Katie Hafner and Saritha Rai (Extracted from "Google Offers a Bird's-Eye View, and Some Governments Tremble", New York Times, 20 December 2005

"When Google introduced Google Earth, free software that marries satellite and aerial images with mapping capabilities, the company emphasized its usefulness as a teaching and navigation tool, while advertising the pure entertainment value of high-resolution flyover images of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the pyramids.

But since its debut last summer, Google Earth has received attention of an unexpected sort. Officials of several nations have expressed alarm over its detailed display of government buildings, military installations and other important sites within their borders."

[Ed: It is inevitable that one day, a terrorist group will import a nuclear bomb inside one the the thousands of freight containers that enter developed nation-states every day and blow up a central government. The Google developmment above is yet another sign that the days of highly centralised governances which cannot, nevertheless, protect their own safety cordons, are over. National boundaries are now increasingly permeable to illegal migrants, hard drugs, small arms, human transplant organs, counterfeited banknotes and goods (mostly high quality imitations) and so on. Thank goodness that ideas and sensible practices -- still the majority of human activities -- are also increasingly transferrable between cultures that are ready to receive them despite, in many cases, governmental attempts to prevent them.]