And I would guess that Russia is actively doing either preparations for or actual drilling for oil, natural gas, or similar, because in the past couple of years they have ramped up mineral explorations as the Arctic ice retreats and has eyes on making as many claims as possible. 

Paige
From: "Chris Hanson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 8, 2016 2:13:24 PM
Subject: Re: These 20 Places Have Been Hidden from the Public by Google

Well, this was posted on April 1st but I did confirm that many of the places are actually pixelated and/or obscured in google maps ... I'm mostly curious about #3 the islands in Russia. Does anyone know why that is obscured


I would guess simply because nobody has bothered acquiring satellite images of them because there's no interest in them.

--
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