Marijuana growers busted on Google Earth

[Indycar]

Officials told reporters that between 2004 and 2008, the gang is believed to have sold up to seven tons of the drug; illegally earning three to ten million Swiss francs a year.

 

Found the location, and the image is dated to 2000. It appears the cops aren't bright enough to write em up for the previous 4 years leading up to 2004.

[Nooby]

Yup I got it on my GE but it's Hattenhausen and not Thurgau, but fuck a duck there's no way you'd even look that close if you weren't already suspicious that 'something' was going on in that general area. And if the growers hadn't planted a 'field within a field' why would they even look closer. Still don't see how they tell it's weed from that photo though, must be enough to get them to send out a ground crew to look closer?

 

Wonder what else they they use these satellites for? I mean how many billions to get a satellite up and running compared to how much the cops can sell that crop for?

 

indy, mine says 'image 2009'

Edited February 3, 2009 by Nooby

[Indycar]

indy, mine says 'image 2009'

 

Any chance of a screenshot, man? I got a feeling your making the same blu as a few. It'll show up down the bottom, right of centre.

 

EDIT: By the way, i still highly doubt they were tipped off by a cop using GE alone. If you spend a bit of time, casing the region. There appears to be quite a few plot abnormalities, just like any other rural area.

[Nooby]

Any chance of a screenshot, man?

 

Bulk hassle dude. ;P

 

The thing at the bottom of the screen says 2009 tele atlas, Image 2009 geo content.

 

Either way there's no way they'd be able to spot that just from randomly looking at Google Earth pics, they would have had a tip off and then 'maybe' used GE afterwards to pinpoint it...if at all.

[jabez]

They say they were already investigating them. So they would have been checking the house out and seen that they had are crop of some sort that they were trying to hide, then if the owners of the property had a history of growing cannabis then that would proberly be enough to get a search warrant in Australia.

 

Then the other thing you would have to consider even if the picture is old there still might be an old crop there. But they would clearly have to be investigating you to be looking that close I would think.

[Indycar]

OK jabez, seeing you know so much about it, here's a couple of questions

 

1) How do you know it's a crop of cannabis 'n not some other crop?

2) How is that crop hidden?

3) How do you know the owner had a history of growing cannabis

 

Nooby, see pic below man. I think your looking at the company 'n year the scan is copywritten to. To the right of that, you'll see the ACTUAL date the scan was taken.

[jabez]

1) You can't tell what kind of crop it is, but it would be a useful tool for the jacks if you were being investigated and they wanted an idea where to start looking.

 

2) there's clearly a 2 acre crop in that photo that someone is trying to hide from the ground by putting it in the middle of the corn crop. I think any copper would come to that conclution.

 

3) I don't know anything about the owners of the property. I was just saying that if you had history of growing cannabis and the coppers had a picture like that of your property then it would proberly be enough to get a warrant.

[Pebbz]

I had a look at GE last night... I dunno if it's the version I have or what, but I'd find it hard to pick mj from another plant or tree in a yard, unless ya had massive greenhouses all over the place and they had a reason to be looking right into ur backyard. Even when I tried to zoom in as close as possible, it didn't make the image any clearer for me to be able to tell what plant was growing there.

 

just thought I'd share that.

 

Pebbz

[Indycar]

Cheers for your answers jabez. Now i understand you know little about Agriculture as well.

 

[Pure]

Thought it was about time I added my 2 cents .

 

No-one seems to have mentioned "google high res" locations or that google earth collect data from allot more than just government satalites. They get images from everywhere and anywhere really , national geographic are a big supporter and they also don't put as harsh restrictions on the image quality or zoom capabilities that the government satality images have , that said Every image has to be aproved before it can be used and it could have very well been a situation like this that led to a very clear image ( that has not been aproved ).

 

Here are some examples that are available on the professional edition of GE , again though these are quite specific area's and I really don't know how many of them there are

 

 

 

Video footage

 

 

 

Australia Day was last week. For the occasion, both Google and Microsoft both planned to do flyovers to snap imagery of the Sydney landscape and actual Sydney residents (Sydneysiders) for the event - ultimately to be used in Google Earth, Google Maps and Microsoft Live Local (Virtual Earth). However, Google’s flyover didn’t work as planned.

 

Microsoft ran a “Look Up and Smile” campaign with prizes such as $2000 for the best dressed person. Aussies came out to claim their space on the maps with lavish banners and love letters, all dressed up and ready for the big day.

 

Microsoft obtained permission to fly over Centennial Park at 11.20am on Friday at an altitude of 2500m, and they did just that. Google on the other hand, got shot down by Sydney air traffic control Friday morning.

 

In fact, Terry O’Connor, the spokesperson for Air Services Australia told Google it would be almost impossible to fly over the area they proposed. Google proposed to fly at an altitude much lower than Microsoft, at 600m.

 

You can imagine the disappointment when the folks that came out to participate and earn their spot on Google Maps Australia discovered they were not going to get what they came out for. One person reportedly spent $10,000 on a 50-meter sign with his company’s logo and web address.

 

Article link

 

I simply can't comment on what the government has available to them but I can assure you that it is more than we are provided with because there was a whole bunch of litigation stuff at the start of google earth and you also have to consider the fact that anything google can or does get passes through the hands of a compliance officer for aproval before going up in any version of GE soany flyover shots done are accesable aswell ( not to mention all the fly over shots military planes and the like take themselfs).

 

As far as these dudes go , who knows how they got done except for those investigating it the fact is if it WAS from potential GE shots we are never going to see them