A few years back, satellite imagery was the exclusive domain of government entities. But private business has gradually moved in, and over time, the equipment they're sending into space is providing sharper imagery and greater detail. That has left some governments wondering whether the pictures might be revealing a bit too much about sensitive locations. Now, at least one California legislator has taken those worries to an extreme: He wants all government buildings, including schools, to get the low-res treatment from Google Earth and similar services; failure to comply would mean hefty fines and jail time.

For the most part, satellite imagery services have reached agreements with various governments about whether they can photograph sensitive locations and, if so, at what resolution. Similar informal agreements exist with companies such as Microsoft and Google, which provide maps and virtual earth services. For example, as shown here, the images available of the neighborhood near Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC start to get blurry as the service maps areas closer to the White House.

But these sorts of agreements are informal and, apparently, subject to revision without notice. That's the apparent message of a story that appeared in The Sun, which found that a military base that houses some of the country's nuclear-armed submarines had lost the protective fuzziness that had masked its appearance in earlier versions of Google's imagery service. The same applied to its MI-6 intelligence ministry headquarters and the barracks for the UK's special forces. When asked about the change, The Sun was told by a Google spokesman that "we do listen to requests from governments but we don’t comment on the details of any of those discussions."

That story may help explain the attention that's now being given to California legislation, Assembly Bill 255, which was introduced nearly a month ago. That bill would move well beyond sensitive military installations and require any company that offers either a satellite imagery service or a street view to blur out a huge collection of buildings. The bill would add schools, hospitals, government buildings, and places of worship to the list of locations that have to receive blurring.

Perhaps more significantly, the bill won't rely on ad hoc agreements between the government and service providers; instead, the bill would give the government some serious legal weaponry if it chose to go after the companies. Anyone found violating the requirements would be hit with fines of a quarter of a million dollars a day for each day the image remains pristine. The company's executive officers would also face a minimum of a year in jail.

As with many recent instances of misguided legislation, this one appears to have been prompted by fears of terrorism. The basic logic appears to be that anything terrorists might conceivably use to make their lives easier has to be stopped, even if that same service makes the lives of ordinary citizens easier. Presumably, atmospheric oxygen will be targeted with legislation at some point in the future.

Even by that logic, this bill fails by being overly narrow. By simply targeting street view and satellite services, the legislation's author has left a huge variety of pictures of the Capitol and the Berkeley Campus sitting online, undisturbed. It's especially ironic that one of the aerial views is hosted by University of California, Berkeley itself, home of John Yoo, who is notably not a fan of terrorists.

Presumably, this legislation will never make it past the introductory stage. Still, there's a strong argument to be made that it deserves any publicity it gets, in that the publicity may discourage others from introducing legislation without thinking.