permaculture

[sean forde <sforde@gmail.com>]

The images that you see in Google maps/earth are obtained from various
sources. Broadly speaking, most of the imagery either came from satellites,
or from cameras mounted on airplanes.

The satellite images are low resolution (low level of detail), but cover the
entire earth. The aerial images are high resolution, but only cover specific
portions of the earth where observations airplanes were paid to fly. There
are some US government programs (specifcally NAIP) that charter airplanes
for just this purpose every few years, in order to make aerial observation
of agricultural land available. Google pays for this imagery, and makes it
available in Google Earth. It also purchases aerial imagery from other
sources.

However, there are still some places for which there are no aerial photos.
No government (fed,state, or local) has in interest in shelling out bucks to
photo. Many rural and wild places fall into this category, "below the
radar". In addition, sometimes the datasets get screwed up, and leave holes.

It is unlikely that you land has been purposely "redacted" from Google Earth
due to government edict. It is much more likely that it has just been
omitted.