Censorship of maps

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (January 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (January 2008)

Censorship of maps describes the way of handling the appearance of potential strategically important objects like military bases, power plants or transmitters towards their censorship on maps.

Especially in non-democratic countries, the appearance of such objects on maps available for the public is undesired, so it is often tried not to show them on the map. However problems can occur with the drive of the object. In some cases the drive is drawn in the map until the border of the strategic object. This method is however suspicious as the road ends blind in the terrain.

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 fleeing more difficult.

Censorship of maps is also applied by Google maps, where certain areas are greyed out.

A variant of censorship of maps is putting in wrong high values. This can be important for predicting flooding. In World War I many German soldiers were killed in Belgium by flooding after their camps were flooded, which were according to the maps used by German military in areas which may be not affected by the flooding.

Censorship of maps is today still often applied, although it does not make so much sense any more in the age of satellite picture services.

[edit] 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Lists of air traffic obstacles may not be published by many countries as many of them are strategically important (chimneys of power stations, radio masts, etc.)