On Saturday 20 Dec 2008 7:01:41 am Easwar Hariharan wrote: > On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 5:56 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves <[email protected]>wrote: > > On Saturday 20 Dec 2008 4:38:50 am Praveen A wrote: > > > We have raised our doubts about this earlier here. But it is real now. > > > > what is real? Could you summarise? I do not have the bandwidth currently > > to read slashdot. > > The danger of continuing to map streets for OSM/FreeMap in the curretn > situation.
where is the danger? > Two guys have been put behind bars under the official secrets act > for mapping highways using GPS(apparently for Nokia Navigator). not so - they were arrested for photographing the Jamnagar airforce base. In any situation if you go around photographing military bases - especially in a place like Gujarat, you are asking for trouble. When mapping, realise that the average policeman/security guy is uneducated and unaware of modern technology. It is always good to speak to the authorities in sensitive areas and enlist their support. We OSM guys map as individuals and may not be able to approach higher authorities, but surely a company like Nokia can. To protect our mappers, we are working on setting up a local OSM chapter that can interact with the authorities for suitable permissions, maybe even a badge or id card for OSM members. As far as mapping Mumbai is concerned, no need to go on the streets at all - satellite image is there, you can comfortably sit in your house and help rectify and improve the Mumbai map. Also join OSM and help us get things organised. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
