Using Google Earth to Find an ISIS Training Camp
Anyone who is impressed by this should seriously check out Andrew Sullivan's view from your window contest. Most weeks a reader submits a photo from their window, literally anywhere in the world. And people track it down with very similar techniques, to the exact window. And a lot of the contest photos offer much less to go off of than this [namely, only 1 photo, low res, country/context unspecified].<p>Here is the winners archive.<p><a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-contest/" rel="nofollow">http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-contest/</a><p>Some of photos aren't too crazy or offer a landmark that is recognizable if you'd seen it before.  But most of them offer very little in terms of knowing where to start unless you've got a huge body of contextual knowledge you can draw on.<p>A couple ones that I had absolutely no idea where to start with:<p><a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/08/17/the-view-from-your-window-contest-winner-11/" rel="nofollow">http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/08/17/the-view-from-your...</a>
<a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/19/the-view-from-your-window-contest-winner-218/" rel="nofollow">http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/19/the-view-from-your...</a><p>I imagine the CIA/NSA has a crack team of a couple dozen people doing this exact job.