The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) issued a public advisory pertaining especially to Google regarding Google Maps. The DOD made it clear that the roving photographic vehicles Google uses for the “Street View” panoramic images are not allowed to enter U.S. military bases.

Street View is one of the features of Google Maps that Google introduced last year. The Street View is a 360 degree panoramic point of view photo of a selected street. You can zoom in and out and rotate the camera to provide the exact view of a person actually standing in the middle of the selected street.

Below is a Street View of Times Square in New York City:

The advisory came after Street View images of Fort Sam Houston (which is not open to the public) in San Antonio, Texas, appeared on Google Maps last month, shortly after they launched the service for the city.

“It actually shows where all the guards are. It shows how the barriers go up and down. It shows how to get in and out of buildings,” said Gen. Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command.

As soon as they knew about the advisory, Google removed the said pictures.

Lt. Commander Gary Ross, a public affairs officer for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the U.S. Northern Command, said that they were aware that Google was requesting access to Fort Sam Houston. Afterwards, the Pentagon issued a memo on the 28^th of February to clarify their stand against Google’s Street View cameras and other actions similar to that capacity as other companies are also inquiring about taking photos of their military facilities.

“It has operational risks for force protection and the safety of personnel who work on the base,” he added.

When asked why Google took pictures of the military base, spokesperson Larry Yu said it was actually against their policy to do even try and get access to military facilities and the problem arose because an employee did not follow that policy.

“Our policy is to stay on public roads,” he said. “One of our drivers clearly broke our policy and that was a mistake. We’ve reminded the drivers it is against our policy to ask for access to military bases, drive on private roads, ignore ‘no trespassing’ signs, etc.”

But the question really is how that driver was able to go inside the base and take the pictures. Somebody must have let him in; unless Google is using super stealth vans for their operations. Guards at Fort Sam Houston didn’t seem to mind at all; but not the big dogs at the Pentagon.

People have been voicing out concerns about privacy with the recent launch of Street View. When does exploration cross over to invasion?

“We’ve been pretty clear with people that if they’re concerned with the imagery, we try to make it easier and easier to submit requests to get the imagery taken down,” said Yu. “That’s helped mitigate issues of privacy.”