The military issue has come up with OSM before. My thoughts: Most of the time mapping military areas is not a security risk, but perhaps mapping the roads and buildings inside them (if you can't see them from outside the area). Anyone can take these notes, and if they are for bad intentions they will do it more covertly (like not say they are making a map when asked, and writing notes encoded to look like a poem or something else).
Map making is not surveying. Surveying(taking notes and recordings on the ground) might be illegal if unauthorised by the government, but map making (creating the map from other sources while in another country) isn't under their power to stop. Also creating map products (navigation or paper maps) might need to be authorised (for use) in that country. Some recent links: http://brainoff.com/weblog/2010/02/26/1532 <http://brainoff.com/weblog/2010/02/26/1532>“One of the goals of your project is to map military installations!” Colonel Omar had printed out the OSM map key. http://blog.wonderfullyrich.net/2010/01/uganda-treats-you-right/ didn't go so well. If they had just told him "yes this is the UN clinic" then he could have mapped it as such. Is it really a barracks in disguise and everyone locally knows? Then he should map it as a clinic, because that's what the signs on the ground say (and if the guards had said so). Military installations usually say "keep out, military area, do not stop while passing, etc." and so you can map them as military landuse (but perhaps not know any other details). Then future people using OSM will not go "wow, why are there guards everywhere?" and think the industrial area had been invaded, that is the aim of maps. -- Gregory o...@livingwithdragons.com http://www.livingwithdragons.com
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