I had begun to work on this report well in advance of a planned counterterrorism fact-finding trip to Israel in early February to meet with defense and intelligence officials. But during a chance encounter with a US intelligence official unrelated to the trip, I was proffered a story that, surprisingly, had direct bearing on this dispatch. And with renewed terrorism in Israel emanating from Gaza only the day before, his story took on added urgency.

The RAND Corp. defines “geospatial information” broadly to include geospatial data and information that exist in a variety of forms and are accessible through various media and sources—from raw geospatial data (e.g., latitude and longitude coordinates, maps and nautical charts, aerial and satellite images, textual geospatial descriptions) to relatively sophisticated geospatial datasets like highly detailed, high accuracy geographic information system (GIS) databases.

GIS refers to computer applications that can store, retrieve, manipulate, analyze, display and share geographic data in a real-time environment (as opposed to GSI, which refers specifically to intelligence, or the information produced by GIS platforms and technology). GIS technology has rapidly morphed into a multimedia infrastructure management tool replete with tabular databases, maps, digital photography, engineering plans, detailed street maps and video that all can be merged into a single application with powerful search, query and analysis functions.

But just as GSI datasets and the GIS applications that are used to manipulate them are increasingly being used to help federal, state and local governments prepare for and respond to homeland security issues and emergencies, so, too, can terrorists potentially turn to them to plot and execute attacks ranging from bombings to calculating the best location to unleash a virulent pathogen.

My dinner companion’s legitimate concerns were made all the more disconcerting in the context of the unease that had just descended like a gloomy, gray haze over the city—and it wasn’t smog—following the Hamas-directed suicide bombing not far south in Dimona by young terrorists from the West Bank city of Hebron.

By Thursday evening, Hamas terrorists had launched dozens of short-range “Qassam” rockets against Israeli communities north and east of Gaza and had threatened more suicide bombings throughout the Jewish state. Also that day, the Israeli Defense Forces, using its own GSI, had successfully begun to carry out search and destroy missions against rocket-launching sites using the Israel Air Force’s “Heron” unmanned aerial vehicle to pinpoint terrorist locations for destruction by the Cobra attack helicopters at the Palmachim air base—“the eyes of Israel.”

The US official’s mission in Israel was classified, but what he could say was indeed unnerving. He said that at an unspecified time not all that long ago he discovered “recent” imagery on Google Earth that clearly showed temporary housing and other facilities that had been erected for a US mission in an undisclosed Middle East country with which he was directly involved. As soon as he realized the full implications of what he was seeing, he was horrified—and Google was immediately contacted.

While the official stressed that Google quickly, willingly and without opposition removed the offending imagery, he nevertheless drilled down on the threat that it could have posed had it been left in the public domain. Had terrorists stumbled across the unusually fresh imagery—which counterterror intelligence analysts say terrorists search for with “sophisticated regularity”— they potentially could have used it to plan an attack on the site.

“Right there was all the intelligence they needed to plan an attack,” he said.

Threat response

For its part, Google has previously said of such information that it could indeed be used for “bad” purposes and is available to the public in many forms. “Of course, we are always ready to listen to governments’ requests,” a spokesman said, adding that the search engine giant has “opened channels” with the United States and other countries when it comes to potentially sensitive but open source GIS. Google, however, is “not prepared to discuss what we have discussed with them,” he maintained, adding, “but we do listen and we are sensitive to [their] requests.”

In the case of the US security official, Google did respond to the threat concerns he brought to its attention regarding imagery that could be used by terrorists.

Similarly, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian jihadist terrorist organization, reputedly has been using Google Earth to help in planning attacks on Israeli Defense Forces positions and other Israeli targets.

“We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city center and sensitive areas,” Khaled Jaabari, the group’s commander in Gaza—also known as Abu Walid—has been reported as saying.

During my counterterrorism fact-finding mission, arranged by Shaneson Consulting Group, Israeli defense and intelligence officials did in fact express concern that, in some instances, there’s little doubt that the level of tactical-attack-utility information that’s contained in some easily accessible GSI on locations in Israel could be used to virtually recon targets of opportunities for martyr-seeking suicide bombers close by in Gaza or the West Bank—or already within Israel proper, as is believed to have been the case with the suicide bombers from Hebron who struck a mall in Dimona.