Google Maps face many controversies due to the service of letting people see what’s happening in real time. But now people clearly see Google Maps as important for everyone. But Why?
Washington Post reports: An International Professor Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is an arms control specialist who works at Middlebury Institute of Internal Studies in Monterey, Calif. He and his fellow researchers are analyzing images taken from space, but then he realized What was happening in Russia and Ukraine Invasion.
According @googlemaps, there is a “traffic jam” at 3:15 in the morning on the road from Belgorod, Russia to the Ukrainian border. It starts *exactly* where we saw a Russian formation of armor and IFV/APCs show up yesterday.
— Dr. Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) February 24, 2022
Someone’s on the move. pic.twitter.com/BYyc5YZsWL
Professor noticed that traffic around Belgorod, Russia, to alert his team that the Russian military was on the move, and on February 23 around 3:15 a.m Washington Post reports he was surveying when he noticed something that didn’t make much sense at that hour means a traffic jam.
Related: Facebook limits false campaigns over Ukraine by blocking some Russian media accounts
Lewis and his fellow researchers combined radar imagery and realized the invasion was a go. Russia officially announced its assault on UkraineonThursday morning, which President Biden called “unprovoked and unjustified.”
“In the old days, we would have relied on a reporter to show us what was happening on the ground. And today, you can open Google Maps and see people fleeing Kyiv.”
Lewis said
Non-techy average people with access to publicly available tools could easily survey things like “troop movements” leading to many future internet disruptions in conflict-prone regions.
On Thursday, the Indian Embassy in Ukraine tweeted an advisory to its citizens and students in the country: It suggested that if they could hear air sirens, they should search for nearby bomb shelters on Google Maps.
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