Google Maps Community Competition Falls Foul of Indian Regulations

Added On Jul 30, 2014

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Google Maps Community Competition Falls Foul of Indian Regulations

The Google Maps community has been in a soup in India, ever since the country’s Central Bureau of investigation had launched an official investigation into their community for viraling the location of sensitive military base to all its users.

The whole situation began when the Chocolate Factory asked its users to accurately map out their local neighborhood in a community competition that was held last year, known as the Google’s Mapathon 2013. It was a nationwide competition with people passing over sensitive maps and other key details of strategic installation inside India to this U. S company.

However, I pretext of falling under a U. S centric mindset, Mountain View failed to obtain all necessary approval from the Survey of India, the official mapping agency of India. According to The Times of India, the map mainly focused on nearby hospitals and restaurants.

However, further investigation by the Survey of India proved that several of the Mapathon entries included a number of coordinates of sensitive defense outposts in details that are non- negotiable by the public. According to the Post at Quartz, Delhi police headquarters have received new complaints along with the original ones during 2013.

After an initial probe by the Delhi police, this sensitive case was handed over to CBI since detailed investigation of the case would require entering areas outside of the Delhi Police jurisdiction and interrogating individuals with the FBI, since Google is also incorporated in the U.S.

According to the post notes, India’s National Map Policy provides the Survey of India with a monopoly over publishing maps through the policy of the open series maps that includes all the roads, railway tracks, forested areas, rivers, famous sites, restaurants, hospitals and other administered boundaries with minute details.

Responding to the investigation held, Google Maps community announced that they were in touch with relevant authorities and do not fail to take national regulations and security very seriously. However, they were not aware of any privacy issues regarding the maps they created. They refrained from making any further comments.

According to the Bureau, if Google Maps community had to map out the areas independent of the national agency, then it would have required permission from the Survey of India as well as the Indian Defense ministry, something which they failed to attain. CBI might be roping in few Army officials in its trail, according to sources.

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