Citizens Arrest Of Google Car - Accused Of Spying

A Google Maps camera car was prevented from passing through a village in northern Thailand yesterday because the residents suspected the vehicle's driver of being a spy.

Dephrom Fufong, a 27-year-old Chiang Mai man, was briefly detained for interrogation when he drove his camera-mounted Google car into Phrae’s Song district. 

The villagers thought that the government had sent the car to survey the neighborhood for a controversial dam project, which has reached a stalemate as local residents strongly oppose its construction.

Dephrom was forced to swear in front of a Buddha image at the village temple that he had not shot anything in the area. He was then asked to leave.

Dephrom said he was given a letter issued by the village head outlining why Google wasn’t allowed to show the area on its Google Street View service, Mthai reported.

Basic Beijing

Until I came out here, I didn't know that Beijing has some ancient celestial and terrestrial alignment going on its layout, which explains its destiny to rule the entire Universe and beyond for practically ever and ever or at least till the water runs out.

But you don't need to know all that because I'm going to give you a run down of basic Beijing layout. First off, that square in the middle is the forbidden city and as you can see the roads are laid out neat running north, south, east, west except for those ring roads which are like motorways carving through the metropolis (much bigger than the A40M for those inside the M25)

Then as we get closer you can the Forbidden city which has a heavier outline because of the moat that surrounds it, and below that is a star on Tiananmen Square. They say it holds a million people if you want to get some scale of the action that kicked off in 1989. Just a wee bit to the left (or West) is an egg shaped structure which is the National Theater for performing arts I took pictures of over here

Just an inch or so north of Tiananmen Square on the pic below is the famous Chairman Mao portrait.

Yes, I've been playing with Google maps this afternoon and I got bored of checking out the military installations and started sniffing around my neighbourhood. I'm going to have a housewarming party called 'Forbidden City/Naughty Nights' and I've got the invitation card semi thought out already....me being in advertising and all that.