25 Blurred Places on Google Maps and the Real Reasons Behind Them

Blurred Google Maps Images: What They Do and Do Not Prove

Most blurred patches on Google Maps and Google Earth have a dull explanation: a government asked for them, a national law requires them, or the only imagery anyone has of that spot is old, cloudy or low resolution. A smudge can tell you that a site is sensitive, but it rarely tells you what is there. With that in mind, the 25 places below, first collected by The Spirit Science in late 2014, make a good tour of how online maps are made and why some corners of the planet stay fuzzy.

Keep one thing in mind as you read. Satellite and aerial pictures are swapped out every few years, so a site that looked smeared in a 2014 screenshot may be perfectly sharp today, and the reverse also happens. Each entry is a snapshot of what people reported at the time, with the context that later sources add.

Why online maps blur some places

Google, Apple and Microsoft do not fly over every rooftop themselves. They buy most of their imagery from satellite operators and aerial survey firms, then stitch it together. Gaps, colour shifts and soft patches often come from that process alone: clouds on the day of the pass, a seam between two image sets, or an area nobody has paid to photograph in high detail.

Deliberate obscuring does exist, and it follows a few clear patterns:

National law. The Netherlands has an old rule requiring Dutch companies to blur imagery of military and royal sites, which is why Dutch pictures show distinctive polygon-shaped smudges.
Government requests. According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), France asked Google to obscure its prisons, and Google agreed to do so by the end of 2018. India obtained a similar agreement for sensitive sites.
Resolution limits. The US Kyl–Bingaman Amendment of 1997 capped US-licensed imagery of Israel at 2 metres per pixel. NOAA relaxed that cap to 0.4 metres in July 2020.
Privacy. Street View blurs faces and licence plates automatically, and homeowners can ask for their house to be blurred.

Not every country plays along. Malaysia's government has said it will not ask Google to hide anything, because a list of blurred spots would simply announce which ones matter. That point has proved true: in 2018 FAS researcher Matt Korda found more than 300 obscured sites in Israel and Turkey on Russia's Yandex Maps, and the blurs themselves outlined the bases they were meant to hide.

Military bases and defence sites

Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands, shown with the mosaic-style blurring that Dutch rules require for military facilities.

Volkel Air Base, Netherlands. This Royal Netherlands Air Force base in North Brabant is the clearest example on the list. Dutch providers must blur military sites, and FAS reports that an image of Volkel was altered after one of its analysts had already bought a clear copy. Arms-control researchers have long described Volkel as a storage site for US nuclear bombs under NATO nuclear sharing, which neither government confirms.

Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Ramstein is the headquarters of US Air Forces in Europe and one of the busiest American bases abroad. Its blurring varies by service; one recent survey found it obscured on Apple Maps rather than Google.

Air base at Reims, France. France routinely hides defence and nuclear sites on all major map services. Reims hosted a large French air base for decades before it closed around 2011, so the imagery of the site may now show something quite different.

NATO headquarters, Portugal. NATO has run commands near Lisbon for decades, and Portugal is strict about imagery: a current list of censored places includes Lisbon Naval Base, Montijo Air Base and several prisons, all blurred on Google Maps.

Missile silos, Spain. This label is doubtful. Spain has no nuclear weapons, and no Spanish missile field is publicly known. Spanish military sites such as Zaragoza Air Base and an army signals command are blurred on Apple and Bing maps, so the original list was probably pointing at one of those.

Michael Army Airfield, Utah. Listed in 2014 as "The Michael Aaf Building", this is the airfield at Dugway Proving Ground, the US Army's remote testing range for chemical and biological defence. A secretive mission and a desert location make it a natural candidate for reduced detail.

Minami-Torishima, Japan. Also known as Marcus Island, this tiny triangle of coral is Japan's easternmost point, nearly 2,000 km from Tokyo. Its only residents are staff from Japanese government agencies, including the Self-Defense Forces, which run its airstrip and weather station.

Power plants, dams and industry

Seabrook Station, New Hampshire. Seabrook is a single-reactor nuclear plant on the New England coast. Nuclear plants are classic examples of sensitive infrastructure, and several around the world, such as France's Tricastin plant, are blurred on all major map services.

Keowee Dam, South Carolina. Lake Keowee's hydro station is tied to the neighbouring Oconee Nuclear Station, which it can supply with emergency power. That link explains why the dam is treated as critical infrastructure.

Cornell University's heat and power plant, New York. The campus generates its own electricity and steam from natural gas. The reason for any blur here is unknown and may simply be an imagery seam.

Mobil Oil Corporation site, New York. Mobil merged with Exxon in 1999. Oil depots and refineries are among the sites companies most often ask mapping firms to soften, citing security.

Oil refinery, Hungary. Hungary's main refinery sits at Százhalombatta, south of Budapest. The 2014 list did not name the site, so it is not possible to say which plant was meant or why it looked obscured.

Prisons, palaces and private homes

The 2014 list labelled this obscured patch Elmira Correctional Facility. Note how the blur is a block of coloured polygons rather than a simple smear.

Elmira Correctional Facility, New York. Elmira is a maximum-security state prison. Prisons are among the most commonly blurred sites in the world, because clear overhead views can help escape planning.

Huis ten Bosch Palace, The Netherlands. Listed in 2014 as "Palace Huis Ten", this palace in The Hague is the home of the Dutch royal family. Dutch rules on royal sites apply, and another royal building, Noordeinde Palace, is blurred on Bing Maps.

Alexei Miller's house, Russia. Alexey Miller has run the state energy giant Gazprom since 2001. Homes of powerful Russians are often obscured, but there is no public record of who asked for this one.

Noordwijk aan Zee, Netherlands. This beach resort is also home to ESTEC, the European Space Agency's largest research and technology centre. Under Dutch rules, sensitive sites in town would be blurred as a matter of course.

Remote places, ruins and research stations

Northern Canada near Baker Lake, where a dark strip runs across the snow. Long black or grey bands like this usually mark a gap between satellite passes, not a hidden object.

Baker Lake, Northern Canada. Baker Lake is an Inuit community in Nunavut, with a large gold mine nearby. Arctic imagery is often patchy because of cloud, low sun and snow glare, and the black band seen here is typical of missing data.

HAARP, Alaska. The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program near Gakona studies the ionosphere with a powerful radio transmitter. It is a magnet for weather-control and mind-control theories, but scientists note its power is tiny next to a single lightning flash. The University of Alaska Fairbanks has run it since 2015 and holds public open days.

Babylon, Iraq. The ancient city near Hillah was used as a coalition military camp after the 2003 invasion, and archaeologists reported damage to the site. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and any blur probably reflects old or poor imagery rather than a secret.

Tantauco Park, Chile. This large private reserve on Chiloé Island was created by Sebastián Piñera, later Chile's president. Southern Chile is often cloudy, and remote parks seldom get fresh high-resolution passes.

Pacific Northwest, USA, and an unnamed area of Russia. These entries came with no coordinates, so they cannot be checked. Both regions contain military land as well as huge areas of forest that are simply imaged at lower detail.

The odd ones out: Colonel Sanders and North Korea

Colonel Sanders. This entry most likely refers to the giant KFC portrait laid out in the Nevada desert in 2006 as a stunt to be seen from space. It is an advert, not a secret, and how it looks on maps depends on which image set is loaded.

North Korea. The country took first place in 2014 because it once appeared almost blank. Today its satellite imagery is not censored on Google Maps; the main gap is that many buildings and roads carry no labels, because so little ground information leaves the country.

The White House. The original post said the White House only had outdated images. It was blurred when Google Maps and Google Earth first launched, but it is no longer censored there.

Myths and how to check a blurred spot yourself

The biggest myth is that a blur proves a cover-up. Most fuzzy areas are just the edge of an old image set. The second myth is that one map service shows the whole truth. In practice each service buys different pictures, and a site hidden on one may be sharp on another.

If a place puzzles you, try these steps:

Use the historical imagery slider in Google Earth to see older pictures of the same spot.
Compare Google, Apple, Bing and free sources such as the European Copernicus Sentinel images.
Check the imagery date and provider credit at the bottom of the screen.
Look for news coverage or official notices before drawing a conclusion.

Real secrecy also has limits. Commercial satellites now photograph most of the Earth often, and a blurred base is usually visible to anyone willing to pay for raw pictures. For more places the public cannot easily visit, read Nine Restricted Places and the Stories Behind Their Access.

Which of these spots would you most like to see in sharp detail? Tell us in the comments.

Sources: Original list by Kirsten for The Spirit Science; Wikipedia: List of satellite map images with missing or unclear data; Federation of American Scientists: Widespread blurring of satellite images reveals secret facilities; Wikipedia: Kyl–Bingaman Amendment; Wikipedia: HAARP.

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