I love the smell of freedom in the morning. Smells like…..my lungs are burning……

The Chinese government has recently begun to come to grips with the fact that rampant pollution is making the country very foggy, and therefore making it nearly impossible to spy on the populace with the 20 million-odd surveillance cameras they’ve placed here and there. Apparently part of the difficulty with addressing the pollution problem is that years of referring to it as “fog,” not “smog,” has led to measures that deal with the former but not the latter. (Pro tip for repressive governments: don’t internalize your own propaganda.)

It’s not just the surveillance cameras on the ground that are having trouble, though. China’s air pollution “fog” has gotten so thick at times that it obscures the view of entire cities from earth orbit. That has got to be frustrating to anyone with spy satellites in the area. China has such an interesting array of giant things that show up in satellite photos, even if the Great Wall of China is not actually visible from space. It would be a shame for all that stuff to be obscured, but I also understand the importance of not being spied upon. If lung-clogging smfog is the price of liberty, then—no, wait, I’m not going there.

Photo credit: click from morguefile.com.