Apple Maps has been the subject of much criticism and the butt of many jokes, and now the app is being criticized by the Taiwanese government for showing sensitive military images. According to Taiwan News, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry wants Apple to blur images of its new $1.4 billion warning radar station.
This new radar system is said to be located near Hsinchu Air Base in Northern Taiwan and can reportedly detect aircrafts and missiles coming from as far as western China. It’s expected to go live later this year.
David Lo, Defense Ministry spokesperson, said, “Regarding images taken by commercial satellites, legally we can do nothing about it. But we’ll ask Apple to lower the resolution of satellite images of some confidential military establishments the way we’ve asked Google in the past.”
It looks like Apple is encountering some of the same privacy issues that Google has with its Street View function. Many privacy advocates are critical of how much personal information can be seen from street-level photography, and Google now blurs out individual faces and identifiers like license plates. While Apple Maps should do what it can to hide confidential military bases in its maps, perhaps Taiwan should also do more to disguise such a sensitive military base.
Source: Taiwan News Online via The Next Web and Phys.Org via SlashGear
Image Credit: The Next Web
