Comments on: Stark relief: White House, VP's residence now visible in Google Maps

Google drops maps that censor federal residences in favor of new, clear versions.

[karpenterskids]

Any chance we could get the floorplans, as well?

[Hep Cat]

Just go to D.C. and they'll actually let you take a tour of the place...or at least they used to.

[solitare_pax]

Just do a Google search for White House Floor Plans - the place was redone by Truman to follow the original plans, so it is public record.

Tours (during the Bush years) had to be arranged about six weeks in ADVANCE through your Senator or Congressman. Try explaining that to a kid during a vacation planned at the last minute. There is a museum/visitor center to see the cast-off items Bush wasn't using though.

[donjonson]

Come on do you really think that with all the taxpayer money Obama is trying to figure out how to spend that he really stopped and said.. "Hey I was looking at the white house the other day on Google maps and realized that sneaky old Bush was trying to hide what he was doing on the roof. I'm going to call up Google and make sure that the world knows my administration has a policy of transparency and openness. The mindless infatuation for Obama is ridiculous or perhaps the mindless hatred for Bush simply caused all the Media zombies to cling to Obama's theatrics. I know Rafe was probably... hopefully being facetious but there are many out there who would see this and think it was a direct decision from the elected savior himself to promote the new image of the executive branch of the united states government.

[rafe]

I don't think the new administration had anything to do with this. What's not clear is who at Google was involved.

[TheUnknownComic]

I suspect the more likely story is that people under the Bush administration threatened Google if they didn't obscure the areas. Something along the lines of "Fuzz things up or we can really slow down this and that and cause you all kinds of trouble." Once the Bush people were essentially out the door, Google did what the wanted. The question is whether the new security people will also crack down. I doubt it since I doubt there's much shown in the photos that couldn't have been found elsewhere by somebody dedicated to the search.

[biffhenerson]

The images were not blurred out on other similar web sites. Not sure why Googles images were blurred. I suspect they came from their map source that way. One might also read into this that they do not wish to protect the wacky Obama administration as well as they did prior administrations. lol,