1. Police Powers > 1st Amend. Here? The government’s police powers trump all sorts of other constitutional considerations under the right circumstances. I’d have to look up all the tests and such since it’s been two years since con law, but the general idea is true from a legal standpoint. Also, from a 1st Amend. perspective, your rights to access this information are not as significant a consideration as Google’s right to put the information out there. Legally, it doesn’t really matter what rights YOU are giving up here.

2. Law and Econ Cost/Benefit: A law and econ type or even public policy aficionado might say this is a classic cost/benefit or expected value issue. What utility do Google Earth users derive from having these buildings clearly visible? What utility would society potentially derive from having these locations blurred? Is there any way to know these values to any useful extent, and if not, is the imperfect information problem the lack of knowledge creates enough to negate the efficiency/societal utility argument if it’s actually in the government’s favor here?

3. This is commercial speech as far as I know, regardless of whether Google makes money DIRECTLY from Google Earth. Please correct me if I’m wrong here. Any law student who’s taken con law, and some who haven’t, knows that commercial speech gets its own type of treatment under constitutional law. This special treatment usually cuts against free speech. We could talk policy on this point all day; however, the special commercial speech classification is a legal fact for now.

Again, please remember my opening to this comment :)