And the Walls of Mordor Come A-Tumbling Down: Vice President's Residence Reappears on Google Maps

by Damozel | Gawker:

The official residence of the vice president, obscured until Dick Cheney's last days in office and residence, now shines in satellite sunlight...Google Maps now showed a clear overhead image of One Observatory Circle (below), the address which has served as the home of the vice president since 1974. It's the first glimpse Google users have gotten of the place....For the past four years, since Google first began introducing high-resolution satellite imagery into Google Earth and Google Maps, people have noticed that Cheney's house remained obscured (top photo), even as the White House itself could be seen clearly.

So it seems that even Maureen Dowd is sometimes right.  She wrote in 2005:

The vice president, who believes in unwarranted, unlimited snooping, is so pathologically secretive that if you use Google Earth's database to see his official residence, the view is scrambled and obscured. You can view satellite photos of the White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol - but not of the Lord of the Underworld's lair.

On the other hand, James Fallows claims to have been the first major journalist to notice the strange blurring of Google Earth in the place where Sauron used to dwell.  He seems very anxious that we realize that he got there before MoDo.  Duly noted, James Fallows.  Well done!

So, anyway, back in May 2005 ---before MoDo's column --- Fallows wrote:

Last month, I mentioned that one small part of the American land mass was obscured in an unusual way. It's not the headquarters of the C.I.A., which is there in such detail you that can tell the color of cars in the parking lots. Nor is the mystery zone a dam or a power plant. Some are clearer than others, but the differences result from varying quality of satellite photographs from place to place.

True, the roofs of the White House and two neighboring buildings have been Photoshopped, to conceal whatever protective systems may be up there. And the view of the United States Capitol grounds is blurry, though the contours of the main buildings are distinct. But to see what real camouflage looks like, zoom in on the satellite view of 1 Observatory Circle in Washington. That's where Dick Cheney lives.

Fallows, hailing "one small step for transparency," now says: 

Now, as several sources (eg here) have noted, the Vice President's official house is being treated like other sensitive structures in DC -- or Beijing or Moscow or Paris or Tokyo or Baghdad. That is: as worthy of protection on the ground, but not of being airbrushed out of recognition in a fashion worthy of the old Soviet era (or of today's "security theater"). I noticed this last night when checking neighborhood maps in Google Earth. It is by a steady accumulation of these small changes that we'll appreciate how much there is to undo after the past eight years.

My theory is that the previous blurring was caused by a warp in the space-time continuum produced by the crushing mass of Cheney's black hole of a heart (as dense as a collapsed star and permitting) rather than by air-brushing.

I bet wherever he is currently residing is similarly obscured on Google Earth. As a commenter at The Swamp remarked:

Those dark clouds over Mass Ave, NW have shifted to Wyoming. Damdest thing I've ever seen.

Well, at least they've lifted over the VP's house.  Let the sun shine in! 

More at Memeorandum.

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Comments

[Greg Berry]

Love this! Thanks for posting. Big fan of this discussion and debate -- thanks especially for taking the time to point out the hypocrisy (and the end therein).

Thought you'd like this link to my recent blog post about the CA Proposition 8 mapping dustup. Some similar themes to this post.

http://blog.awhere.com/public/item/224704

enjoy!