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."

Comments

Go team!

[Anonymous Coward]

wait, which side are we for?

I'm waiting for the 'Think about the Children'

[vertical_98]

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

Re:I'm waiting for the 'Think about the Children'

[Anonymous Coward]

There are always somethings that can not be revealed: Witness Protection, Undercover Officers, etc. Well the Bush administration seems to have no problem with revealing the identities of CIA NOC undercover officers. Especially ones who work WMD proliferation.

Re:I'm waiting for the 'Think about the Children'

[abirdman]

It isn't up to the public to decide what they need to know

This is patently wrong, and a paranoid knee-jerk reaction to anti-terrorist FUD spread by well-meaning but clueless (and now campaigning) government functionaries. Public information is just that--public. And unless it is demonstrated before a judge that the information should be kept out of the hands of the public, then it belongs to the people. Hence the phrase, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

An uninformed electorate is a misled electorate. Government rules by the consent of the governed. And a gated-community, private club, members-only government is a government that has removed itself from the very public who has consented to place them in power.

One other point, which I think is relevant here, is that Greenwich, CT is one of the richest communities in the country. I think the reason they don't want aerial maps of the town made public is then we'd all know where and how they live. The anti-terrorist security angle is all just smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that America's richest elite class doesn't want to be noticed. Hiding behind the "national security" curtain is just plain cynical.

And what's worse is the poor computer consultant who wants the maps (and has got all the liberal lawyers up in arms and fighting for him) probably just wants them so he can sell good information to companies that do lawn care, swimming pools, and aluminum siding for castle estates.

Re:I'm waiting for the 'Think about the Children'

[Maudib]

The whole point of the second world war was to remove possible competition from Anglo-Saxon hegemony over the British Empire.

This theory nicely fits into marxist dogma, but really doesnt hold water. You could argue that the Germans started WWII in order to replace British-U.S. hegemony with their own, but to say that the Allies fought the war to remove competition is utterly absurd. Germany wasnt attacking British or French colonies, they were attacking Britain and France, trying to conquer them. The point of the war from the Allies perspective was purely self defense. The only other alternative was submission.

That it was purely a matter of self defense is further vindicated by France and Englands repeated efferts at appeasement in order to avoid wat.

No, waiting until 1942 to attack was certainly construed as diabolique by the paranoid Russians, however it took that long to build up the necesary resources. In 1940 the U.S. military was about half a million strong, how the hell is that supposed to turn into a second front overnight? That it only took two years is a testament to how quickly the Americans moved and how much they were trying to honor their committments to the russians.

FOIA Requests and the AG

[justzisguy]

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.

So, rather than asking federal officials to pay special attention when the public's right to know might collide with the government's need to safeguard our security, Ashcroft instead asked them to consider whether "institutional, commercial and personal privacy interests could be implicated by disclosure of the information." Even more disturbing, he wrote:

"When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."

The Greenwich case appears to be an extension of the precident set by General Ashcroft. If FOIA is curtailed, how will journalists and watchdog groups get their information they use to keep government honest?

Re:FOIA Requests and the AG

[flossie]

If FOIA is curtailed, how will journalists and watchdog groups get their information they use to keep government honest?

I do not think the word "keep" means what you think it means!

Maps want to be free!

[PhotoGuy]

Well, sort of.

It's always been a thorn in my side, that (here in Canada, and no doubt elswhere) tax money pays for government agencies to collect map and aerial photography data (and land records), and do not make it properly accessible to the public.

Prior to the internet, you could buy the maps and aerial photographs for a fee, which was a bit high, I always thought, but reasonable considering the trouble and costs associated with the physical reproduction of the media.

Now in this age of the Internet and blank DVD's priced well under $1 (even our lame Cdn $), providing that "public data" far more cheaply (and allowing copying) should be allowed.

Instead the fees for getting large sets of map data are exorbitant. I just hope that more competitive privatized satellite photography concerns can provide a lot of this, far more economically.

This is especially annoying, since here in Canada, we are taxed quite heavily; if you make more than $50K Cdn [30K+-ish US], your incremental tax rate is something like 50c on the dollar. Plus in some provinces, you pay 15% GST on everything you purchase; booze and gas have taxes that are astronomical (more than 100%, I believe). (Not that we Canadians drink a lot, *cough* *cough*.)

In many cases, those tax dollars are put to great use, incredible and accessible health care (as much as we like to bitch about it, it's great), generally excellent and free highways (toll roads are fairly rare in Canada), and so forth. Granted, those are more critical than map data, but I still hope we come around on the mapping issue some day.

Re:Maps want to be free!

[Jim_Maryland]

I used to work for Prince George's County Maryland (as an onsite sub contractor) as both their GIS programmer and the UNIX/Win32 system administrator. The question of who has access to the data was a common question, not only concerning private citizens/corporations but even between county/state agencies.

Aerial photography purchases were done from the budget of a couple of the agencies in the county (Maryland National Capital Parks & Planning, Dept. of Public Works, Health and Human Services, Emergency Services, Dept. of Environmental Resources, and maybe one or two more agencies). Each agency would commit a portion of the money to the collection/maintenance cost (for both aerial data and the generated vector files). Other agencies in the county who chose not to help pay for the cost of the data were often not given access to the data without some payment (not done at my level). I don't know the exact details on the public getting data, but they wouldn't have had direct access to our department anyways so I can only guess they wouldn't have any access as well.

Now to further elaborate on the inter-county agencies, the education board wanted to do a bus routing project using the road centerline file (for E911 and Dept. of Public Works primarily). The school board didn't contribute to the aerial photograph collection and county directors would refuse to allow them access. I'm sure PG County Schools are similar to other school systems in having a limited budget so refusing access seems unreasonable to me, but you have to follow the county policy.

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. Another problem is at what point do you release the data in the collection/maintenance process? While aerial photos are essentially a "complete" product, the derived GIS data is a "living" dataset that is constantly being updated for changes since the photography. New attributes can be added to the datasets as well so the product can rarely be seen as complete. Analysis done on data must always be made with understandings of the condition of the dataset.

OK, gotta cut this short here...

Some counties are now looking at leasing the data from the aerial photography companies now. By leasing the data, various agreements on who has access to the data are put in place. The benefit to the county is that the data is generally provided cheaper and more frequently. The aerial photography companies benefit is that they know they'll have a regular data customer but they may also sell to private companies/citizens as well.

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. Sure, it would be neat to have the aerial photo over my house, but I can get that through an online interactive mapping site (http://terraserver.microsoft.com or the other one listed in a previous posters comment). I'm not sure that I'd need it in raw format.

Some data is available for download. Check out agencies like USGS, Census Agency, NGA, etc....

Re:Maps want to be free!

[NatHoward]

I thought this was mostly a very helpful comment, but I wish to cast some rhetorical light on one aspect of this question.

The poster says:

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.

and

I'm not sure that I have a need to see it.

I would like to suggest that, while it's a legitimate philosophical question to ask, the question of whether a citizen "needs" some government information should not factor importantly into the evualuation of whether a law is good in a free society.

The problem is that a citizen's needs are a very poor index of what he should be allowed to do or to have. For example, I don't "need" a swimming pool, but I have one. If "need" were a criterion, almost nobody would have a pool, an SUV, eat out at restaurants, vote, be able to print a newspaper, be able to buy a newspaper, send their kid to private school, or, for that matter, read slashdot.

Our actions would be even more circumscribed if a self-interested government got to define the word "need".

It's clear to me, btw, that the original poster wasn't talking about "need" in this way, exactly. I just wanted to make sure that the notion of "need", once introduced, wasn't used without reflection -- that is, without my 2 cents being added in!

Now, how do I feel about whether government, having bought this information, should be compelled to disgorge this information? Why, yes! Government supposedly exists partly to internalize externalities of exactly this sort. If government doesn't wish to become the source for that information, perhaps it should contract with private parties for appropriate summaries, rather than the complete geographic database. Alternatively, a wise government might well conclude that its citizens, are, on balance, better off if they all have at least the potential ("need" or not!) to have this information for a nominal price....

It should be available

[reboot246]

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.

Terra Server

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't mind a slightly old copy, it's all online for your viewing: Greenwich, Connecticut, United Stetes 13 April 1992. Click away to your hearts content.
Of, if you prefer, the Greenwich, Connecticut Topological Map, 01 July 1986 USGS

Re:Um...

[Sunspire]

Or even better, if you use Keyhole 2, Greenwich CT photos are available at 1m resolution (the entire US is guaranteed to be available at 15m resolution). Now that's pretty damn good, you can make out cars easily and even people, I doubt the town's own images are much better than that. The program is available free of charge for 7 trial days to anyone in the world.

So clearly this data is already available to anyone who wants it, so it's not about security. Restricting aerial photography, that's been paid for by tax money in the first place, just keeps it out of public programs like NASA's World Wind viewer (featured yesterday on Slashdot). I'm sure the greedy bastards at Greenwich would have no objections to selling the photos to a provider like Keyhole instead of just give them up for free. Crying "terrorists, security breach!" is just the fashionable thing to do these days when don't feel like cooperating.

And let's face it. Programs like Keyhole and the free World Wind are only going to get better from here on. 5-10 years from now you're going to able to pan from San Francisco to Paris, either way around, and have a 1-5meter resolution all the way, so that you can count every Starbuck along the way if you feel like it. The globe is going to be mapped completely, deal with it.

What does he want to do with this data?

[arb]

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.

Re:What does he want to do with this data?

[GPSguy]

Trying to add a little bit of sanity to this line...

Producing the data are expensive. Often, as well, the aerial imagery companies will retain ownership of the images (often not photos anymore) or ramp the costs of the service and imagery 'way up beyond what the city or state can afford. There's historical precedent to this, back when most of us didn't care or want those data...

He's asking for the whole database. Likely, if it's a reasonably designed GIS database, there's data of a tax/ownership nature that shouldn't be released electronically... if at all. There are some things about my taxes I don't see a reason for you to know, and if they're included therein (and they might be in a "reasonable" but not necessarily in a "good" design) then request was out of line.

In Texas, all GIS data derived with public funds but not restricted by contractual obligations are released as public data, or available from the various agencies upon request. (http://www.tnris.state.tx.us/)

This may change with restrictions and recommendations from the Feds bout reducing access to critical infrastructure data. For a variety of reasons, I can go either way on this. although I'm currently the "data wants to be free" guy in that duscussion.

That said, some of the GIS data we have in Texas on critial infrastructure and critical industries DOES come pretty close to qualifying for "due diligence" on the part of a terrorist. They'd get all the needed to mine the bridge, or do maximum damage to the chemical plant. Should we make it easy?

Finally, on the costs associated with requesting "free" data from state agencies: I've seen the numbers and have gotten the patient explanations on why they're so high. Let's say a CD-RW disk is $.25. Then you have to have a GIS analyst retrieve the data and place it in the burn directory. If it were something like, "Send me the whole database" this is relatively easy. Then you have to have someone burn the CD. Or CDs. The agency, at least in Texas, is required by State law to recover costs using a formula that incorporates the direct and indirect costs of the individuals doing the work, on a per-hour basis, shipping, and a depreciation allowance for the equipment, again prorated. A little bit here, a little bit there, eventually the CD costs $75, which was what TNRIS charged last time I went there rather than downloading the data directly...

There will be a quiz next hour.

Re:Stop with the acronyms!

[Quobobo]

Today FOI and GIS, tomorrow OMG ASL PLZ!11! ROFL

Think about it, man. Do you really want that on your conscience?

Re:It should be available - no general answer.

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

You sure about that logic? some other data collection paid for by public money:

• Social insurance databases
• Driver's license db's
• all police investigations, regardless of whether charges are laid.
• medicare payment treatment and payment records
• nuclear missile plans.
• the approved architectural plans for that nice, bombable Hoover Dam.
• tax records of all sorts
• how the governement recognises you, as opposed to someone pretending to be you, and gives you access to your own information...
• military supply orders and troop movements.

  Basing the argument on the government having paid for the collection is a iffy at best. The basis should rather be based on maximizing the public good,which is, in the general case, harder to figure out. One has to weigh: privacy concerns vs. defence (against Terrorists domestic and foreign) vs. public benefit. The answer will come out different depending on what the data is, what technology is in place/reasonable, and how much the organisation is willing to spend to make the information public. How soon to make it public is also going to have a big effect on how much it costs. folks on the internet want information upto the second.

  You have a chemical spill in Seattle. You have a real-time information system for exchange among first responders who are doing their work. It hits the news and their site gets slashdotted. It's a dynamically built site, so caching by google is of no use whatever. The firemen and coast guard can no longer get information from aerial reconnaisance being done by a Canadian survey plane that happenned to be available. So they don't know where in the harbour the spill has gotten to.

  Wall it off? OK, you need a separate network accessible by city, province, state, and many branches of two national governments, as well transportation (railways, airlines) in the area, and any specialized contractors that might be called in. And it has to be setup ahead of time, and managed and funded so that it is up when a crisis happens.

  What is the cost of making that site public? Does the public need to know where there is a chemical spill? Of course they do! Should they get same information the government does on their first responder systems? Would be nice, but if the architecture/technology in place cannot answering that sort of demand, what do you do? Most people would accept as reasonable that you have a first responder system that is only available to a few, then have other systems which are used for public dissemination (aka. press conferences, other web sites, etc...)