ "India: Stop Looking At Me, Google!". Archived from the original on 2012-02-16. Retrieved 2011-05-08.
- ^ Dubey, Krati (2006-07-10). "Google Earth Poses Security Threat to India, ISRO Chief seeks Dialogue". TechShout. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
- Sydney Morning Herald. 2005-08-08. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
- ^ Israel's top secret sites on Google Earth Archived January 8, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Google Maps".
- ^ Nikolas Schiller (Jan 21, 2009). "Google FINALLY updates the imagery of Washington, DC and now you can kinda see the message on my rooftop". Blog. The Daily Render. Retrieved 2009-01-21.
- ^ a b Jenna Johnson (2007-07-22). "Google's View of D.C. Melds New and Sharp, Old and Fuzzy". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-07-22.
Sources
- Neocleous, Mark (2003). "The violence of cartography". Imagining the state. McGraw-Hill International. ISBN 978-0-335-20351-2.
- JSTOR 1151014.
- ISBN 978-0-521-38915-0.