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Town Fights FOI Request for GIS Data and Images
dweyerma writes "The state's highest court will now decide a landmark public records case involving access to aerial reconnaissance photographs and maps of Greenwich, CT. The town maintains the images in a tightly kept database known as a geographic information system, which a judge declared to be public records last December. The Connecticut Supreme Court announced Monday that it will hear the town's appeal of that ruling, expediting the case by leap-frogging the state Appellate Court. The move virtually coincides with the third anniversary of the initial complaint in the case, which Greenwich resident and computer consultant Stephen Whitaker filed with the state Freedom Information Commission after the town denied his request for an electronic copy of the entire database for security and privacy reasons."
The government is a body of individuals most notably ungoverned - Shepard Book
We used to to be the most loved country in the world, now we are the one that catches the most shit. I think the government should stop spoon-feeding us what they think we should know and let us have what we think we should know.
There are always somethings that can not be revealed: Witness Protection, Undercover Officers, etc. But the maps are already available they are just not together in a nice electronic format. Maybe its time for the government of, for, and by the people to become that again.
Vertical
72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"Despite all the examples of excess, government works most of the time for most people. Of course it makes mistakes, but it is a human run organization and is subject to fallibility."
So basically, government doesn't need to comply with the law, and you don't care.
American, are you?
If the database was paid for with tax money, then it should be available to the taxpayers. Besides, as others have pointed out, the same information is already available in a form that would be useful to terrorists.
I use USAPhotoMaps to access the terraserver. I have a database of aerial photos and topo maps of all the areas I work (nearly my whole state). The resolution of the photos is 1 meter per pixel and for the topo maps it's 4 meters per pixel. That info plus a program to show streets and roads makes my job much easier.
I'm sure the headline makes sense to some people, but not many people are going to understand FOI or GIS. I can't be the only person who thought this was about Google image search data and images at first glance.
It's just kind of ridiculous when a native English speaker can't make sense of the headline. Please, at least explain these things in the submission.
Subtracting the spin put on this by alternet, what exactly is so bad about this memo? Ashcroft told federal officials that they should consider privacy rights when dealing with FOIA requests, and "even more disturbingly" that they should make sure their decisions have a sound legal basis.
Shocking. Not.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the Attorney General Ashcroft's October 12, 2001 memo instructing federal agencies to stall on FOIA requests.
Considering that it is the Connecticut government fighting the request and not the US government, probably not.
From my reading of the article, he wants to use them for commercial reasons. He has asked for an entire copy of the GIS data and aerial photographical maps. That's a lot of data which would be expensive for anyone to generate. Has he offered to purchase the information, or is he expecting to kick start his business with free information paid for by the city?
Surely if he had a legitimate business idea, he would be willing to pay other data providers for the information he wants. There are several mapping, GIS and photographical companies that would no doubt love to supply him with the data he requires at a reasonable cost.
If this was a software company trying to use GPL'd software to build up a closed source business, people here would be up in arms.
Yeah, got that. But what you don't say is if it's a realistic cost.
It costs money to create, maintain, and distribute data. Are they charging an extra amount that's just going into general gov revenue or something?
as the above poster mentioned, why couldn't they give me a copy on CD - charge me $1.00 for the CD and send me on my way? It's because they are sneaking in a hidden tax (what else would it be when the government charges for the same service twice)
It is reasonable to me that I pay for the small amount of time it takes a government employee to make a copy, but in these days of auto feeding copy machines and CD's - the prices they charge are way out of line.
I say it again: HIDDEN TAX
What makes it worse is that you search for the court cases on OLD outdated IBM PS/2's running some form of outdated software that can barely do a two word search and return ANY results. Most of the time you have to have the EXACT spelling of the name to get results.
Key quote:
... and celebrities' homes in electronic form could lead to breaches in security and privacy.
argued that the unfettered release of detailed information
Yep. Wonder who might be behind this. It was done with public funds and it should be public. Are we going to stand up to terrorism or are we going to hide away an hope the big bad osma won't try to hurt us again. Everytime we cave on something like this, it is a victory for terrorism (and the celebs that are using it to their advantage).
"As for the data being available to myself as a citizen (btw, I live in one of the counties adjacent to PG County so I have to get data for my area just like everyone else if I want it), I'm not sure that I have a need to see it"
This is almost surely some engineering company that wants to harvest all of the town's data to set up a for-profit service. The argument about why or why not to favor this individual is hard to settle, but both sides of the argument about "freedom of information" and "security" are disingenuous.
The tone of the memo is slightly disturbing though. FOIA is designed to make the government more transparent. Ashcroft says, hey err on the side of obscurity, we are behind you.
I don't disagree that there are plenty of things that the government knows that it shouldn't tell people, but there are also lots of things where it is ridiculous for there to be any secret keeping...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Launch codes for missles are also 'public records'.
Will a judge now release this information as well as all the manuals on building and luanching ICBM's?
Clearly not.
Or maybe not so clearly not.
Now we see why it is important to limit the amount of data that can be kept on us. Now we see why data that the 'government' collects on us should be owned by us. Obviously not all of the data.
Now for public access, a few problems exist with this. In general, a private citizen wouldn't have much need for the information so releasing to the public would essentially benefit a very small set of people/companies. The benefit for this small group would essentially be paid for by all tax payers.
I think you miss the point. It isn't whether or not a private citizen would have use for this, but rather that the government paid for it and the information SHOULD be available via a Freedom of Information request. Unless the information meets one of the exceptions listed in the Freedom of Information Act, it simply shouldn't be restricted. That's why we have the darn exceptions in the first place. "I don't think most people will use it" is not an acceptable reason to block access to information obtained with public funds.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the government fund Internet access to such records for the general public, but the records should be available on request.
If you are concerned about people making commercial use of such aerial photography, I would think such photography would still be under copyright and thus could not be used in such a manner.
The benefit for this small group would essentially be paid for by all tax payers
I think you just described a large portion of goverment services, from unemployment benefits to welfare, to public transportation.
Chip H.
It is easy to misread the tone of a written message. Ever have a messenger conversation go to hell because of a quick-to-react emotional person on the other end gets a case of teh crazy on you? A conversation that would have gone an entirely different way over the phone or face-to-face?
The tone of his memo may be intentional. Sometimes telling people to be careful isn't enough. Sometimes, to get their attention, you need to use various means to provide emphasis on the message. Or , then again, the person that sent the message to the local goverment agencies was probably in a serious mood (it is, after all, a serious job) and the letter reflected it.
Some people think FOI means that everything should be put out into the public view for all to see. Personally, I would rather there be some judgment used. There is no need for the majority of people to know the exact layout of a sewage system, or the water distribution system, or the GPS coordinates of the government buildings in town, etc. The local government should be required to review each request and say "Oh, you're the contractor that's going to build over there? Sure, here's the info on the sewer and water." And "You're an ex-con and want to know about the power and underground access in the local financial district? Um....no"
Just because some of the loudest people are law abiding citizens doesn't mean everyone else is. I would like to know more than I do, but I realize that I don't have a need to know. And being a reporter doing a story will probably get a person past most FOI issues, so as long as the reporter and watchdog organizations remain responsible they should not have any problems keeping the government honest.
I just want to echo a little bit of what you said. We as citizens have in part a vested interesting in both public access to governmental GIS data AND public censorship of governmental GIS data.
As most people pointed out, detailed maps and aerial photography are widely available right now. Getting access to the governments aerial photographs isn't, or shouldn't, be the issue.
The issue is the release of the actual data that is overlaid onto these maps. Because this data is what creates the spatial relationships, both physical and temporal, that makes GIS actually useful. Mainly in identifying systemic instances of disorder in a community and ultimately in producing efficient government policy to deal with it.
A part of this data is and should be made available to the public. Many governments, such as my hometown of Wichita, do indeed make a subset of this data available to the public through an interactive website.
However, there is also quite a bit of data that you don't want out in the public for privacy and other legal reasons.
Right now, a police officer investigating a sexual assault case can use a GIS system to instantly identify, which if any, registered sexual offenders are living or working near the scene of the crime. This is because their GIS system is linked to the states sexual offender database (and also assuming that database is updated continuously and correctly). We would probably all agree that this is for the good of the community.
Now imagine that this same GIS system is linked to your local DMV. Now imagine that all of this DMV information is now available to the public through a GIS website. Now imagine a sexual predator using the same search of the neighborhood to identify all addresses that include a female with a learner's permit (i.e. likely young girls ages 16-18 yrs old). We would probably all agree that this would be bad for a community.
The example is fallacious, but as an example of what is possible, hopefully it will get your imagination working. The capacity for abuse is virtually unlimited if the wrong individuals have access to the wrong types of information.
The government already has a lot of information about you and me. I personally don't want all the personal data they have about me published for the public to see. To be honest, I want as little of that information as possible known to anyone.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
Wasn't Slashdot talking just recently about Arizona turning public access to GIS into a profit center...
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http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/27/225
I've dealt with local government GIS data before and no one has ever been as anal about it as these people. The newspaper I work for, our county's GIS department, the local planning board and board of elections have all used the data for things like maps of the flood plane, hog farms, proposed zoning changes, election districts, etc. And we are right next door to an USAF base, where you would almost expect people to be touchy about maps.
Other communities have shaved time off emergency response calls (fire, ambulance, cops, etc.):
http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc01/pro
Keeping GIS open also aids market transparency. Having this information available over the Internet -- instead of just at the Courthouse -- reduces friction in real estate transactions and makes it easier for people to make informed judgments about real estate. It helps encourage smarter capitalism through route planning and provisioning.
To me the terror argument is spurious -- this is a case of some information control freaks playing Dilbert's Mordac character.
-- I browse at +5 with stripped sigs