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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Politics: coming from the Latin roots 'poly', meaning many, and 'tics', meaning small blood sucking parasites.