The big white holes in France

Millions of French internet users are zooming in on aerial views of their holiday houses with a new state web service, but not Jacques Chirac. The Château de Bity, the family seat in the Corrèze which the President rarely visits, is whited out along with the whole surrounding village.

Dozens of blanks fleck the landscape of France on Geoportail, the state-financed birds-eye view of France which Chirac opened with a mouse-click 10 days ago as a French alternative to Google Earth. The white zones,  totalling dozens, maybe hundreds, of square kilometres, cover a secret list of sites that the state deems sensitive under a 1973 law. Taking and publishing their pictures is banned.  The sites include the harbours of Toulon [pictured above] and Brest, as well as power stations, government buildings and certain factories. So many no-look zones litter western Brittany that French bloggers have renamed it "Emmenthal country", after the Swiss cheese.  Yet all are visible on Google's satellite views, some, such as Toulon and the Avord air force base, with the high resolution that Geoportail offers for the rest of France.

  "French law requires us to hide sensitive sites for national defence," Bertrand Levy, director of the National Geographical Institute, which runs the site, told us yesterday.  "We have just been authorised to blur these zones rather than hide them, which is better. Obviously one can wonder about the point of blurring zones if they appear on other sites but we are a public service and have to obey the law." 

At Government request, Google blurs detail on a few American installations, including the residence of Vice-President Dick Cheney  -- but not the White House. Pictures are too old to be of use to terrorists, say the Google people. Israel is, however, blurred, and India is putting pressure on Google to hide sites that could be sensitive to enemies or terrorists, but nowhere have so many zones simply been blanked out as on Geoportail's France.

The guardians of French security appear to agree with the Russian officer who complained the other day that the American web services were "doing the terrorists' job for them".  An unnamed official at the French ministry of Defence saw the irony when he told le Figaro that Geoportail's white spaces did the opposite of protecting the country. "They point a finger at all the sensitive zones that might interest terrorists," he said. 

Www.geoportail.fr has been a runaway success with its base of 400,000 aerial photographs covering the non-sensitive parts of the country, showing everything down to the size of a 50-centimetre manhole cover. France's territories in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific are also included. In contrast, the American sites focus on French cities and tourist sites, giving astonishing views of the Eiffel Tower and the Mont St Michel Monastery in Brittany, but leaving la France profonde as a low resolution blur. The French site, which is free, offers a detailed survey map that overlays the aerial shots. It is adding a 3D "fly-over" facility in the autumn and will soon offer dense cover of state services, such as schools, tax-offices, town halls and unemployment benefit centres. The idea is that Geoportail observes the Gallic tradition of equality of public service, meaning that villages are supposed to be as well provided for as big towns.

The site crashed the moment that Chirac opened it and it was jammed with 20 million attempted connections for the first three days. It has become available, in a shaky way, this week, with half a million visits a day. The service, run by the equivalent to Britain's Ordnance Survey at a cost of seven million euros, is the fruit of  Chirac's campaign to promote French and European alternatives to US digital hegemony. "It is about democracy, because our citizens have the right to know all the facts about the environment," Chirac said when he opened Geoportail from the Elysée Palace.

The French National Library has put more than 80,000 books and newspaper articles online since early 2006 on a portal called Gallica, in response to Google Book, and Chirac has been pushing plans for a Franco-German search engine to rival Yahoo and Google. He was also the driving force behind Galileo, Europe's five billion euro scheme for a satellite navigation network, due to open by 2010, that will end dependence of the US military's Global Positioning System (GPS).

Chirac has also launched a French international 24-hours news network that has a mission to present a Gallic view of the world that contrasts with the "Anglo-Saxon" slant of CNN and the BBC. Yesterday, the French service, which is to go on air in December, was officially baptised France-24. Until now it has been known as CFII (la Chaîne Française d'Information Internationale) or CNN à la française.

Chirac's push to digitalise France's heritage has also included the opening last spring of free online access to the archives of the National Audiovisual Institute, which has stored all television and radio broadcasts from the public networks since the 1940s.  The service is a nostalgic trove of old news footage, variety shows and grooves from the Gallic grave.

It is becoming clear that the President may believe that greatest monument of his reign will be virtual, un grand projet numérique to match the concrete and glass structures bequeathed by François Mitterrand and his other predecessors.

Comments

[michael robertson]

How wonderful!, The Geoportail guide to “Lieux remarquables”! Surely the creators of this “Guide to sensitive areas” were aware of multitasking on home computers? You can run Geoportail and Google Earth at the same time, and use the French maps to lead you straight to the areas of interest, as highlighted, and switch straight over to Google Earth, once you have it up and running as well, (Alt-TAB on Windows PCs) and examine them closely! The only saving grace, is that in its present form Geoportail is still very flaky, compared to Google earth.I have to admit though, that in some of the areas covered, the detail is extremely good. An odd example of “Tripping over false friends” exists in the label, “Allez a ma Commune”, which presumably translates to English as “go to my neighbourhood”, but the term “commune” sounds to Anglophones rather as if it might well be at home in a web site run by the people's Republic of China!

[Deborah]

I've tried to click in the right places but so far no luck, nothing comes up for geoportail, I'll have a go for the other sites.

Apropos your post about football, it is now nearly ten o'oclock in Bordeaux, and I can here a lot of encourageing cheers ..... all the neighbours have their televisions on for the match France/Portugal.

As I am slow on the uptake I keep thinking of comments for your First World War post ..... I'll add one anyway, I often do that on blogs, but suppose that noone goes back to have a look!

[colin grayson]

for those who don't know , a commune is the smallest administrative unit in france , with a mayor and a council....the number of inhabitants varies wildly ...mine has 160, others run into many thousands;
a number , 5 /6 perhaps ,will be grouped into a canton with representatives from each commune on it's council ; after this it's the famed Departement .....won't go into how that is administered , there is probably a limit on the length of submissions here :))

the communes appear to have been established a couple of hundred years ago and remain largely unchanged ; the corollory is that the system does not reflect modern conditions , and moves to bigger units are in hand ...but this is France , don't hold your breath !

but from my perspective it is sad to see this happen ; I know it is ridiculous to have a system where almost 10% of the ENTIRE population is on the council , but apart from the honoraria for the mayor and a part time secretary , we have no employees ;if something goes wrong we fix it ourselves if we can ; if something major is proposed my door bell rings , I produce an aperatif , and my neighbour [ a councillor of course ] ascertains if I have any objections or suggestions ;on one occassion , he appeared on a friday evening , asked if we would donate a piece of our garden in order to widen the crossroads for the increasingly large agricultural machinery [ on agenda for council meeting next morning ]; I agreed to respond the next morning in time for the meeting, and went and measured up and looked at the aesthetics .
next morning we met , with another neighbour [deputy mayor] , and I proposed a more extensive scheme , involving a neigbours property as well , moving his access ; they thought up an improvement to MY scheme , and off they went

at lunch time the front door rang again , won't come in said my neighbour, just to tell you that we phoned robert [ the other landowner involved] , he agreed , and the plan is approved ; will be applying for a grant from the Departement on tuesday ; oh , and would I like my replacement retaining wall in dry stone or mortared stone ?

will the administration changes REALLY be an improvement? not for me I fear

pity no attachments are possible , would send a photo of the finished product!

[GAG]

Let that be a lesson to you Colin.

Rule of thumb in France. Never say yes. Always agree to think about it, but never reach a decision. And if you must reach a decision, always say no.

Simplistic advice I know, but generally it works.
GAG

[Frank Schnittger]

Colin, the system of local democracy you describe seems to me to be wholly admirable. Not only does it mean that people are consulted about things that affect them directly, but they learn to take the initiative in resolving local problems at a local level. This in turn, leads to less dependency on centralised bureaucrats to do everything, and a lot of local pride and a sense of ownership about how a locality develops. People are prepared to make small sacrifices (e.g. part of your garden) for the common good.

For my sins (and they are many) I used to be Chairman of a Council in my locality. It was an entirely voluntary body with no statutory basis (only larger towns and areas in Ireland have statutory Mayors and Councils). A Global construction company had a quarry on the outskirts of the town and provided a lot of local employment.

They started to expand the development in breach of planning laws. This involved removing some hills around the town - destroying some pre-historic artefacts and creating a lot of dust on surrounding roads and adjacent houses. The management also claimed to know nothing about 100,000 tonnes of waste (some hazardous) dumped on the site by their lorry drivers. A lot of money is alleged to have changed hands in order to encourage the regional council to turn a blind eye. We started a campaign against the expansion and dump and a lot of court actions later eventually succeeded.

However the town was divided. Local employees of the firm were told their jobs were in jeopardy if the expansion could not go ahead. For them it was a case of livelihoods being put at risk by environmentalists – who they saw anti economic development and NIMBY (not in my back yard) activists. To this day some locals won’t talk to others.

My point is we don’t all live in a rural Idyll, but it is important to protect what you have. The French Commune structure seems to me to be ideal (does it protect residents from legal actions by large corporations and developers? – we had to form our Community Council into a limited company to protect our members from legal actions by the construction company and their supporters). Of course some national infrastructure projects have to take priority over local interests – everyone recognises that. But you also have to protect local communities from unscrupulous developers.

Charles’ post referred to white holes over France. If you look up my locality in Google Earth you will see real white holes in Ireland – put there not by censorship, but by the activities of a ruthless global construction company with no care for the environment.

[Frank Schnittger]

For those who have moved on, there is still quite an interesting debate going on towards the end of the "Wrangling over the Atlantic" thread between James and Rachel over whether Christianity can be used to justify U.S. foreign policy decisions - such as the invasion of Iraq - or whether Europe is as unchristian today as many Christians allege.

Any budding "Just War" theologians out there? Anyone here know anything about Christian social teaching? The debate seems (to me) to raise some very fundamental questions about what Christianity is, or should be about, and whether the US or European societies can be regarded as more "Christian" today in their domestic and foreign policies.

[colin grayson]

am afraid I don't understand your comment GAG ; for me working together with my neighbours is ideal ; responding by giving a small piece of land is an improvement for all , and I am more than content with my new wall ; as a quid pro quo it [ choose your pronunciation] couldn't be bettered
only one person didn't respond positively to the road improvements in the village ; he inherited the property , doesn't live here , in fact I have never met him ; and the piece of land involved is 1 metre by 6 ! the council could get a compulsory purchase order , but are hopeing to be able to use a less litigous method !for the moment the widened road runs up to his property 1 metre too wide , then starts again 6 metres later

[michael robertson]

Thank you Colin, for pointing out to me what a commune actually represents in France. As you are probably aware in the UK, such decisions, especially anything involving widening a road, could not take place without lengthy planning applications, delays, howls of protests from environmentalists, traditionalists and other busybodies, and the result of course would be that no decision would ever be reached, even after a period of years. This outcome would be seen as a triumph of local democratic procedures, but in fact would represent nothing of the sort. I am therefore most impressed that such autonomy exists at a local level in France, a situation quite unlike that in Britain!

[colin grayson]

michael , hope I haven't mislead you in so far as we can't just do as we please in the commune ......having come up with our communal [sic] plan , we then had a visit from the Equipement office to investigate that this conforms to the Departmental scheme , tech regs , etc.

but there is a downside ....the local mayor has a level of power that would be regarded as autocratic in britain , ken livingstone [ mayor of london for non uk readers ] would be regarded as pretty powerless here ; so don't fall out with him [ or increasingly ,her ]

[GAG]

Colin
I didn’t understand your initial comments. Hence my reply.
Good luck with your stone wall. Just watch out for sleeping Adders though.
GAG

[michael robertson]

Colin, It did seem rather surprising, but now you have enlightened me further, I see that you have to comply at some point with the local officials. Even so, it looks like a good system, as Frank Schnittinger has pointed out, local residents are more likely to take charge of issues that they care about, rather than just sit back and complain, or blame other people for local problems and such like. Best of luck with your "grand projet!"

[colin grayson]

michael , it's not so much that we have to comply with the officials ,they can't stop it because it doesn't please them !
but there are all sorts of technical regulations , increasingly european , things like slopes , polluting with the run off , maximum slopes ,radii , etc , and the official ensures we comply or the scheme won't be signed off [ or given a grant !]

it's a bit like building a house ; you apply to the mayor , the council approves [ or not ] ; but if the plans don't meet all the technical building regulations ,whatever we say in the commune

some of the regulations are extremely precise and local e.g. we have a traditional [ for hundreds of years ] design of external shutter , the sort that folds back against the facade ; when the shutters are open the frame is on display ; instead of the more normal french Z , we have a surrounding frame and horizontal cross bar , all with shaped edges ; apply to fit something else , you will get refused ; is this interfering with individual rights ? not in my opinion ; if you want a more modern design for your new house it is quite in order to do so as long as the shutter remains within the framework when open ; but the displayed shutter is part of the character of the area ,hence a tradition thought worth preserving