Polar Flow User Data Can Be Used to Identify Military and Intelligence Personnel

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Remember how in January the mobile fitness app Strava was found to reveal the training routes and user data of military and security personnel? It wasn’t just Strava. A joint investigation by Bellingcat and De Correspondent found that the data for users of the Polar Flow app is even more exposed: even the names and home addresses of military and intelligence personnel working at embassies, bases, intelligence agencies and other sensitive locations could be figured out from the user data. De Correspondent shows how.

Polar, the Finnish company behind the app and service, announced that they were suspending the Explore feature that made the data accessible. They also note, and it’s worth remembering, that Polar data is private by default. If you’re military or intelligence and using a fitness app, what the hell are you doing exposing your location data—especially if you’re in a sensitive location?

The report also contains one hell of a buried lede. They tested other apps, namely Strava, Endomondo and Runkeeper, and, well: “Though it’s harder to identify people and find their home addresses than it is through Polar, we were ultimately able to do so using these apps. In contrast to Polar’s app, there is no indication that people whose profiles are set to private can also be identified in these apps. We informed them of our findings last week.” In other words, this is an industry-wide problem, not just a problem with one or two services. [The Verge]

The Consolation of Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Consolation of Maps (riverrun, June), the first novel from Irish writer Thomas Bourke, is set in the world of map exhibitions and map dealers.  From the publisher’s book description: “Kenji Tanabe finds maps easier to read than people. At the elite Tokyo gallery where he works, he sells antique maps by selling the stories that he sees within their traces: their contribution to progress, their dramatic illustrations, their exquisite compasses. But no compass or cartography can guide him through the events that will follow the sudden and unexpected offer of a job in America.” The description and reviews (see GeoLounge and the Irish Times) portray this as more a literary novel than a mystery or thriller; I’ll have to check it out for myself. It’s only published in the U.K. but is available elsewhere through third-party dealers; Amazon UK will likely deliver regardless of the address. Kindle and iBooks versions will be geographically restricted, of course.

50 States, One Continuous View

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

This is a map of the United States without insets. Published in 1975 by the U.S. Geological Survey, it shows Alaska, Hawaii and the lower 48 states in the same, continuous view—though Hawaii’s Leeward Islands are cut off (as are the various territories). Can’t have everything, I guess. It’s available from the USGS as a free downloadable PDF; the paper version costs $9. [MapPorn]

Previously: Alaska’s Cartographic Revenge.

An Exhibition of Maps Smuggled Out of Napoleonic France

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Gentleman, Soldier, Scholar and Spy: The Napoleonic-Era Maps of Robert Clifford, an exhibition running at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario through 1 September 2018, showcases an unusual collection of maps held by the McMaster University Library: a cache of maps smuggled out of France in the early 1800s by British spy and cartographer Robert Clifford.

Clifford’s maps reveal a world on the cusp of an evolutionary shift in cartography brought about by the Napoleonic wars. Hand-coloured, manuscript maps depicting the precise and exacting geometry of Vauban-designed fortified cities give way to maps printed from engraved plates, incorporating new techniques and symbology to satisfy the shifting focus onto the surrounding landscape of unordered nature. Maps used primarily for the siege of cities in previous generations are re-placed by maps of vast expanses of territory for a new style of open warfare.

How the maps ended up at McMaster is a story in itself; see the Hamilton Spectator’s coverage. [Tony Campbell]

The Illustrated Football Atlas

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
"Harry Kane--England," from Michael Raisch, The Illustrated Football Atlas, 2018.
“Harry Kane–England,” from Michael Raisch, The Illustrated Football Atlas, 2018.
"Paul Pobga--France," from Michael Raisch, The Illustrated Football Atlas, 2018.
“Paul Pobga–France,” from Michael Raisch, The Illustrated Football Atlas, 2018.
"Kevin de Bruyne--Belgium," from Michael Raisch, The Illustrated Football Atlas, 2018.
“Kevin de Bruyne–Belgium,” from Michael Raisch, The Illustrated Football Atlas, 2018.

Created by designer Michael Raisch to coincide with the 2018 FIFA World Cup, The Illustrated Football Atlas combines vintage maps with drawings of the respective countries’ players. For more about this project, there’s an interview with Raisch at both The Guardian and These Football Times. [Mark Safran]

Apple Maps Data Being Completely Rebuilt for iOS 12

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino reported last week on major changes coming to Apple Maps in iOS 12. The underlying data, which has come in for criticism since the service launched, is being redone. Rather than relying on “a patchwork of data partners,” Apple is growing its own map data.

It’s doing this by using first-party data gathered by iPhones with a privacy-first methodology and its own fleet of cars packed with sensors and cameras. The new product will launch in San Francisco and the Bay Area with the next iOS 12 beta and will cover Northern California by fall.

Every version of iOS will get the updated maps eventually, and they will be more responsive to changes in roadways and construction, more visually rich depending on the specific context they’re viewed in and feature more detailed ground cover, foliage, pools, pedestrian pathways and more.

This is nothing less than a full re-set of Maps and it’s been four years in the making, which is when Apple began to develop its new data-gathering systems. Eventually, Apple will no longer rely on third-party data to provide the basis for its maps, which has been one of its major pitfalls from the beginning.

Well worth a read if you’re interested in mobile maps: Panzarino’s article digs down into how Apple will collect and process its mapping data. how it plans to dramatically speed up changes and updates to the map, and how (it says) it’s taking privacy seriously at every step of the process.

New Details Emerging in Pittsburgh Rare Book and Map Thefts

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Some developments in the case of the rare books and maps stolen from the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, which came to light last April. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last week that a former library archivist and a bookseller are the focus of the investigation.

The former archivist of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s rare book collection told investigators he conspired with the owner of an Oakland bookseller since the 1990s to steal and resell items taken from there.

Gregory Priore, who was terminated from the library on June 28, 2017, and John Schulman, who co-owns Caliban Book Shop, are under investigation for theft, receiving stolen property and criminal mischief, according to hundreds of pages of documents unsealed Thursday in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

Charges have not yet been laid. A search warrant was executed at the Caliban Book Shop’s warehouse last August and several of the items reported stolen from the library were apparently recovered.

Note the timeline: we first heard about this in April 2018, but the searches had already been executed the previous August. The thefts had apparently been going on for decades but were only discovered in April 2017. We’re not finding things out in real time. [WMS]

Previously: 314 Rare Books and Maps Stolen from Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

History of Cartography Project’s Sixth Volume Now Available Online

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The History of Cartography Project’s sixth volume, covering the twentieth century, came out three years ago. Edited by Mark Monmonier, it comprised two physical books and nearly two thousand pages and had a list price of $500. That physical edition is still available (e.g. on Amazon), but as of this month it’s available online for free in PDF form, like the first three volumes in the series. (Volumes four and five are still being prepared; volume four, covering the European Enlightenment, is slated to arrive in 2019.) [NLS]

Where Waldseemüller’s Map Was Made

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Writing for BBC Travel, Madhvi Ramani looks at where Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map of the world, famous for being the first map to name “America,” came to be: the church of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges. The collaboration there by Waldseemüller and Martin Ringmann is covered in detail by Toby Lester’s Fourth Part of the World, which Ramani refers to (and I review here), but this take is, well, shorter. [ICA]

Publishing pieces on the Waldseemüller map, often called “America’s birth certificate,” seems to be a thing that happens in early July: Voice of America did it in 2016. Can’t imagine why that might be.

A Collection of Rand McNally Road Atlas Covers

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Rand McNally Road Atlas has long been a staple of North American travellers. The company—still around—is celebrating the atlas’s 95th edition by putting out a retrospective volume of the road atlas’s covers: American Journey: A Treasury of Rand McNally Road Atlas Covers (Rand McNally, 3 June) is a slim hardcover volume: 96 pages, enough for one page per edition. CNN Travel has coverage. [WMS]

Copy of Ratzer’s Map of Colonial New York Auctioned for $150,000

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Plan of the City of New York, in North America, 1776. Map, 123 × 89 cm. New York Public Library.

A 1776 map of New York City sold at auction in New York last April for $150,000, the Daily Mail reported at the time. The map is the second edition of the more famous, and rare, 1770 map showing the work of surveyor Bernard Ratzer. It was published in England, and was apparently put to use by British officers during the American Revolution. The New York Public Library’s copy has been digitized and is available online. [WMS]

Previously: Map of Colonial New Jersey Rediscovered.

Matthew Blackett’s Transit Map of Canada

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Toronto Star talks with Matthew Blackett, who for the past six years has been working on a transit map of Canada. In the figurative sense, not the literal sense: this isn’t a map of Canadian transit networks. Like many maps that draw inspiration from transit network diagrams, Blackett’s map imagines its subject as a giant city: it shows Canadian towns and cities as stops along transit lines that treat regions as neighbourhoods. (Thanks, Dwight.)

Osher Formally Donates Map Collection to USM

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Harold Osher is formally donating his map collection to the University of Southern Maine, a gift with an estimated value of $100 million, along with a contribution to an endowment to support the collection (USM press release, Portland Press-Herald). Osher and his wife, Peggy (who died last month) donated “their initial collection” to the USM in 1989; the map library named after them opened five years later. The Oshers’ collection comprises more than 5,000 maps, the Osher Map Library comprises more than 60 collections and nearly half a million maps. I’m not entirely clear what’s being donated here: I gather the Osher has had access to the Oshers’ maps for some time, and this is a formal transfer of ownership; or perhaps these are additional maps being transferred from their private collection to the USM. Either way, this has some significance. [Tony Campbell]

Previously: Peggy Osher, 1929-2018.

New Books for June 2018

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Cartography.

The big book coming out this month, in all senses of the word, is Cartography. by our friend Kenneth Field (Esri Press, 28 June). “This sage compendium for contemporary mapmakers distills the essence of cartography into useful topics, organized for convenience in finding the specific idea or method you need. Unlike books targeted to deep scholarly discourse of cartographic theory, this book provides sound, visually compelling information that translates into practical and useful tools for modern mapmaking. At the intersection of science and art, this book serves as a guidepost for designing an accurate and effective map.” A hardcover edition is also available.

Borders, Trade and Diplomacy

June saw the publication of a new paperback edition of Jerry Brotton’s Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (Reaktion, 18 June), in which the author “shows that trade and diplomacy defined the development of maps and globes in this period, far more than the disinterested pursuit of scientific accuracy and objectivity, and challenges our preconceptions about not just maps, but also the history and geography of what we call East and West.” Amazon

Carving Up the Globe: An Atlas of Diplomacy, edited by Malise Ruthven (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 18 June), “illustrates treaties that have determined the political fates of millions. In rich detail, it chronicles everything from ancient Egyptian and Hittite accords to the first Sino–Tibetan peace in 783 CE, the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916, and the 2014 Minsk Protocol looming over the war in Ukraine. But there is more here than shifting territorial frontiers. Throughout history, diplomats have also drawn boundaries around valuable resources and used treaties to empower, liberate, and constrain. Carving Up the Globe encompasses these agreements, too, across land, sea, and air. Missile and nuclear pacts, environmental treaties, chemical weapons conventions, and economic deals are all carefully rendered.” Amazon

Steven Seegel’s Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe (University of Chicago Press, 29 June) “takes us through some of these historical dramas with a detailed look at the maps that made and unmade the world of East Central Europe through a long continuum of world war and revolution. As a collective biography of five prominent geographers between 1870 and 1950—Albrecht Penck, Eugeniusz Romer, Stepan Rudnyts’kyi, Isaiah Bowman, and Count Pál Teleki—Map Men reexamines the deep emotions, textures of friendship, and multigenerational sagas behind these influential maps.” Amazon, iBooks

The U.S. Navy and Cartography

To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire by Jason W. Smith (University of North Carolina Press, 8 June). “By recasting and deepening our understanding of the U.S. Navy and the United States at sea, Smith brings to the fore the overlooked work of naval hydrographers, surveyors, and cartographers. In the nautical chart’s soundings, names, symbols, and embedded narratives, Smith recounts the largely untold story of a young nation looking to extend its power over the boundless sea.” (The ebook version was out in April.) Amazon

Multispectral Martellus

Henricus Martellus’s World Map at Yale (c. 1491): Multispectral Imaging, Sources, and Influence by Chet Van Duzer (Springer, 25 June) reports on the results of multispectral imaging of a map previously thought illegible due to faded text. “This volume provides transcriptions, translations, and commentary on the Latin texts on the map, particularly their sources, as well as the place names in several regions. This leads to a demonstration of a very close relationship between the Martellus map and Martin Waldseemüller’s famous map of 1507. One of the most exciting discoveries on the map is in the hinterlands of southern Africa. The information there comes from African sources; the map is thus a unique and supremely important document regarding African cartography in the fifteenth century. This book is essential reading for digital humanitarians and historians of cartography.” Amazon

Map Books of 2018 Updated

The Map Books of 2018 page has been updated to include several new forthcoming books and to reflect changes to previously announced publication dates (which happens quite a lot, it seems).