A California lawmaker has introduced a bill that would require all virtual mapping programs to blur out schools, places of worship, government or medical buildings or face hefty fines and possible jail time.

A California lawmaker has introduced a bill that would require all virtual mapping programs to blur out schools, places of worship, government or medical buildings or face hefty fines and possible jail time.

Assemblyman Joel Anderson, a Republican, crafted the bill after it was revealed that terrorists in Israel and Mumbai used popular mapping programs to help plot their attacks.

"All I'm trying to do is stop terrorists," Anderson told the AP. "I don't want California to be helping map out future targets for terrorists."

According to the bill text, photographs and images of schools, places of worship, government or medical buildings must be blurred. Street-level imagery would also be banned. Companies that violated the provisions of the bill would face fines of up to $250,000 for every day the illegal imagery was available online.

Top-level executives and board members at these companies, meanwhile, who knowingly let these images remain online could face up to three years in jail.

"We are happy to speak with Assemblyman Anderson regarding this legislation and hope to have a productive conversation," a Google spokesperson said Tuesday. "Google Maps and Google Earth provide users with a rich, immersive experience, offering useful information and enabling greater understanding of a specific location or area."

Google made headlines earlier this year when it was revealed that images of the vice president's home in Washington were no longer obscured after Dick Cheney moved out.

The company's popular Street View offering provides 360-degree, street-level images from cities around the world. When it first debuted, bloggers had fun picking out amusing images captured by the Google camera, but Google also took some heat when some people recognized themselves in the photographs. It later announced that it would blur peoples' faces.

The current level of openness varies from mapping program to mapping program. There is no set law governing how these companies must handle their images. Much of the satellite imagery used by mapping programs comes from international companies over which U.S. agencies have no jurisdiction, Dave Burpee, a public affairs officer with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), told PCMag.com in 2007 after the debut of Google Street View.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company was unable to address the issue at this time.

This post originally appeared on AppScout.