Take a virtual tour of New York on Google Maps and some blurry images appear.

As you zoom down in satellite view, what looks like the crisp outline of the airport terminal near upstate Buffalo dissolves into a fuzzy white blob. Instead of cars, blotches of color sit in the main parking lot.

Swing southeast 140 miles to the prison in Elmira, near the Pennsylvania border, or the atomic research lab in Schenectady, about 180 miles northeast from there — and the images hide behind the same type of blur.

The alterations are not the work of a hacker. In the post-9/11 world, they're the product of New York state's homeland security apparatus