CT High Court Rules GIS Data Can Be Kept Secret [UPDATED]

kinema writes "A few days ago the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that the town of Greenwich's Department of Information Technology does not have to release the images and GIS data that the town keeps. The court found that mandatory disclosure of the data under the state's freedom of information statues is exempted under a recently passed state law that allows information to be kept secret 'when there are reasonable grounds to believe that their disclosure may result in a safety risk.' I'm sure I'm not the only one in the audience that has a hard time swallowing this. I am looking into filing a similar request to obtain the GIS data for the Portland Oregon metro area. As the data is currently available to anyone willing to shell out the nearly $900 per year, the local government isn't going to be able to argue that the data could be used by terrorists and should therefore be kept from the public which paid untold amounts for the data to be collected through their taxes." Update: 01/11 16:51 GMT by M : This story is incorrect. Although the case was just heard by the court, there has been no decision either for or against the disclosure of the GIS information.

Comments

Another Fine Edit

[aardvarko]

Here's the actual link to the Wikipedia article about GIS. Editors, or button-pushers?

Re:Outrageous...

[Anonymous Coward]

Extra Work to provide it to the public?
all it would take would be a website where users could download it.
in general the only thing in GIS that makes large files, are raster data (satellite images and so forth), the vector data (typically the most important data) are small enough that they could easily be published on a website with no worries about bandwidth cost.... plus how many people will actually download It or have teh software to open up the data anyways... that software aint cheap just check out http://www.esri.com/.

.........That is all

Most of the GIS data in the world is unavailable

[Anonymous Coward]

In europe, GIS data isn't free, and is only available with non-disclosure agreements and steep yearly license fees. It's considered as a valuable commercial resource that can be milked for years and years.

The US government is still refusing to release VMAP2 GIS data for european countries, because of partner deals with GIS agencies of those governments, even though the data was collected by american satellites with US taxpayer dollars.

They absolutely refuse to respond to FOIA requests.

Re:Are you a map maker?

[TWX]

As long as the Government wants to use my money to do anything I feel that I should have the right to see how they're spending that money, in all but a very, very specific set of circumstances for the immediate moment, and ultimately in every aspect as soon as information isn't critical. I believe that I should be able to look up water main locations, power line information, sewage information, telephone line/pole leasing, and the like, because I might find some gross abuse somewhere that warrants public scrutiny.

The only exception that I could make at all would be for ongoing criminal investigations. Things where the court hasn't yet decided but is scheduled to decide, or where the police are investigating and releasing information could compromise the investigation.

The odds of terrorists attacking the water main that leads to my house are miniscule. My city so wide and low density that any terrorists would be foolish to attack here for the purposes of making a large number of kills. That doesn't mean that it's impossible, it just means that it's not something that I'm going to lose sleep over. If I were in San Francisco, New York, or any other really high density place I might have some kind of concern, but not here, even if I am in the fifth largest metro area.

Besides, this is just another attempt at security through obscurity, when it's possible (and even likely) that much of the information on infrastructure is already recorded elsewhere anyway, so claiming that they're protecting it for some actual reason is absurd.

Remember, if we all go paranoid, the terrorists really do win.

Terrorism paranoia

[Animats]

According to the U.S. Department of State, 2003 was the lowest year for terrorism in over a decade. (The 2004 figures aren't out yet.) The US hasn't had a terrorist attack since the anthrax fiasco in late 2001.

For better or worse, the US's aggressive anti-terrorism foreign policy has had an effect. It's the invasion of Afghanistan that did it. The Taliban thought they were safe backing bin Laden - they'd beat the Russians, their country was landlocked and a long way from US allies, and the terrain favored them. Big mistake. Three months later the Taliban was out of power with its leaders dead, jailed, or on the run.

This made a big impression on dictators and warlords worldwide. Allowing terrorists to operate from your territory against the US is not survivable.

We'll probably have trouble again. But we have bigger problems. Compared to AIDS, hurricanes, and other problems, the death toll from terrorism is low.

Re:Terrorism paranoia

[AEton]

Data aggregation in the State Department ran into some serious problems with that report. The article you cite is dated in late April 2004; by June Per CNN was carrying the story that they had grossly underestimated the issue:

The State Department eventually conceded that the original report failed to include a number of deadly attacks in the latter part of 2003, including a car bomb that exploded in a housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and a series of attacks in Istanbul, Turkey, all of which took place in November.

Black said the report was "marred by significant errors" when it was originally released. But he said those errors were the result of "honest mistakes, and certainly not deliberate deceptions."

Allegations have been raised that the Bush administration deliberately made the State Department advertise a reduction in terrorist attacks - i.e., demonstrate a tangible 2003 victory for the "war on terror". Of course, when the data point the other direction, it's just as easy to say that the Bush administration abused the State Department's fearmongering abilities to hype a security claim in an election year.

I personally suspect that it was a simple error of data aggregation; these things happen in bureaucracies.

The summaries, original and revised, illustrate the difference.

Original:

There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight decrease from the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, and a drop of 45 percent from the level in 2001 of 346 attacks. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969.

Revised:

There were 208 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight increase from the most recently published figure of 198* attacks in 2002, and a 42 percent drop from the level in 2001 of 355 attacks.
*As new information becomes available, revisions are made to previously published statistics. The current running total for international terrorist incidents in 2002 is 205. [huh?!]

Original:

A total of 307 persons were killed in the attacks of 2003, far fewer than the 725 killed during 2002. A total of 1,593 persons were wounded in the attacks that occurred in 2003, down from 2,013 persons wounded the year before.

Revised:

A total of 625 persons were killed in the attacks of 2003, fewer than the 725 killed during 2002. A total of 3646 persons were wounded in the attacks that occurred in 2003, a sharp increase from 2013 persons wounded the year before. This increase reflects the numerous indiscriminate attacks during 2003 on "soft targets," such as places of worship, hotels, and commercial districts, intended to produce mass casualties.

Original:

In 2003, the highest number of attacks (70) and the highest casualty count (159 persons dead and 951 wounded) occurred in Asia.
There were 82 anti-US attacks in 2003, which is up slightly from the 77 attacks the previous year, and represents a 62-percent decrease from the 219 attacks recorded in 2001.
Thirty-five American citizens died in 15 international terrorist attacks in 2003

Revised:

Thirty-five U.S. citizens died in international terrorist attacks in 2003 [the other paragraphs disappeared - no mention of whether the number of anti-US attacks changed]

The House Democrats released a report analyzing the changes in the revised format. If their analysis strikes you as biased, content youreslf with the presumably ve

probably not a big deal

[The Tyro]

I was curious about this exact issue when the Terraserver first went online (I was working for the military at that time). When I tried to look up some military bases, I didn't have much success. I found that entire blocks of land around all the military bases I checked were missing.

I just checked, and those images are now there; that's new... but after looking at the dates on the pictures, I'd suggest to you that those images are old, and not current enough to be of serious value to a terrorist enemy.

Let's face it... Satellite photos are sexy, but terrorists are probably much more interested in the smaller, current details: How many jersey barricades are at the base gate? Do the guards have heavy enough weaponry to stop their vehicle if they take a run at it? Are they doing 100% ID check? How about contractors... can mail and pizza delivery drivers get on-base at will?

I can't see a lot of those 4 and 5 year-old satellite photos being that useful to your typical dumb-enough-to-drive-a-truck-bomb terrorists.

forget $900 THIS is free in Portland Oregon

[scotch51]

Perhaps you will be amused to know that the city of Portland Oregon puts most of that stuff online now... for free. The home page is http://portlandmaps.com but that won't suggest how much fun it can be. Let's pick on one of my neigbors at random:

General Info

Satellite Mapping

With Property Lines

Elevation

Crime Stats
Well you get the idea.

Its free for the most part.....

[Almost_anonymous_cow]

If you showed up to the office personaly you could get the data you were intrested in for free. Its the handling of all the presonal requests that eat up time hence the charging of data.

In my department the issue was raised if we should limit access on the internet of our waterline maps. We in the department figured that was crap since you could go and get for a minial fee copies of the paper copies on file.

We in the utilites have figured we will give you data to a certain point for free until the request gets too big then we will make you go and pay for the information you need. We can handle a certain area for free if you looking at a block and print you out a map but the minute you want the entire system you are looking to do more with what we provide and will get charged for the time we have to deal with you.

A lot of this might also be with resellers and other people that use the public data do a little tweaking and then try to sell it off to someone else. Such things might be road center lines from like GDT which might ask for a towns roads then put it into their system then try to sell that back to people that are doing mapquest type applications with it. Course that doenst prevent cities from entering in contracts with such clearing houses for data sharing we give you our data and we expect a certain amount of data back.

Re:I just *love* the smell of BS in the morning...

[ifnkovhgroghprm]

If you actually knew who lives in Greenwich, and how close it is to NYC, then you might guess as to why they are concerned about their safety. There are some VERY wealthy and powerful people who live there. I don't think they should be special and prevent GIS data from being available to citizens though. I thought that the state was going to side with the researchers (not with the town).

Re:You are confused

[danila]

I do realise the difference - what you called a map is just a subset of layers (streets, topography). GIS can contain these layers and many more, including power grid capacity and the ability to combine them all for processing, display, tracking, etc. But seriously, the prices for GIS data are astronomical. And because they are astronomical, they destroy the unborn mass market for geo data. Joel writes about the same problem for software pricing. Of course, there are some data sets for which there is no conceivable mass market, but overall there definitely is one for geo data/systems. But since it costs $1000s, only those who absolutely need them and can afford to pay insane proces become the clients, perpetrating this vicious circle.

Personally I found out (when making a city map for PDAs) that it's several orders of magnitued cheaper to hire a student to scan a folded map and create a vector map manually than to buy digital data.