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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.
Security Schmurity...if there is not a very, very compelling reason to keep people's noses out of such information...EVERYTHING should be released. I, for one, would like the rule to be if you want to come in and get it, it's TAXPAYER OWNED/FUNDED and you can do so. Short of plans for nuclear silos or locations of CIA monitoring stations, what compelling reason is there for not letting people know the location of water/gas services? Terrorists don't want to cause a water main break, they want to kill 1000's of people in spectacular attacks. In my opinion, it's just a cop-out so they don't have to do any extra work to provide it to the public.
Here's the actual link to the Wikipedia article about GIS. Editors, or button-pushers?
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.
First, you and I may not need the information, but others may. Second, the theoretical right to see the information is more important than the information itself. As the source of our government's legitimacy, we have the right to know of its activities.
Of course, this right must be curtailed in the interests of national security (this case is, however, ludicrous) and other citizens' privacy (as in your example of FBI files). But why shouldn't we have access to documents on the Kennedy assassination?
Y'know, I'd rather have the government hampered by FOIA requests. It keeps it from meddling with my life.
I'd be much more worried about the VERY detailed satelite images available at http://terraserver.microsoft.com/.
You can get sat images of ALMOST all of our military bases and probably every big city.
The City of Portland operates portlandmaps which provides free access to limited GIS data.
is no security at all.
I can go down to the airport and pay someone to take me an hour long tour around town. I'll take my new Canon 8 megapixel camera along. If I wanted to do some damage, those pictures are going to work just as will as the GIS pictures. Might cost me a little more in short term, but what does that matter?
As an aside, Helena, Montana gives away GIS data to anyone who asks for it. The taxpayers of Helena payed for those pictures and that information in the first place. It's only right that we have free access to it. As a matter of fact, I have a hard drive around here with 10 gigs of photos and infrastructure maps of Helena and the surrounding area just for asking.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Please, show me a terrorist who would attack anything in Greenwich, CT over in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., or any other major metropolitan area in the US.
And have you checked out their website? They have such genuinely useful things as e-mail notification of town emergencies to any affected residents. Please tell me that some of you also think that to be a marginal waste of resources. And what's this crap on the front page about needing permission to reproduce the town seal? Apparently the fair use train doesn't make stops in Greenwich also.
Congratulations, Greenwich, CT: you have successfully pissed me off.
I'm going to sleep now. Good morning, and good riddance.
How do you know what "most" FOIA requests return? No one tracks that sort of information. All you "know" is that crackpots online use the FOIA to further their conspiracies and you've spent so much time reading them that you project that onto everyone because you have no other real experience with it.
The FOIA grants any information requested to the requester, given that such information exists and isn't vital to national security
No, no it does not. That's just one of a long list of exceptions.
Requesting the FBI file on yourself is clearly a right, but requesting the file on someone else? Not a right, IMO.
Well, good, because you're right. It's not a right. Personnel, medical and similar files that would constitute a "clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" are exempt from FOIA requests.
Trying to finagle documents regarding the Kennedy assassination? Not a right, IMO.
Why the hell not? For what possible reason should the official government proceedings regarding a very newsworthy event that happened over 40 years ago be hidden? Information relating to law enforcement proceedings are protected, when they have reason to be, but there's no conceivable reason for that.
Personally, I'd rather see the roads fixed and utilities made more efficient than see a bunch of fat, sweaty geeks get their jollies by harrassing the government.
Considering you need to pay for document research time and duplication for FOIA requests, no one except crackpots thinks it's a good way to "harrass" anyone.
You can find the full text of the relevant Act here. I suggest you at least skim it.
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:
Revised:
Original:
Revised:
Original:
Revised:
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
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
The fundamental issue here is not about map data, but whether we should allow ourselves to have less freedom because we fear terrorists.
Regarding this, it is valuable to educate ourselves about what we are fearing. Regarding that, it is valuable to know more about the activities of the U.S. government. Only a small percentage of U.S. citizens understand much about the involvement of the U.S. government with other countries. There is plenty of reliable information available, but learning more takes so much time most people haven't done it. Here is a small overview that I put together: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories. There may be other articles and books that are far more valuable to you, that article is just a contribution of mine.
Most U.S. citizens believe that the terrorists attacked without provocation. That is not true. The terrorists attacked after many decades of experiencing U.S. government violence. (Violence does not justify more violence, of course, but most people don't believe that, including the leaders of the U.S. Defense Department, and the terrorists.)
Am I saying that the U.S. government is a net evil force in the world? No. What has happened is that the government decided two things several decades ago. I'm sure those in power then did not understand that their decisions would eventually corrupt the entire government. At the time, the decisions seemed logical.
First, the government decided that it could act in other countries in secret. Second, the U.S. government decided it could act in secret to protect U.S. businesses in other countries.
What probably no one realized then was how much that would come to be a corrupting influence on the government. What no one realized then was how much additional profit there was to be made by arranging, in secret, for U.S. taxpayers to pay for the security arrangements needed by U.S. multinational businesses.
Soon huge businesses were arguing that the U.S. government should subvert democratically elected leaders, as the government did in Iran. Soon U.S. businesses would arrange unfair contracts with corrupt leaders, and when there was a protest, call for U.S. government intervention in the name of patriotism.
That's partly how we got to the present situation, where two men, whose family and business associates and friends have extensive investments in global oil businesses, are president and vice-president of the entire U.S. government, even though there is conflict of interest in such an arrangement.
If the GIS data in question is anything like the stuff I work with, there is absolutely no information that I can think of which a)is useful to terrorists b)couldn't be easily discovered with a quick drive around the neighborhood. Information about bridge architecture, maybe, but not much else.
This 'terrorism' straw man is getting ridiculous - it's encouraging government offices to keep things a secret just because they want to. Granted, if you're running a government office, this is probably a good idea. I won't name names, but I can say that there are states with D.O.T.s out there with records that are inexcusably inaccurate or horribly out of date (cue '40s radio drama organ because everyone is surprised). Being beauraucracies, the natural solution to this kind of situation is to keep anyone from finding the problem by limiting flow of information as much as possible rather than to simply fix the problem.
Of course, doing this requires that you start keeping as many secrets as possible - you see, if the American public ever found out how terrorists actually operate, they would realize that all of thse terrorism-related justifications for huge wastes of money, freedom, integrity, and time are just one huge bullshit excuse, and the whole thing would come tumbling down. We can't have that, because then every government official from the lowest county clerk all the way up to George "Paid Vacation" Bush would have to actually put time into carefully considering policy decisions and competently piloting the areas they govern rather than smoking rock and blaming hippies and muslims for their mistakes like they do now.
--
Politics: coming from the Latin roots 'poly', meaning many, and 'tics', meaning small blood sucking parasites.
General Info
Satellite Mapping
With Property Lines
Elevation
Crime Stats
Well you get the idea.
In Nearly All Paradigms, Shift Happens.