Archeology grad student pulls the cover off Gitmo growth

A Stanford archeology PhD student named Adrian Myers has harnessed Google Earth to reveal something the US government has tried to keep under wraps: the growth of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. He did so drawing on readily available data, and in a way that violated no laws. Some very clever sleuthing — and a nice bit of quick-cycle archeology. Science has the (paywalled) story from ace archeology writer Heather Pringle.

For human-rights advocates, Gitmo is terra incognita, a place^^of many unknowns, and its clandestine nature and location on^^foreign soil have helped fuel suspicions about the treatment^^of detainees there. In a new study published in World Archaeology^^this week, archaeology Ph.D. student Adrian Myers of Stanford^^University in Palo Alto, California, strips away part of the^^secrecy. By analyzing a series of satellite images easily accessible^^on Google Earth, Myers has drawn the first independent map of^^Gitmo and charted its explosive growth over the past 7 years.^^"He has taken the archaeological eye and turned it on Google^^Earth images of a heavily clouded political prison," says cultural^^anthropologist David Price of St. Martin's University in Lacey,^^Washington. "And this is telling us something about what's going^^on at Gitmo."

Beautiful stuff — and this techno-triumph by an archeology student speaks nicely of the eclectic nature of that discipline.

Myers began studying Google Earth images of Guantánamo^^Bay in April 2009 while gathering data for his dissertation^^on the archaeology of internment camps. At first, he wondered^^whether he would be able to see the prison, given that Google^^Earth gets images from private companies that are subject to^^laws restricting the release of images of military installations^^and other sensitive places. Myers expected Gitmo to be blurred^^out. But it wasn't. "When I navigated there," he says, "I remember^^saying, ‘Holy crap, you can see it.’"

Myers downloaded Google Earth's high-resolution images of Gitmo^^taken on three dates between April 2003 and February 2008. He^^then loaded them into a geographical information system and^^identified features such as roads, guard towers, and barbed^^wire fences. To better interpret what he was seeing, he compared^^the satellite images with official ground photos of the prison^^and with plans he found in a leaked government report. "That^^was key," says Susan Wolfinbarger, a remote-sensing expert at^^the American Association for the Advancement of Science (whichpublishes Science). "That extra contextual information helps^^you to interpret it."

By comparing the dated satellite images, Myers traced the prison's^^evolution. Initially, the government built temporary plywood^^barracks surrounded by chain-link fences. But as the war dragged^^on, it built a more permanent facility, Camp Delta, that contained^^structures closely resembling concrete supermaximum-security^^prisons. It also significantly expanded Gitmo. Over a 5-year^^period beginning in April 2003, the number of prison structures^^soared by nearly 40%; floor space expanded from 42,920 to 61,558^^square meters, an increase of about 40%.

Myers thinks the makeshift prison in 2003 reveals how the U.S.^^military was caught off-guard by the war on terror, capturing^^suspects before it had prepared a prison, and that the later^^building boom signaled an intention to hold prisoners for a^^long period. Given the many questions that human-rights groups^^have raised about the covert prison over the years, adds Wolfinbarger,^^it's somewhat surprising that an archaeologist was the first^^to map it: "I can't believe that someone in geography didn't^^think to do this." (A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment^^on Myers's study and said she could not confirm that the images^^were of Gitmo.)

There's quite a bit more to the story, and I must say I think it's a shame it's paywalled. It's of public interest, for starters. And even from a business point of view, I find Nature's newish practice of providing free access to news and most features, while still paywalling the peer-reviewed content, to make more sense: It spreads lay-audience-level write-ups (and the magazine's rep) to the public while preserving the the truly exclusive content — the peer-reviewed articles — for subscribers. A nice compromise, methinks. [Disclosure: I'm writing a feature for Nature right now. Conceivably that colors my view — though I did express approval at Nature's opening of its non-peer-reviewed content at the time it took effect, which would argue I'm in on the idea regardless.)

In any case, this is a juicy and well-written story. Pringle has more interesting work at her website, well worth exploring.