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Eye in the Sky Busts Fraudulent Farmers
Peter Kuhns writes: "Awesome article about Big Brother using USGS satellite photos to ferret out a fraudulent farming company that scammed insurance companies over lost crops. The USGS apparantly takes lots of infrared (re:remote sensing) photos of the entire nation and stores this data going back a number of years. This is a big wake up call to farmers, the government, and potentially the USGS, who could suddenly be in the business of big business." Another very cool use of USGS data is drawmap, which I discovered a few months ago.
lawyer: Your honor, recent X-Ray signals picked up by the SOHO solar observatory suggest that Earth's natural infrared emmissions reflect off the sun's surface and can be reassembled into images as you can see here in exhibit A. While we'd like to thank the scientists for their incredible work, however damaging these images are to the defendants case, I'd like to draw the courts attention to the eye witness' account of the Adjuster who claims no crops were planted.
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Well, Most ofthe farmers I know are independant "I can make it on my own" type of people. They hate the thought of taking substidies. However there are bad apples in every bunch. It only takes one farmer to take the goverment aid, and because of what that does to situation (which isn't what you would think without knowing advanced ecconomics and accounting for not all these farmers having done so) they are forced to take those same themselves.
Getting rid of goverment aid would change the situation again, and how isn't exactly clear. Some things have changed since grandpa ran the farm without goverment intervention.
I'm glad this was used in this way.
1. Farm insurance is pretty expensive, some of that expense no doubt is because of fraud.
2. It's not like farmers don't know that TR-1s (U-2s) and satellites are doing this, they get copies all the time in the mail. In fact there is a *huge* depository of them in plain sight at Sioux Falls South Dakota - the EROS data center.
3. I noticed some people comparing this to the recent court case about IR and pot growing. It's not the same technology, this is a near infrared that lets them see through cloud cover, not walls. In all the pictures I've seen of the family farm, you couldn't see through the roof.
All in all it's a good thing.
Test case? The USGS has been providing this sort of data since the 60s & 70s. Depending on what was actually used, the cost to the USDA was much smaller than what it would have cost to pay the insurance claim. Here is the product list and prices. A person can search for what is currently available with GLIS or EarthExplorer.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
That depends. The place where this data came from is probably in Daschle's state, so he may use some of his new clout to keep that facility fully funded. It would be better for the budget cutters to go after the social services branches of the Federal Govt than it would small agencies. Easily more waste and fraud in those areas than these agencies budgets. Unfortunately, if they did the bleeding heart media would have a field day about the mean ole Govt going after the poor.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Since probably many people on /. probably don't know how this works, I'll post a brief summary.
;^)
The aperature equation determines the resolution of a satellite (or any other imaging instrument).
X = h*lambda/(L*cos(A))
where h is the height, lambda is the wavelength of the electromagnetic signal (light, radio, etc),
L*cos(A) is the projected length of the receiver (antenna, lens aperature)...
Plugging in some numbers say...
h=1000km, (too high for a survellance satellite, but easier math)
lambda=1um (near infra-red)
L=1m (a small satellite)
With this you get 1 meter resolution (yikes), although it doesn't account for distortion, etc...
Of course one way to increase the resolution is to get closer (reduce h), use higher frequencies
(reduce wavelengths), or increase the receiving aperature (big satellites are hard to fly).
Then there's this trick to increase the resolution of satellites that combine multiple "looks" of
the same object from different positions to simulate a large aperature. This technique is
called synthetic aperature imaging.
Non-geo-stationary satellites can combine multiple "looks" at a point while they fly by to
improve the resoltion. Of course there are problems like dopper shift, atmospheric distortion,
range shifts, etc that have to get accounted for, but this is the basic idea.
The problem with a geo-stationary satellite looking at you is that they fly very high
(very large h) and the don't move relative to the point target.
Of course a more realistic account would be in Tom Clancy's Patriot games where the real-time
image could only be obtained for a short time until the low-flying fast-moving spy satellite
couldn't see the target any more over the horizon...
But I digress...
Google Category
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Bleh!
Earth Science Corps
MS 513
U.S. Geological Survey
Reston, Virginia 20192
for more information on doing so. I have to agree with you: after using the aforementioned maps to find my way to a very remote part of NM last week, I have a new favorite organization as well!
"I don't think I ain't" -Thompson's Corollary to Descartes
EXACTLY. While a lot of the things Government-authorized people are allowed to do these days does bother me, I've never had a problem with the "plain view doctrine". A police officer pulling someone over at random and demanding to search the car just in case they're carrying drugs bothers me, but a police officer pulling over a car with smoke pouring out of the windows and arresting the driver on the basis that there's a planter full of marijuana plants plainly visible in the front seat next to an open, half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels doesn't really bother me at all...
100's of acres of land out in the open sounds like "plain view" to me, too.
---
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
A few days ago the Supreme Court banned remote
sensing searchs of one's home, specifically
heat sensors for marijuana gardens lamps.
I don't believe this extends to businesses (farmland),
but probably to one's cars.
Not to promote Mickeysoft or anything, but they have an awfully nice timekiller on the web called Terraserver. It holds a crapload of fairly-recent USGS satellite maps (1994/1996 or so) that you can zoom in on, and pick out your home town, your home street, even your house and the car in your driveway from orbit...Your entire neighborhood photographed at 1m resolution. For example, I work here...Zoom in, and you can see me waving to the satellite's camera.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Last time I played with mapping software was using GIS stuff at U of A. Oy, if that doesn't split your head nothing will. Drawmap looks very cool indeed.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Besides, everyone knows hydroponics is the way to go...
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Very true, considering the higher "altitude" required by geosynchonous systems. My posting should have been more precise as the numbers I quoted were for lower non-geosynchronous orbits. However given two or more geosynchonous systems, one could mathematically obtain higher resolution images at geosynchronous altitudes. Of course this would entail quite a bit of post processing and could not occur in real time given present technology eh?
As for "Enemy of the State", I did not see the movie, but given what I did see in "Patriot Games"? I would not be suprised if it were portrayed in much the same manner.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Actually, there is the possibility of tasking a satellite (starting with the KH-11 series) so that it crosses over the path of what you are interested in. (Retasking satellites is only done in cases of national interest as it is expensive) From there a rotating mirror can keep the target in constant field of view as the satellite passes overhead. Additionally it is more than likely (attn: NSA, public domain info) that electro-optical based satellites can be tasked to fly in geosynchronous orbits to maintain constant observation without all of the the issues associated with image processing of data obtained at various angles of incidence. Of course if you are talking of pure video relay, there is little processing to perform other than cleaning up images looking through lots of atmosphere etc... Also it should be noted that while optimal resolution of imagery can achieve 10cm or slightly better, video resolution is much worse. (20-30 cm at best) (Attn: NSA, public domain info). If you are looking at IR video, it will be lower resolution than standard video. (50cm at best)
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I hope this isn't off topic, but a segment of the government that doesn't get much spotlight is the work the USGS does. Here's a great example. The USGS does a great job for the country (whether or not you like the big brother mentality of this article). They monitor stream flow, mineral resources, earthquake activiey, etc.
/. community will get in an uproar when NASA gets its huge budget cut, but I would make the case you should all be aware of the great work the USGS does, and maybe support their great silent works.
I use to work for the USGS and they have had their budget cut year after year. I don't think they'll do too well under the Bush administration either. One of the things they were really working on when I left them was public relations. The USGS does alot for you all, whether you know it or not. Everyone in the
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
While some might argue that this sets a dangerous precedent, I think using this sort of satellite imagery to investigate an insurance claim is probably much less intrusive than the conventional invetigations insurance companies pursue.
Having the insurance company confirm that there is no fraud occuring by using satellite images (hopefully with the authorization of the farmer making the claim), involves really no-one else other than the farmer and the company.
On the other hand, if they investigate by asking around the community, obtaining possibly irrelevant financial records, etc., very quickly everyone in the farmer's community will know about it. News (especially juicy gossip like an accusation of insurance fraud) travels fast in a small town. Unless the farmer *wants* other people to know that he's making an insurance claim, nobody really has the right to know this.
I feel using this sort of technology does a better job of *protecting* the farmer's privacy than it does of invading it.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
It's only software!
Hmmm.... The Canton, NY office of the USDA still uses the system you described. Or at least they did until 1997, which is the last time I was over there.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
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Caimlas
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I used USDA pictures circa 1962 which were flown using former WWII photo recon cameras (and still in B-something or other aircraft no doubt). The negatives (negative print film) were roughly 10x10 because the film was 12" wide. All in IR. The last sets I used were taken around 1982.
Much as your strips were taken, 20-30% overlap, great stereo, flown around 5k' above the surface. We, alas, had to manually fix the roll and yaw... a major pain in the rear. Doing it with 35mm would be even harder manually, but by computer, a major win.
Sad they've switched totally to satelites. It would be a cake job to overfly with GPS stamps on every frame now. When some fool knocks down the satelites, there will be a mad scramble to re-build the older infrastructure.
Thanks again for the update!
former photo analyst,
-- Multics
Now that I have that said...
At one point or another your property (the few of you that actually own property in the USA) was probably imaged this week. Your land is probably imaged 30 or 40 times a year (especially right now where there is maximum sun and sun angles are very high). That 30-40 doesn't count being spied on the NRO or the Russians (or whomever else). Most of the pictures are so low-res that they get what they need for time-sensitive maps (crops, diseases, erosion, land types, etc) that short of you doing something outrageously odd, you'll not be bothered.
How do you think that your precious GPS navigator got its maps? It wasn't from a State Road Inventories since they are not accurate enough. It was from being overflown.
Ever see big Xs, +s or Ls painted on the pavement? Well those are there so the overflight photos can be tied to known geographic locations and the photos can be tied together to build a mosaic.
What makes this story vaguely more intresting is that it is about satelite photos, not traditional air photos. Further the USGS took the photos but the USDA got to use them.
USDA has been overflying on crop validations since at least the 1960s (perhaps as far back as the mid-1940s). How do you think the estimates of crop production get produced? Overflights by Billy-Bob in his Piper with a classic B/W Kodak IR film (roughly 10"x10" negatives, BTW) do most of the heavy lifting then some poor photogramitrist measures whatever was of interest and poof, yet another thematic map.
You folks need some sense of how the world works. Most of this has been happening since long before you were born.
-- Multics
See also:
GEOG 415-001: Air Photo Interpretation
Air Photo Interpretation
And for you EUers, Air Photo Services.
P.S. About crop insurance... go read the USDA web site before you spout about it -- no bailouts there, oh clueless ones.
I'm no fan of pot being illegal, but don't be pissed because the cops use technology to observe what's going on.
The cops were using technology to circumvent the 4th Amendment's protection from unlawful search - so yes, you should be pissed when this happens. And you should be delighted that the SCOTUS shot it down as unconstitutional.
You seem to prefer to flame rather than think.
First, read Cpt. Nitpick's response, he beat me to answering. Then consider this: all this does is up the ante. The fraudulent farmers will simply find new ways to cheat. The problem has not been solved.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Between this publicity and cool people like Orlando Jones' character in _Evolution_ working for the USGS, I think I've found my new favorite organization.
Okay, seriously: Busting fraud is way cool in my book.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Depends on who you are and what you have access to. Your average internet user? No. If you're the NRO, its a different story...
I see a fun anarchist legend in the works...
Get black paint, and cover up the white crosses.
Get white paint, and paint random Xs, +s or Ls all over your town in random locations.
Before they know it, the USGS will be mapping Los Angeles right next to San Jose! Wish I could see those Geologists faces right now...
"Holy shit! Now THAT is some big Continental Drift!"
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
This is interesting because now we have a systematically assembled and stored database.
The question is, if the spatial resolution on these scans were good enough to detect growing lamps in your house (who knows?), would the authorities need a search warrant to look at their own data?
This raises a more general question about the use of data mining for law enforcement. With increased collection of data about where we go and what we do (credit card records, electronic toll paying devices, face recognition software, satellite images, etc.) Can (and should) the government search datasets that it owns (or others) looking for suspicious patterns? Yes, they can use these data once they suspect you, but can they use it to find new suspects?
Besides, if you have ever thought that anything that can be viewed from the sky is private you have been in a cave on the moon since the cuban missle crisis. There are commercial companies as well as *publicy* available pictures of lots of stuff like this.
Your rights of privacy are overridden by the rights of everybody else to fly more than 400 feet over your property and take pictures. Suck it up.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Not true - though wouldn't it be nice if life was this simple?
Visit one crop insurer I've dealt with - American Agrisurance - and learn how it's not so simple.
After a massive battle to keep you from getting a lousy $300 back per individual, you should know that the government likes to keep its money.
*scoove*
I just showed this article to a soybean farmer friend of mine (5500+ acres in southwest Iowa).
Besides not being surprised that the government would spend its billion dollar defense network on spying on the little guy, he pointed out how amusing it was that all this energy is going into protecting the government's crop insurance stake while the farmer is slowly slipping into oblivion.
(And before some city fool posts an obnoxious, ignorant post about crop subsidies and all the government waste, let me point out that these guys can't stand it either - but faced with government protection of wholesale monopolies that name their price for crops in ebay fashion, that subsidy means the difference between them eeking out a pathetic survival and you having nothing on your dinner plate).
Record low crop prices, record high fuel and fertilizer prices and the whole mess about GMOs (resulting in international boycotts of US produced foods, using GMO as an excuse for nationalistic crop protection) are encouraging the die hards to get out of the business. Heck, in the state of Washington, they're considering paying apple producers to simply destroy orchards. They can't affect the wholesalers, so they'll affect you at home (while the wholesalers rake in even more dollars).
It'll backlash, certainly. Consumers are engineering the beginnings of a California energy crisis in the agriculture markets by choosing to destroy their producers. Just like the greens in CA successfully killed off electricity production, protection of ag distribution monopolies combined with other factors will ensure prohibitively expensive foods in 10-15 years.
So yes, the big guy is doing well. He's smart - greasing both parties at the same time (Microsoft's recently corrected error). He's also getting a great return on his investment, especially if the world's greatest military is now working for him by spying on the serfs in the fields.
You're going to get just what the big guy wants you to buy, at the price he names. Groceries at 40%+ of your income just around the corner...
*scoove*
p.s. If you want to do something about it, support the open source of agriculture. Go down to your local farmer's market this weekend and buy food there. Slashdotters claim to hate Microsoft, yet support the Microsoft of agriculture every time they go to the big grocery store. BUY DIRECT - better, fresher, honest food!
My guess is they just called up the USGS and asked them for a picture the USGS took anyway.. Hell, they prolly even paid the $40-50 the USGS usually wants..
So no.. Unless they paid that expert witness a half mil.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Why didn't the insurance company send somebody out to inspect the crops? Why wouldn't the insurance company require the farmers to at least photograph the crops and the damage?
Someone you trust is one of us.
Not yet. If you look at commercial satellite imagery companies, most satellites have a 1 meter or larger resolution. We're talking about maybe being able to distinguish between cars and trucks, not look at the 1/4 inch you are extending over your property line.
Nope. If you look around at commercial satellite imagery companies, they seem to be struggling to get a 24 hour turn around time on still images, let alone video.
And also the GPS unit on your tractor said you were doing 40MPH in a 35MPH farm zone. Here is your ticket.
Ask Slashdot - google for stupid people.
What about the recent SCOTUS decision about using heat sensors to discover pot grows? theoretically, this could even be used for the exact same thing. This stuff gives me the creeps.
Heat sensors were being used to look inside houses while these satalites photograph what is out in the open. Legally, its called "plain sight". Anything that can been seen out in the open can be used against you. For example, the police pull over a car for running a red light. The police can not open and search the trunk to find the money the people in the car just robbed from a nearby bank (unbeknownst to the police). Now, if the loot was in the back seat and the police officer could see it though the window (in "plain sight") he could use it as evidence and arrest the people in the car for the robbery. He still can't open the trunk to find the 20 killos of coke in it (unless he received a warrant, received consent from the driver, or had evidence suggesting there were drugs in it).
It would be another story if the satalites could "see" inside building (ie: infared heat sensor).
When the U.S. government says that they won't tolerate no bullshit, they literally mean it.
http://www.perljam.net/misc/drawmap/www.ttc-cmc.ne t/%257Efme/drawmap.html
Every farm in Europe now has to submit an annual IACS form (Integrated Administration and Control System), listing what they are going to grow that year field-by-field; and submit new maps with it showing any changes in field boundaries (new fences etc), with the new areas measured to the nearest 100 square metres (0.01 of a hectare).
These plans are then automatically compared against the IR satellite photos of what actually gets grown. If you have planted less than you have claimed for, your entire subsidy claim is void. If it looks like you've done it intentionally, they'll nail you for fraud. (The inspectors are on results bonuses, so they don't take prisoners).
Crazy system, the C.A.P., in lots of ways; but without farm support, many of the more marginal Scottish rural areas would turn into depopulated deserts.
Hi!
All kidding aside, Microsoft does have a mapping product: Microsoft MapPoint 2002. And as somebody in the business, I can tell you three things:
The first version of MapPoint (2001) was nice--but this version is substantially better, at least from a programmer's perspective. The object model exposed by the product is substantially richer--doing something like reverse geo-coding (which is very complicated using MapQuest's server engine) is a breeze.
Pricing: With regard and respect to enthusiasts for the GPL, Microsoft is by no means the bad guy when it comes to software pricing. Go price any kind of small-market toolset--the prices can be hideous. For example, GIS mapping systems: the big guns come from ESRI, MapInfo, and MapQuest (now part of AOL). You license the server software--and then you license data (typically on a quarterly subscription). (Data usually comes from GDT or NavTech.) How much? We're paying an annual subscription fee (for the server license and the data) of roughly $40,000. And that doesn't include any Canadian data.
Yeah, you read it right. Forty thousand bucks per year.
And here comes Microsoft with MapPoint 2002. Better data, substantially easier programming model, more reliable tool--for $295. Not $295/year--just $295.
That's not all we're going to end up paying. Microsoft themselves doesn't seem to have figured out that you can use MapPoint in a server setting--we're inquiring about what a server license will cost. But we're confident that it will be substantially less than we're paying presently. (The client, who actually has to foot this bill, is late for a meeting here. That's why I'm cruising /. at midday.)
Public domain data: Most GIS systems focusing on the United States use street data based on the public-domain TIGR data files. You can download the TIGR data from a number of sources--but don't get your hopes up. The data isn't very good. Any commercial GIS system will use data that has been "enhanced" by GDT, NavTech, or another data provider--to make sure, for instance, that Main Street in your town actually runs from 41.44323N/-75.3323W to 41.87332N/-75.40012W. The original TIGR files were created by the Census Bureau--to be sure that every house was enumerated. They didn't plan on people using GPS units to compare with the maps, and basing life-or-death decisions on their data. When municipalities began developing 911 emergency response systems (and literally making life-or-death decisions based on the map data) the flaws in the TIGR data became all-too-apparent. So third-party providers like GDT exist to compare the map data with satellite imagery and aerial photographs to make sure that map objects are correctly placed. MapPoint, like any other commercial GIS tool, is based on third-party-enhanced data from GDT and NavTech.
If you're doing GIS work, this is a tool that's definitely worth looking into.
Uh, I think you rushed to quickly to jump on big brother and not bother to notice that these satellites are infared, not photo.
These things wouldn't be able to notice the lot locations, only the houses (since your house is climate controlled, and would show up only as a yellow dot in a red background if it was a hot day outside). It would have no idea how well your home or roof are built. It would not happen to notice whether or not you were standing outside naked waving your full monty (now a legit word... thank you, Oxford) to your neighbor.
...of course, you'd probably still go to jail, if your neighbor got too offended.
Personally, although there are big brother issues, I hope everyone realizes that there are already satellites orbiting in space that take pictures of the Earth already (you know, the ones that can pick off your license plates, and the ones that can tell that you're speeding even though they're 31 miles away). We were too busy crying for better satelite TV and cell phone availability to figure out what was going on in abusing this technology.
Although, I'm glad that these things were put to good use in this case. Being from a farming state and knowing the current farm economy (or lack thereof), I'm glad to see them stopping farm insurance claim fraud, because it's incredably easy to file for...all you gotta do is spend an hour filling out the right papers, plus an hour calling your state representative demanding justice if the claim was rejected the first time. Rarely will you get a visit from any big insurance guys unless you claim some proposterous amount of land that was damaged.
Maybe the insurance companies can use these satellites to catch those pesky aliens mutilating farmers' cattle. Those aliens must cost the insurance companies a fortune in payouts.
What, you're pissed that the gov't enforces laws by observing what you do? Do you expect the bad guys to turn themselves in?
I'm no fan of pot being illegal, but don't be pissed because the cops use technology to observe what's going on.
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So how is it that simply being observed is a violation of the 4th Amendment? The cops are LOOKING. It's surveillance. You gonna say the cops can't look at your house, or your backyard? Absurd.
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Well, I will (as usual) be called a fascist, but my opinion would be that if each individual peice of data is legal for them to have, there is no reason it would not be legal for them to cross check all that data. What they do with the patterns is another question.
I don't know enough about law enforcement or (for example) drug production and dealing to know to what extent a corelation of banking habits, energy consumption, travel and or video rentals could be considered "probable cause" to start a formal or informal investigation. Where does it become harrassment based on "profile"? Its a legitamate question, but no more debilitating of one than the profiling issues that have recently plauged highway patrolmen etc. It is in other words an issue to be dealt with, not one to make us ban the practice altogether. All IMFO of course.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
It's good to know that I'm being watched. It's not good to know that being watched will always work to someone else's advantage. Ah...
Fraudulent companies only get fined? Big whoop. Fines are not a deterrent. Throw white collar criminals in jail. Give them real reason to fear getting caught.
I remember back during the OJ Simpson trial thinking there had to be one decent shot of Brentwood in the US/China/USSR satellite archives.
What would this show? It would show the location of the "White Bronco" and the time it was(n't) there and since we are talking IR we could even see if the engine was warm.
Kidnappings and lots of other crimes could be traced with this tech beyond just farm fraud.
But with all things there is a dark side.
The next thing you know this information is commercially, don't even think about publicly, available and you find your email and mail box stuffed with spam saying they noticed that YOU where stuck in traffic at 17:45, of course no spamer would ever assume their customer was smart enough to read military time, and they want to sell you something to easy your time to and from work.
In short: rejoice for the good this can bring. In long: Big Brother is watching.
Ascii artist &
It's for Windows and it isn't freeware any more, but it only costs US$35, which is an order or two of magnitude cheaper than a lot of the tools that geo folks use.
It accepts DEMs and a number of other 3D geo input formats and produces 3D output in VRML and Terragen, all sorts of 2D image formats, and even MPEG and AVI movies of flythroughs.
I don't get a commission or anything. I just think it's a cool tool, and converts geodata to some potentially very useful formats.
On the off chance you're in geoscience and don't know about GeoVRML, click here.
3D geodata flythroughs on the web may be an answer to Jim Blinn's famous comment about finding a use for real time 3d.
Not in Canada. In Canada, police have the right to pull you over, and search your vehicle for any reason they may choose. They can tear it completely apart, and leave it like that for you to put back together, if they so desire. It happened to a friend of mine, the police were looking for a black guy who had just robbed a convenience store, and they pulled my (white) friend over and searched his car top to bottom. They WERE nice enough to help him put it back together, but they weren't obligated to.
The reasoning is this: The heat sensors were used to gain thermal readings from inside a house on the pot growers, where the SCOTUS has ruled that one has a reasonable expectation of privacy, inside ones' own home. In this case, the land was not located inside the house. Thus, no reasonable expectation of privacy.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I used to do the aerial photography for the USDA in about half of New York State. Not a Piper, a Cessna. And plain old 35mm, not some bizarre large format thing. 10" negs? How would you handle that kind of monstrosity inside a small plane? Furthermore, we didn't use any Xs or Ls or otherwise. Didn't need em, actually. We drew a series of straight lines on a map and flew straight from one end to the other, at a fixed groundspeed and altitude. Using a standard 35mm camera with autowinder and databack, we shot one image every 30 seconds or so (it varied, depending on the altitude). The frames would overlap by about 20% on each side. It's dead simple to compute which frame of which roll belongs to any point on the ground. We did this exactly once a year, for the payment-in-kind program. In other words, the program which pays farmers to leave fields fallow. The USDA had a neat computer system that would take a couple of points on the frame, compensate for plane roll and yaw, and compute the area of the fields in question.
Since this was in the Northeast, the fields aren't as large and regularly shaped as in the Midwest, and they're pretty tough to measure accurately on the ground without trained surveyors. This scheme was more accurate than the manual methods the USDA had previously used.
In addition to the area of the fields photographed, the USDA also needed to know what type of crops are being produced. They claimed that they could distinguish crop types from the films, so I imagine they could also identify pot.
The relevance here is that in about 1988 or 1989, that office of the USDA stopped hiring aerial photographers, and began getting all their data from satellite photos.
Make your own. It's pretty easy, and in Potsdam, I think it would be a neccessity. I would experiment with making the dough, shaping the rings, letting them raise/ferment, and then pop them all (but two) in the freezer. Then you could pull out a couple of frozen proto-bagels, boil and bake them, and have a fresh bagel in about a half-hour...
Just playing devil's advocate, but I recently read a report by some economist who's thesis was that the U.S. shouldn't even be in the farming business anymore.
He was under the impression that since so much of farming is mind-numbing, dangerous, and labour-intensive work, in a perfect (capitolist ;) society farming would naturally move to 3rd World countries if there weren't tariffs, subsidies, and other assistance (daming rivers for irrigation etc..) that made it possible to continue farming here. In other words, the average American is too well-educated (okay, don't laugh too hard...), too "fragile" (e.g. worth too much in a lawsuit if he loses an arm in a bailer or something), and too expensive (dollars per hour) to be a farmer. In addition, U.S. land is too valuable in it's alternative uses (roads, parking lots, strip malls, McMansions, etc..) to be tied up in farming.
In the report's anlysis, the future of farming in the U.S. is limited to a few huge corps who can automate much of the grunt work, a few niche, specialty, and seasonal crops (where time to market is the determining factor), and hobbiests (like me... I can't wait for my home-grown tomatoes!).
It's a harsh stream of ideas. I personally prefer to live near a 100 acres of corn than 75 acres of developments and 25 acres of Walmarts.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I'm sure Microsoft will throw a fit over not being able to repackage it as MS Mapper and charge $200...
sulli
RTFJ.
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All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
is this.....is this for REAL?
great comedy company.
I wish that were true. It was once, but no longer. The supreme court just ruled ('Atwater vs. City of Lago Vista' April 24, 2001) that an officer can arrest you even if the violation which got you pulled over is a misdemeanor with no jail time. As Sandra Day O'Conner said in that decision: "After today, the arsenal available to any officer extends to full arrest and the searches concomitant to that arrest." In other words, if they want to search your trunk all they have to do is pull you over for failure to signal a lane change or some other lame excuse then arrest you. Now they have you in handcuffs in the back of the cruser and they can legally do any damn thing they want to your car without a warrent, and anything they find can and will be used against you.
The only thing the Supremes have left to do is find a way to empower the cops to just shoot you on the spot and avoid the cost of a trial.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
If this were the case, the Supreme court decision about heat sensors is probably irrelevant, as the rules of evidence are greatly relaxed for civil cases.
So when Microsoft gets into this biz, will their motto change to, "We know where you went today"?
No, seriously, why did it take the USGS to do this? I mean, if I reported a loss to my insurance company, I'd get someone coming out to verify it. The insurance company doesn't just take my word for it. Of course, I'm not a big business, but still...
OK, fine, they're catching fraudulent farmers. But can they catch seriously disturbed farmers???
Using satellites for this is just one more step up. The county I'm about to move into uses planes to search out land owners who build new buildings without a permit. Planes could have also been used for this purpose. It just happens that satellites already catch picture and IR photos all over the world.
The prospect of what could be done with satellites is not very comforting, but when used properly to catch criminals I'm all for it.