Slashdot Mirror
Court Rules GIS Data Can't Be Kept Secret
Silverbear writes "In an update from a Slashdot story posted in January, The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that there is not a significant security risk to the town of Greenwich in making its GIS Data available to the public, and therefore must do so. Greenwich had claimed that the data could compromise personal and national security, and was sued under CT Freedom of Information laws. The legal ruling is available."
For the lazy people who are google-impaired, WTF is GIS?
So, tax information (boundaries and assessments), streets and address ranges, future land-use plans, city/county boundaries, building permits, census data, and waterways information. Yes, obviously all these is sensitive data that needs to be protected from possible terrorists.
Believe me people, if the terrorists wanted to poison the water supply they wouldn't need the GIS data to figure out how to do it. They also probably really don't care about the Census data to figure out population centers (especially in Greenwich). I highly doubt they care about tax information like assessment values and boundaries as Greenwich is all high-cost living for the most part.
GIS data should be freely examinable. We paid for it as taxpayers and even helped to contribute the data (Census) so why shouldn't we be able to access it? In fact, Portland's $900 for the data is too steep. It should be free for non-commercial use IMHO.
Next they'll make it all available but in a ROT-13 CSV file so they can protect it under the DMCA! Blah.
At least the courts knew better this time and ruled in favor of open information that the public paid for.
So what's the point in hiding "public" information.
Its like banning "google maps".
I am actually quite surprised this ruling occurred... I was listening to a news story on NPR a couple of days ago about some people taking pictures near bridges/with bridges in the background, or with other things around (like oil refineries, or in one instance, the FBI building was in the background) ... but these people had their film confiscated... ... and that's just for taking pictures casually... but who knows, maybe Conneticuit courts figure "Eh, we're not New York" ...
... I think its ridiculous... but... I am just surprised...
===
Not that I think we should be paranoid, I think this hysteria over terrorism is exactly what both sides want (the government gets to take more control and the terrorists get to disrupt our way of life and our happiness)
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
The maps, created from Geographic Information System data and showing city landmarks, including the location of "security-sensitive'' sites such as schools, public utilities, and bridges, must be open because officials in Greenwich, Conn., did not show that their release will violate a trade secret or threaten public safety, the high court ruled.
I live in CT and have worked in Greenwich. They live in another dimension of reality there, entirely contained in their heads. They don't act as though they believe themselves to be part of CT, they have police preventing access to taxpayer funded town owned roads because they don't want commoners going near the wealthy and famous, and have the state's largest concentration of arrogant self-important snobs outside of the Avon-Simsbury region.
If the other 168 municipalities have to be wide open to publicly availible taxpayer funded satellite scans then so should they. I have a feeling however that they will keep on fighting this decision until Hell freezes over.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
One of the things Keyhole wanted to do before they were purchased was to integrate real estate data - taxes, boundaries on land parcels, etc - into their database. If Google wants to continue with this, this court ruling could make it easier for them to do so.
You don't need a picture of the floorplan of a large office building to ram a plane in to it.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
Excellent point. The problem is, you can't use the fact that 'if taxpayers pay for it and contribute to it, then they should have access to it', as justification.
Look at the NSA, CIA, random military bases. You're liable to be shot on sight if you sneak into them, and the information available there is simply an order of magnitude more sensitive.
So who ultimately decides the cutoff as to what we as taxpayers can see and what we can't? Judges like these. In this situation they made the proper choice, but I can't trust our judicial system in light of the 'other' rulings they've made.
For those joining us from overseas and parts West, Greenwich, Connecticut is among the more -- what's the word? -- 'tony' of digs. Sort of like a Beverly Hills for the New York glitter- and media-rati who don't like the feel of sand between their toes out in the Hamptons.
We, the public, paid for the government bureaucracy that gathered this data. We shouldn't have to pay for it again when we want to look at it. Kudos to the judge in this case.
About damn fucking time.
I dont mind seeing parcel & associated information available as public information but I really would rather not disclose information on things like water and gas pipelines, other critical below-ground infrastructure (above ground probably shouldnt be given out either, but is not that hard to reverse engineer that data, just drive around).
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
At least the courts knew better this time and ruled in favor of open information that the public paid for.
What is it with the "this time" stuff? After a case goes through the full process of being heard, being appealed, and being heard at higher courts, it's reasonably certain that the outcome is correct according to the law. If the courts produce a decision you don't like, then you probably need to look to your lawmakers, not your justices.
Of course, most of the "decisions" that people complain about around here never go to court. i.e. The case procedes as:
1. Person get cease and desist or notices a rights violation.
2. Lots of complaining about how bad the courts are, and how they're all in Bush's/Clinton's/Jimmy Carter's pocket.
3. Case never goes to court, despite the law actually stating the "correct answer".
4. More complaining about how bad the courts are.
Yeash people. Believe it or not, the US court system does tend to work correctly.
Ok, I'm done with my rant now. You can mod me offtopic. (Because I am.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Look at the NSA, CIA, random military bases. You're liable to be shot on sight if you sneak into them, and the information available there is simply an order of magnitude more sensitive.
GIS data (as I have proven) is not sensitive information. I have a feeling that at least some of what the CIA and NSA do is probably top secret and a cause for concern of our Nation's security.
Where taxes go up and down is not sensitive. How much my neighbors pay in taxes on their houses is quite important and is even more important when you are looking for a place to live (the true reason they don't want to pony up the information).
Let's not compare oranges and apples here. GIS != NSA/CIA regardless of how it is funded.
For more info on Greenwich's decision to fight, please contact sales@Greenwich-CT.com
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Check out this mosaic'd TerraServer view of the US Capital and Senate / Congressional office buildings in Washington, DC.
I know why people try to horde GIS data here, and I suspect it may be the same in Greenwich. GIS data is extremely expensive to create and work with, because the software involved tends to have very expensive per-user annual fees associated with it.
Now, you're thinking, "but my tax dollars paid that bill!"
Probably, yes. However, the tax dollars are apportioned in different amounts to different groups within government. Some group has to fight hard to justify a budget allocation big enough to cover their GIS software licenses... and they don't want other government groups to reap the benefits without helping to pay for it.
Around here, government departments tend to charge one another huge fees for their GIS output, thus sharing the cost of the software licenses. If they were required to give it to citizens for free (or, for $900), then obviously they wouldn't be able to charge another government department more than that.
So... they might actually have been worried about security. It seems more plausible to me that some guy was just worried that the folks over in the other department would get his data, and he'd be footing the bill with his budget allocation. Passing it off as a security concern just seems like a better way to get higher-ups on board.
Yeash people. Believe it or not, the US court system does tend to work correctly.
It tends to work correctly on shit that really doesn't matter (i.e. GIS data). It doesn't seem to work very well for civil rights violations such as the Patriot Act.
Yes, the people should stand up and revolt against the Patriot Act and those lawmakers, regime leaders, and officers of the court that aren't doing anything to stop it. Should we get bent out of shape over GIS data? No.
This is a step in the right direction showing that the information does need to be public even if someone uses the word "sensitive" or "terrorism".
I used to work in GIS and the recurring issue was: Information generated using public funds should be made publicly available. In the old days we would provide data so long as they paid for the media and the wages of the staff to generate the area in questiona and the computer operator for cutting the tape.
When I worked for Washington State Department of Natural Resources, they had a formal system for selling their data that included a licensing agreement! Not sure if it was ever challenged in court or how they were able to justify licensing their data.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
2. Lots of complaining about how bad the courts are, and how they're all in Bush's/Clinton's/Jimmy Carter's pocket.
I KNEW Carter was still up to something!
Free as in speech, free as in beer, or free as in lunch?
...why don't they just cover their entire property with cammo netting? :)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
In some town on Long Island, they copyrighted their GIS data and tried to refuse to supply it under NYS's FOIL (Freedom Of Information Law). They were sued and lost, but .... were allowed to keep their copyright. So now the people who receive the data can only republish it if they don't violate the town's copyright. Blah.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Look at the NSA, CIA, random military bases. You're liable to be shot on sight if you sneak into them,...
So who ultimately decides the cutoff as to what we as taxpayers can see and what we can't?
How about using: ``If they can't justify shooting you on sight if you sneak in, they can't justify keeping the information you paid for secret.'' as our criterion?
In this situation they made the proper choice, but I can't trust our judicial system in light of the 'other' rulings they've made.
Me, too.
This sort of wisdom does seem out of character for the courts in general. Not all judges are stupid, crooked, vicious scum, but that's the way to bet. Maybe this fellow is a principled exception to the general rule. Maybe he was just too stoned, and gave the wrong instructions to the clerk who wrote the ruling.
See what I've been reading.
The counties accrue negligible additional costs to share GIS data. In fact, probably accrue cost savings. For example, Richland County covering Columbia, South Carolina and the metropolitan areas freely shares its GIS data and allows the public to view housingh information. Housing prices and other information may be delisted but, I believe, are still available from physically visiting the county office. Also, Los Angeles County provides the information freely as well. It will sell the information in a more compact form but the information can be accessible one property at a time from the Internet. I think they try to get you to buy it but suspect the recent court ruling underscores they are required to make this information publicly available. I've run into city and other public officials before who think the government is a business. They'll try to block your business in order to compete. Best thing to do is let them dive in fully and see how hard business truly is and why the government has no business in business.
Expect Freedom.
I doubt it was the property lines that was the concern on the GIS data, and more likely the infrastructure (electric, telephone, natural gas, water etc) line information that was considered a security conceren.
Now i'm suprised they tried to restrict it as this stuff need to be frely available with little inconveince so that you don't have somebody sticking a bloody great digger through one of them. Trust me, contractors can be lazy and if there is an added inconvience to them getting neccisary health and safety information they might skip it if three is a time/money pressure on.
And it would be nice if they had this collated in a single document. In the UK most infrastructure supplies are considered statutory authorities and hold this infomation themselves which means you have to approach about 60 companies to ensure that a parcel of land does not have any hidden dangers underneath. Which is why we have the odd powerline cut etc.
I am a GIS professional and we went through something like this a while back at a County gov office I worked at. What data should be public and what shouldn't. Our policy was that the data was paid for by tax payers money so all data should be made publicly available at no cost, why charge the taxpayer twice for the same thing. The only exceptions were if there was a probable threat to the safety of an individual or the community. Which in our case the names and addresses of police officers, judges, etc. Maybe the voters should be a little more vocal in Portland.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't
One thing you've got wrong. Terrorists couldn't poison the water supply even with the GIS data. I think I heard it was estimated that in order to poison the water supply at the source you would need a barge full of poison or more. There's just so much water at any given resevoir that in order to get the concentration of poison high enough to hurt someone you need too much poison to go unnoticed. 100 tankers pumping strange chemicals into the water is not something you can sneakily do when nobody is looking.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I really don't see the reason for the restrictions. If someone wanted location information, they would just drive there and record the figures their $100 GPS reciever spit out. More than close enough for a missle or something of the kind.
BWP
As a software developer at a GIS company, I can tell you that it's all spatial information. Modern GIS data often includes names & addresss, parcel information, communities, etc.
Basically, think of it as a new kind of database. One that is capable of generating maps.
And just like any other database, it could have who knows what in it. Some information is very private, and some isn't.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
1. Go to http://www.mapquest.com./
2. Type in Greenwich, CT.
3. See a map of the town!
- or -
Stop by any gas station in the area and ask for a map.
Rest assured terrorists won't ever think to do this. Why? Well, we all know without any help from GIS data, they just drool on themselves all day long. Only GIS data makes them smarter than the average snail.
Greenwich: "If we make this information public, Saddam might bomb our latte shops."
Court: "Saddam is in jail."
Greenwich: "We meant Iran. There is great personal risk to our over-priced coffee industry."
Court: "I think you can survive."
Greenwich: "What about trade secrets. A map of our town is a trade secret."
Court: "You are aware that they are available at the corner gas station for a dollar fifty, right?"
Greenwich: "Not the electronic kind."
Court: "...which is free at Mapquest."
Greenwich: "You are abusing your authority!"
Court: "Get out before I have you shot."
Greenwich: "The next time you are drinking an double express mocha and a AGM-154 JSOW lands on you, just remember, we told you so."
Court: "Next case!"
Is it worth mentioning that terrorists seem to be attacking thing they can see and obivos targets. If someone wants to attack a city building they dont need a gps to do it, they need a phone book and a google maps.
This again is much along the lines of "well if our govt operatative can use GIS to attack somethign then therefore eveyone else must..
I recall someone on irc saying that the biggest risk to airline security are the passengers. Get rid of then and the pilots woudl be nice and safe.
Not on google http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.891044,-77.02011 5&spn=0.005440,0.007918&t=k&hl=en
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4705698
r .html
and here is a link to a blog that refers to the photographer's rights: http://blog.photoblogs.org/2004/06/photographers_
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Will they end up making it available, but charge stiff "processing" fees like some governments do for accessing public property and court records?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
*sigh*, which moronic congressman added something to a bill to block the Capitol and nothing else? I mean the White House and the Pentagon are both left alone.
Court: "Bailiff?"
Balifff: "Yes?"
Court: "Judging from the name, Greenwich likely voted for Ralph Nader, and is a Satanist. Please take the prisoner to Gitmo."
Baliff: "Gladly, Worm, your honor!"
Court: "Now, call the schoolmaster!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
What if I want to dig a hole? I should just dig and hope I don't cut off power/water/phone service to the whole neighbourhood?
That doesn't make much sense since facts, according to copyright law, cannot be copyrighted.
Sysadmin for an undisclosed city govt in Texas here....
GIS indeed contains sensitive data. Our layers contain information about where the high-pressure gasoline transport pipelines run thru our city, also where the high-pressure natural gas pipelines run. The natural gas in these lines is not the diluted stuff, with the mercaptain odorant added, like you get from the pipes at your house. It is the pure concentrated stuff straight from the wells and distribution pumps. From our GIS data, a terrorist (gack! I said the "T"-word. Ugh!) could find the most vulnerable places where to sabotage these pipelines and wreak havoc. He could also find out where the achilles heels of the public safety communications systems (buried fiberoptics and copper lines, microwave sites, etc) are located and sabotage those at the same time as his buddies blow up the gasoline pipelines. Oh, and they'd also be able to more easily find out where to most effectively cripple the water lines too, and on a smelly note, could also find out where to cause the most damage to our sewage pumping stations, most of which are underground too.
...or Google Maps for that matter, either. They both use the same USGS Urban Area Ortho pictures that NASA World Wind can use. (I don't mean you, I mean any pending "M$" conspiracy theorists.)
Blame the government for trying to keep their own buildings from being seen in the Urban Ortho. (Interestingly, it's not concealed in the somewhat-lower-quality aerial ortho, also a USGS creation.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Uhhh . . . I think you've centered Google on one of the Smithsonian buildings on the north side of the Mall. Drag the map east to west (right to left) and you'll see the same old mosaic'd out Capital and office buildings at the east end of the Mall.
How does this compromise personal and national security?
Iesus Christus magnus est.
A bit absurd, actually, not only in principle, but in execution, since if you go to the black-and-white arial photographs, they still show everything.
But then, the usual M$ flavour silliness aside, absurdity seems to be the order of the day, all in the name of totally irrational 'security' measures.
Stupid stuff about this town:
:D
The whole town is rich... filthy rich.
A while back everybody started building heliports on their property to make commuting to the city easier.
People were so annoyed they passed a law forbiding helicopters from landing within town boarders.
A little less far back there was a bad car accident that required immediate medivac.
Within a week there were multiple lawsuits against the town because of the medivac helicopter. The reason: If the town could allow an exception for one helicopter to land, then everybody should be allowed to use one all the time.
They also didn't allow out of towners on their beaches... at all.
The feds sued them.
Now their illegal immigrant help shares the beach with them! Oh the humanity!
The town is also very paranoid... see story.
I wouldn't want my name, address and other "public" information broadcasted and readily available to people I do not know or trust. If it's public information, that's fine - there should fee when someone wants to access it. That way there is a paper trail that links who looked at what.
Heh, in the US, we just cut stuff anyway. Take, for instance, a main fiber line for a major telco whacked by a backhoe... That was a fun day.
Now the great and terrible secrets of Geeks In Space will be available to us all! Muahahahaha!!!
Have a Happy.
Is this a first? Authorized and legal duplication of information is being called "theft" here.
"Especially since GIS people put so much work in the converges, then see it taken and abused by the public."
And here is the other thing wrong with your statement. Government road crews put a lot of hard work into building and maintaining roads, don't they? And yet, if it is not a toll road, you will be shocked to find that there are businesses that actually have company cars and trucks using these roads. Such an abuse! And libraries? There are legions of nonfiction authors who research those free library books and then make a profit from the information when they sell their books. I bet you agree that it would be a great improvement if libraries charged $10 for each book checked out! Stop those profiteers from stealing information!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Actually, the funny thing is that much of what they do is done in the open. Over the years, I have worked on several projects the involved various groups (DARPA, CIA, NSA, and DOD). In several cases, the work was attributed in one context, but was actually used in another. The first time that this was done was at a major university. The 2'nd at a quasi regular job.
Lowers the costs and with all the noise, it makes it hard to tell that it was anything interesting.
As to concern about what they do, I would worry less about what they do, and worry more about allowing the tech. to flow to DOJ( and by extension the FBI). Now, we are moving from what was professional groups (and down the road more autonomy will be restored) to politically-controlled groups. The tools that were available to NSA and CIA just a couple of years ago, will allows for total abuse under Patriot Act (I, II, and future).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
[GIS data] should be free for non-commercial use
Why specify non-commercial? What would be wrong with letting businesses use the data as they see fit?
I hate megacorps as much as the next guy, but I'm also not a fan of arbitrary restrictions on the use of information.
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
Beware selection bias. I'm as cynical as the next Slashdotter, but I have to admit that rationally, I really don't know what "the way to bet" is for courts, and I rather expect "the way to bet" is actually that they work pretty well, on the grounds that life would be much worse than it is otherwise, and on the grounds that we hear more about the "bad" cases because they are the exception.
Yeah, that's the art museum. The building to the right is modern art (the angular one).
I like music
If I'm paranoid its with good cause, I was walking to class this morning and this guy hammering shingles in on the roof of one of the buildings I passed kept saying he was going to kill me.
:~~(
Why oh WHY did I ever have to learn morse code?!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
Second that. However, the town tried to weasel out of giving the GIS data by using a completely different security claim: rather than asserting they didn't have to release the data because it could be used for bad purposes, they relied on a statutory exemption for information that would "pose a threat to the security of the town's information technology system" (emphasis mine). I think this exemption was put it to prevent the disclosure of /etc/passwd , not /mount/data/GIS/.
The GIS system is an example of the changes old data handling changes with the update of technology, mainly speed of access. Nothing unsual, but it's a nice case example.
I myself don't have so much of a problem with GIS systems, but some counties and municipalities are stupid in how they handle the data. You can get very detailed information, but even the most basic, real estate info, can be somewhat alarming. In my area, before you had to go to the court house and request the information to be pulled, which was immediately done but there was a gatekeeper who could throw up a flag if you started only pulling certain houses or, at minimum, ask that you show ID.
Now that information is online, without registration in many places (as if that would help if it were there) for anyone, anywhere to browse on their own time. You pull down a lot more information quicker and without review that way. Some of it is obvious and annoying but not harmful; I had a place where I only had electricity and water & sewer bills sent to, but I still got personalized junk mail. I couldn't figure out for a while how they were finding that info, then I noticed there was a match in that a slight handling of my name that was appearing on the junk mail that was only on the GIS data; it appeared people were mining the system. A neighbor at another place is somewhat suspcious that door to door salespeople target only certain areas of suspected income, given that he's followed some after they've come around and they don't go to neighboring areas.
Further, it's not just how much neighbors pay in taxes. Most GIS systems will tell you when a person bought the house, broker, and the price they paid, as well as the separate assessment values of the lot and the house itself. Further, if you own multiple houses in an area, such as a landlord, people can see how many, where, your minimal net worth, and estimate your income. Most folks would have issues if the IRS turned over your data for anyone to peruse; this is what the GIS system does to some.
Not terrorist material, but a nice goldmine if you want to rob a place if you live in a closed community. Of course, many are not closed communities and you can simply drive by and look at a place to find a target.
In my neighborhood, I don't mind the GIS system, but I can't say I really object to neighbors who do, particularly when you may be a target. A fun example was a CEO of a billion dollar company moved into a nice new house down the street. Everyone knew someone bought the house, but not who. That changed near immediately. Why? Go to the GIS system, hit the lot, pull up the name, look up the name in other sources. Or how my father did it, read a story in the paper about a new CEO being named, look up the info in the GIS system when he was researching other info, and "oh, did you know the CEO of blahblahblah bought the house at the corner?" Phones could be unregistered, a lock on the electrical company address, water & sewer is typically not shared, so it's a backdoor to find who owns a certain property and likely where they live.
Little wonder why renters have the ability to tend to have more relative privacy than land owners.
Great - now NYC can finally declassify its subway maps, even though terrorists could use them to destroy America.
--
make install -not war
oh, oh, oh, and...
"You're making baby Jesus cry!"
That doesn't make much sense since facts, according to copyright law, cannot be copyrighted.
A particular collection of facts, however, can be copyrighted.
Here come da fudge!
You don't mean their transit maps, do you? They've been up for several years now.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Also, some parts of the patriot act have been found unconstitutional.
Good point. Accidental damage to vital infrastructure is much more common than intentional attacks... maybe if the location of underground utilities (phone, electric, water, sewer, and gas lines) were freely available to all, they would stop accidentally digging them up! Oh, and it's not like the location of the gas lines is a big secret -- there are sign posted every 100 feet or so saying "Gas Line - Don't Dig Here!" Again, apparently the threat from idiots with backhoes is a lot bigger than the threat from terrorists.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"GIS Data" is a fantastically broad term (any data with a spatial component), and basically a useless distinction in deciding if data is sensitive... I'm pretty sure whatever Greenwich didn't want to share is not what you think, as all the examples on your list are publicly available already, mostly from the US Census for the cost of reproduction & shipping.
The article doesn't make it clear what the data in question was; On the other hand, I'm not sure what Greenwich even could have that would be sensitive.
As taxpayers, we pay for a lot of things we may or may not have access to or even any use for at all. In the case of the Census however, some quick googling will reveal that you can download it and use it to your hearts content. By the way, why free only for non-comercial use? Companies pay taxes too.
...their roofs have been edited to conceal surface-to-air installations.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
You're showing an appalling lack of understanding about what GIS is and is not.
GIS data most certainly can be sensitive, and you certainly haven't "proven" a thing - at best, you've stated an underwhelming, uninformed opinion, and been modded up for your efforts.
And that's kind of the problem. It's revolting how much the general public doesn't care until it interrupts their daily routines... which leads me to make a prediction:
The moment people realize they can't record their favorite TV shows or televised events the way they used to, then you'll have the public's attention. And when it comes to light that they could have stopped it from happening or that they can band together to make that change happen, the broadcast flag rules might just go away in the event they actually happen. But with that one thing, a door opens to public awareness that can be used to bring to light a bunch of other government attrocities that passed under their noses.
They're repealing the broadcast flag (though Hollywood is figuring a way around that), enforcing speedy trials, making cases open that the government wants closed, etc. etc.
Seems like judicial branch is working. It's the legislative branch that needs to be woken up.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
Having been involved in this situation some time ago, it's not really that the data is a security issue but that cash-strapped agencies have no time or staffing to make the data available in a format ready for public consumption. So there's a nautral tendency to just say no initially. Now they have to preen the data for sensitive information like SSNs, probably export it in a format that anyone off the street and not just other users of their brand if GIS can use, burn one-off CDROMs or worse tapes, and worst case help dumbass users debug their CDROM drives and Excel macros. Someone has to get paid to do that grunt work, and it can suck up a lot of time you woudl other wise spend doing real work like field-checking, developing new features, etc.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Defiantly works , so long as you have money to fight it out in court / can generate enough media hype to get a lawyer to represent you for the sheer celebrity factor.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Man even Google doesn't have close-in satelite imagery of the place.
It's like the porn channel on cable and nobody has a subscription. You cross a line an you go from crystal clear images to scrambled at the edges and then it changes to
"We're sorry, but we don't
have information at this zoom
level for this region.
Try zooming out for a broader look."
Where does Google get their images from and how powerful are these people that they get their area wiped off of the map?
cat sig >
I dunno...there are some VERY potent chemicals out there. I've always heard that people like John Lennon and other famous people in the early days of LSD, had pints or more of liquid acid....which could have been enough to turn on a whole city.
Dunno how factual it was...but, it seemed feasible at the time...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yeah? So freakin' what.
Why should I, as the taxpayer, be concerned with the budgetary constraints of inter (and sometmies intra) departmental rivalry? You've just made a case for a central GIS unit in local government to do the work, get the money, and act as a consultant for other departments. Matter of fact, every county I'm familiar with does it this way.
Fact of the matter is, for all intents and purposes, all this information is a matter of public record. It's just that GIS allows us to view, manage, and manipulate this information in novel and useful ways.
Since the patriot act hasn't been as widely abused as some would have you believe, it hasn't been significantly tested in the courts.
We know this because of the report that was published? Oh give me a fucking break man. The Patriot Act itself creates a barrier to insulate itself from information leaks and they want to make it even MORE powerful?
Explain to me how your statement makes sense in the face of that evidence? "Oh no one is being hurt by the Patriot Act even though they couldn't tell you if they were."
Great, the courts can't stop something that in itself doesn't allow itself to be stopped. Nice.
What ever happened to having a neighborhood welcoming party? Or just going over to their house to say hi?
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
... most of the "decisions" that people complain about around here never go to court ... Believe it or not, the US court system does tend to work correctly
You forgot to mention a couple of little details.
Like for example a legal bill for several tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for fighting a case.
Also, consider the payoffs in this game called "let's go to court". If you win, you get moral satifaction. If you lose, you will likely have to declare bankrupcy. A bit skewed, don't you think?
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Rubbish, it has been: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.889180,-77.00847 0&spn=0.007886,0.010600&t=k&hl=en
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Not to mention that the roofs of the White House and the Executive Office Buildings have been discreetly covered with brown in Photoshop.
What makes this so ridiculous is that DC gift shops almost certainly sell higher-resolution flyover posters of these same locations -- I saw one in a public restroom recently!
Dude, go find that little orange bottle in your cupboard with the label that says "Valium." I think you forgot to take one today. Your little rant doesn't make any sense. Like the GP says, the Supreme Court doesn't just hand down arbitrary decisions. Somebody has to challenge the act, and the Supreme Court does indeed review cases and make decisions (even on the Patriot Act) when it feels inclined to do so. I know a lot of people around here have their underwear all up in a knot because they're afraid that somehow, someday, the Patriot Act may inhibit their ability to get free and unfettered access to internet pornography and illegally copied music, but it just hasn't played out as deviously as you all had hoped. So why don't you relax a little and go back to grousing about the Broadcast Flag or something. Or at least complain about the lack of access to GIS data.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
It's really easy to make a computer map, if you want to. All you need to do is get a reasonably up-to-date city map and scan it in to the computer. From there, with a simple GPS unit, you can determine the latitude and longitude of landmarks in the city (which could be as simple as street intersections, buildings that are easy to pick out on the map, like airports, etc.) and, with any good GIS software, you can georeference the map and have a GIS map that's nearly as good as whatever the city has.
The city's objections are frivolous. I haven't heard of a lot of terrorists with smart bombs that work better with GIS maps. Do you need computers to load up a truck with fertilizer and drive it into a government building? The trade secrets avenue apparently didn't work, but in my state, we have hired a company to create georeferenced aerial photographs, and those are copyrighted by the company. We can only release that data to other state agencies. Fortunately, that data is currently being replaced by open data that the government is generating, so everyone will have access to it.
Why bother poisoning the water? They could just blow up the pumps, or the outlet pipes. The city would be without water for days. Or if you're dead set on poison, just dump all the fluorine or chlorine that's already in the plant into the water.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Mapserver is a CGI-based program for making maps. It has an interface (mapscrpt) in Perl, Python, PHP. PostGIS spatiall-enables Postgres. Great software.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I KNEW Carter was still up to something!
Sneaky commie red, telling us to "put on a sweater" rather than crank up the thermostat to 90 in our SUVs like good little Bushie Americans.
This isn't ridiculous at all.
It's not that the satellite image normally shows anything secret, only that it could.
The posters have most definitely been vetted to make sure they don't reveal anything secretive.
However, satellite photos are regularly updated, so they are probably required to turn on "mosaic mode" for certain latitude/longitude ranges, that way if something was going on outside or on top of the building as the satellite took the picture, it wouldn't be revealed.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Ahh I get it now. I have to be on drugs to understand your logic. Of course the Patriot Act is a good thing and only helps to stop terrorists.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
>Well, you are mostly right. I've paid for the gathering of data, but I
>don't necessarily want to pay for the paper/bandwidth to distribute the
>data.
and another thing, those politicians who get to pay for their "business
lunches" with taxpayer dollars? i don't want any of my tax dollars
paying for any olives. i don't like olives.
WHY ARE YOU GAY?
Sadly, you are such a dumbass that I can't be bothered to speak to you. Enjoy your trolling. Carry on.
"Since the patriot act hasn't been as widely abused as some would have you believe"
How do you know? The first rule of investigating people under the Patriot Act is that you don't talk about investigating people under the Patriot Act.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
By being modded up on slashdot overwhelmingly proves that he is right.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Funny you should mention Portland. http://portlandmaps.com/ has lots of freely available GIS data. Very helpful when buying a house.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
What makes this so ridiculous is that DC gift shops almost certainly sell higher-resolution flyover posters of these same locations -- I saw one in a public restroom recently!
Well, these photos were probably taken before the anti-aircraft batteries went in.
maybe if the location of underground utilities (phone, electric, water, sewer, and gas lines) were freely available to all...
This information is already free. You call an 800 number and someone from a major utility (usually the phone company in my experience) will come to the dig site and electronically locate and mark all utililty lines in the area at no cost to you whatsoever. In fact (in Iowa at least) it's required that you get this service before you dig anywhere. Locates are free but repairing a fiber optic cable is very expensive. Despite this idiots still cut them all the time anyway.
If you don't like the Patriot Act, sue to have it reviewed for Constitutionality. Use the power of the "activist judges" - that's what they're there for.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Good for CT!
The availibilty of GIS data has helped lower costs for many of our clients (I work at an architecture firm, but IANAA yet).
We used to outsource all civil engineering work because of the costs associated with tax maps, FIRM Maps, hi-res topo maps, etc. Now that we have GIS online, we can do the work in-house, typically saving a client over $10,000 in fees and removing a (typical) 4 month delay in the schedule.
Our local county charges telcos a lot of money for continuing access to the GIS data that they use to feed information into the 9-1-1 system. Naturally, the phone companies don't eat the cost. They pass it on to their customers. So taxpayers have to pay money to buy the GIS data that their own taxes funded in the first place.
they'll be safe from the Soviet Nukes there, while Greenwich is destroyed using the GIS data ...
...
Sometimes I wonder if this country's not getting just a teeny bit too paranoid
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Lost a town Master zifferent has. How embarrassing ... how embarrassing.
So we've prevented retarded terrorists from attackingus?
My god, first it was "color alerts" (with no specified time, location or date) and the "fear the reds under you bed" (err, terrorists, whatever), NOW they're pixelating because stupid terrorists would head for the giant pixels!
This isn't security, it's freakin' stupidity!
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
If you are referring to the County of Suffolk, New York v. First American Real Estate Solutions case (and it sounds like you are) then you are misinformed, as that case had nothing to do with GIS data.
f olk_v_first_american.htm
SCRPTSA had not denied any FOIA request of their GIS data by First Experian in this case.
First Experian/First American Real Estate Solutions was accused of violating SCRPTSA's copyright when they took the published, paper tax map compilation books, scanned them and then tried to sell CDRoms of the scans on the open market.
Suffolk lost in US District Court for Southern NY, but won on appeal to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision can be found at http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/IP/copyright/suf
As far as I know First Experian has not appealed this decision, and an amendment to NYS FOIA law to exempt GIS data is still pending before the NYS Legislature.
But the system does have an informal form of checks and balances;
the legislature doesn't trust the millitary,
the courts doesn't trust the FBI,
the NSA doesn't trust the CIA,
the executive branch doesn't trust the legislature,
the Secret Service doesn't trust BATF,
the IRS don't trust anybody and nobody trusts "the government" so in the end it all balances out. the Patriot act gives a lot of people in government a lot of power and usefull tools for dire emergencies and to prevent a lot of dire emergencies and most people in government (and they are just people like us) realy don't want to squander those tools in trivial excesses and not have them when lives are on the line. The few who try will be censured one way or another.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
How do you expect civil contractors to avoid critical infrastructure when works are underway ?
Do you want people blundering around putting backhoes through gas mains ?
I have worked and setup numerous GIS systems across the country and the most common reason for local officials to ask for some system of blocking free use of GIS is not security or personal privacy or commercialization (private companies selling public data). It is to thwart public interest groups from finding out egregious local land-use and zoning practices. It also is to keep local real-estate and land speculators happy.
For some reason, they see providing any local information for "free" as a threat to their free-wheeling and dealing. Because GIS exoses local environmental violations, incompatible land-use practices, zoning violations, land holdings and conglomeration, and so forth. In recent years, GIS has helped to show redlining in communities (keeping poor people out of rich neighborhoods), gerrymandering school and election districts, and so forth.
Some cities mainly use GIS for fine tuning when and where to ticket parking violators. Washington DC was big on this. Some states (like Michigan) ban such practices, but by and large, local governments use GIS for activities that have not been fully sanctioned. Yet they are loathe to share GIS data with anyone else. For instance in Atlanta, they don't even share this information with other departments within the city or regional government. Their protectionist attitude puts to shame IP litigation we now see in the tech field.
I made most of my money in not setting up GIS systems, but how to keep the data away from public, public officials, and citizens' groups. The major software companies, mainly ESRI, have helped in this endeavor by creating tools to work around easy sharing. Only recently with OpenGIS and other initiatives, did this stranglehold began to loosen.
Anyway, needless to say, I don't work in this field anymore. And I sleep well now.
4 ounces of botulism toxin, properly dispensed would kill every animal on the earth. Think about that when you go for your botox treatment
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Terrorists put considerable effort in selecting physical targets that are highly symbolic and recognisable to obtain the maximum emotional response from the real target, the people who live. Their goal is to terrorise not kill, killing is just a means to the end.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Oops. My bad.
You have a valid point, but how much of that information is freely available "piecemeal" from other town sources, as TFD (decision) alludes to? Does releasing this information really create hazards or vulnerabilities that don't already exist?
Right now none of it is published wide open to Joe Public without going thru an access request process so that the stuff we consider sensitive can get appropriate auditing and recordkeeping. Here in Texas, we're not subject to being forced to give wide open disclosure of such data to just anybody... yet.
Sure, some of this info can be pieced together from other sources, but a significant portion of our GIS system would be a concentrated gold mine of info that could be used by evildoers to cause great harm. Also the old "security thru obscurity" does have some merit here and we should preseve as many forms of security as we can instead of negligently handing over vital information to the wrong persons. Beleive me, anyone who has genuine and legitimate need for this data can come down to city hall in person and request access to it and upon approval, get it, and so we'll have a record of who is using it and why they want it, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stick it all out there onto the wild lawless untamed public Internet for any anonymous person to have full unfettered access to it without us knowning who they are and why they're wanting it.
Of course access to some of the layers (land parcels, platting data, etc) truly pose no safety threat and could be published to the world, but our GIS system is presently architected in such a way to contain *all* the data, and to provide access to it for the specifically authorized government officials who need it to do their jobs with it. The system was not designed to publish carefully selected subsets of the databases to the general public over the Internet. To do that would cost extra money to buy extra software and extra hardware and an extra Internet link with sufficient bandwidth for hosting such a GIS publishing service, not to mention hire extra staff whose job it is to manage the extra stuff. If the local taxpayers wish to fund such an animal, and the city council wishes to implement it, then of course we'd do it, but the hard cold truth is that we just barely got 80% of the funding really needed to implement and maintain the internal-use-only GIS system, and had to sacrifice other projects' funding to make up the missing 20% to get as much of the GIS system as we were fortunate enough to get at all.
all the systems i have seen like that were set up like this:
Getting lines marked is free
If the lines are marked wrong and you cut one, no penalty to you
if you do not call and get lines marked, or cut a properly marked line you get to pay out the ass for repairs.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
You call an 800 number and someone will mark the lines within 48 hours. I don't know what your definition of "freely available" is, but my definition doesn't include waiting for 2 days for the information... besides which, what is to stop the terrorists from calling that same 800 number?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Except that it seems to be taking a long time. Case in point, Sibel Edmunds.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ugh. Only problem there is that private enterprise failing in business is limited by bankruptcy. Government can keep pouring money down a rathole because they're funded by money collected from us collected at gunpoint*.
* O'Rourke's Taxation is Armed Coercion theory: "Refusal to be taxed" (i.e. tax evasion) will inevitably get you jail time. "Refusal to be jailed for refusing taxation" (i.e. trying to escape) will get you shot. (taxing at gunpoint is perhaps the oldest US govt tax policy: see the Whiskey Rebellion)
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
If I was a terrorist I'd buy a locator and mark things myself, terrorism has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make.
I'm saying that such a service already exists so using GIS for this is overkill, and we can find something else to waste money on.
Saying a 48hr delay makes the information not freely available makes no sense. It's like saying books in a library aren't freely availible because you have to walk to the library and get a library card to get them. I doubt you'd ever need to dig so urgently that you can't wait two days for someone to provide that service. Personally I've never waited longer than the morning after I call for a locate.
Enough to dose an entire city, but only if ingested in large enough quatity at a single sitting by each person. Reservoirs often hold months worth of water supply. Of the water a city uses, only a tiny percentage of it actually comes in contact with humans at all, much less gets ingested. A thousand pints of liquid LSD in a reservoir wouldn't be enough to produce any measurable effect.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
A particular collection of facts, however, can be copyrighted.
More accurately, a particulr presentation of that collection of facts can be copyrighted. One could present those exact same facts in a different arrangement and sell them.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Makes me feel like I'm watching porn...
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Since it's in many cases illegal to inform people that inquiries are being made about them under PATRIOT, aforementioned people can hardly go mounting judicial challenges, can they?
Sure, the Court tends to rule correctly when it a case gets to it -- but "correctly" these days tends to mean "in line with the intent of Congress". Congress increasingly frequently intends things which arguably aren't compatible with a strict interpretation of Federal powers granted via the Constitution, and the Court frequently grants them those things anyhow. (Consider the CTEA, or the extent of abuse of the interstate commerce clause to legislate things which have only remotely passing relationships with interstate commerce).
ROFL
:)
Thanks, man.
The JSOW is a quality glide bomb. Not as clumsy or random as a CBU, an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
If the maps for the subway were classified, a ruling in CT wouldn't make them unclassified, without a court case first ( most likely ). That was my point.
Rich people think they are above the law because they can afford to use it against the rest of us peasants to their advantage. Greenwhich is the second richest town in America with any significant population (over 30K-ish). see this table : http://www.ired.com/buymyself/rioux/richcities.htm
'nuf said.
But that's the gov't for ya.
A very eloquent way to put it!
Doesnt that mean if you look for "Mosiac Mode" you also find the 'secrets'?
Good for amateur detectives.
No, the locations aren't usually the secret nowadays.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I wonder how usefull this stuff will be. most gov data ive worked with has almost no Meta Data, so what you can do with it is very limited
Just another crappy blog
Very useful if you're planning a move to Portland Oregon. Wether for business, to live or both. PortlandMaps.com
the government survey department has 1:50000 scale GIS data of the whole country,and greater detail of cities & towns. They used to charge 200 rand (~ $30) per 1/25th of a degree square; basically they were subsidising their paper maps (which are very cheap) with the sale of electronic info. Since we got our Freedom of Info Act, they've had to give away the GIS info in a standard format at the cost only of the CD-R's it's burned on.
Slashdotland -- AAAAUUUGGGHHH! Patriot Act is teh SuX0r!!! They will use it to spy on you without a warrant while you surf pr0n and will then arrest you for having pictures of Brittney Spears on your computer!!! And they'll use it to restrict your fair use rights every time you log on to Bittorrent to use your fair use rights to fairly download the latest Avril Levign album!!! It's 3v17!!! It's totally unconstitutional. The 5th Amendment says so!!!
Real World -- The FBI doesn't care about your porn addiction. If you're illegally copying, distributing or receiving copyrigthed material, then you are breaking the law, so if you get caught, is it really that "unfair?" If the FBI catches you with a search performed without a warrant, be sure to tell your defense attorney to bring it up.
Slashdotland -- d00d! The Patriot Act has 1337 superpower l00ph0l3z!!! It has like a force field so that the Supreme Court can't even talk about it, and plus it says that the FBI can execute you on the spot if you complain about the illegal wiretap. And also it disbands like the whole judiciarial branch and declares W to be the supreme emporer for life!!!
Real World -- The Federal Courts can and do review Patriot Act casee. Parts of it have been ruled unconstitutional. Like most laws, parts of it are better than others, and over time we'll decide, as a society, what we think belongs in "good" column and what belongs in the "bad" column. In the meantime, the ACLU and slashbots still have their constitutional right to complain about it.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Not only that but LSD degrades in water over time.
It is pretty unlikely.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You have some good and some bad points in your logic. First, data that has been added to a GIS system is only as "sensitive" as whatever it happens to be about. Most "sensitive" data is already available as maps and satellite imagery that is available for free or the pound of flesh nearest your heart depending upon the source. A GIS linkage might allow a creep to workout how to do the most damage to a population center with a dirty bomb or biological. But something like this can worked out just as readily from paper maps and published data without using a computer.
Anybody can go out with a handheld consumer level GPS and a laser range finder and a good compass and acquire positional data for any particular building or facility that is as accurate as what could be gained from a 7.5 minute USGS map, even if the facility is not shown on such a map. You should probably be able to get a quick and dirty position fix on a flag pole for instance with no more than about a 20 meter error circle from 1000 meters (+/- 1/2 degree angular error + 3 degree average WAAS error). That is far more accuracy than your typical terrorist delivered explosive calls for, and far less than the unibomber achieved using the US Postal Service.
Calling urban GIS data "sensitive" probably means that it is politically sensitive because you can analize city spending and demonstrate that more is being spent on wealthy areas than on poor areas. So the police, the public works and all the other government offices repsonible for spending tax money feel "insecure" knowing your average constituent can turn around and make an election issue out of the data.
I don't get it--are municipal governments not subject to the same lack of copyright the federal government is subject to (i.e., everything the federal government produces is in the public domain)?
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.