President Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua blames Google maps for last week’s accidental invasion of Costa Rican soil. Nicaraguan troops have been accused of crossing the traditionally debated Nicaragua border into Costa Rica, and setting up camp for the night. The soldiers allegedly took down a Costa Rican flag and hoisted the Nicaraguan flag.
In a blog post, Google said the error was caused by incorrect border data from the State Department and they have since corrected the images, to mirror those that have been politically established since the Cañas-Jerez Treaty of 1858, reaffirmed in arbitration by Grover Cleveland in 1888.
Earlier this year, information giant Google was accused of displaying in their Google-maps an inaccurate version of the border between Cambodia and Thailand. Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, wrote a letter saying Google was “radically misleading,” “professionally irresponsible” and “devoid of truth and reality.”
But Cambodia and Thailand are not the only countries to have google map border issues; several countries are unhappy with the way google depicts their borders, citing as example the fact that Google changes border data when you go to localized versions of Google Maps: If one compares Google India Maps to India on Google Maps , the borders are different.
The Costa Rica/Nicaragua dispute has become so tense, that Jose Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, has visited both countries to mediate over the conflict. He is expected to report on his progress November 9th.
On Saturday, Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla said she was prepared to take the dispute to the UN Security Council if Insulza failed to find a solution.’
“Costa Rica is seeing its dignity smeared and there is a sense of great national urgency [to resolve this problem],” Chinchilla said.
