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Your House Is About To Be Photographed
An anonymous reader writes "Photographers from a Canadian company are going house to house, shooting pictures of every house in America, in hopes of building a giant database that can be sold to banks, insurance companies, and appraisal firms. While this activity is legal (as long as the photographers don't trespass on private property to get their shots), there are obviously concerns about security and privacy. Considering that an individual can be detained and questioned by the FBI for photographing a bridge in this country, why should this Canadian company get a free pass? Tinfoil hat aside, something seems very, very fishy here." From the Arizona Star article about the photographing of Tucson: "'The [handout given to people who complain] made it sound like they're doing it for law enforcement, when in reality they're doing it for sales and marketing,' said [a City Council aide], who received several calls about the company."
I have to put up my 10 meter wide 'FUCK YOU' banner.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
They are specifically excluding pictures of bridges.
Any trolls whom reside under a bridge will be excluded from the resultant marketing offers.
liqbase
How very appropriate...
;-)
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along"
Yes, offtopic, but struck me as very funny. Guess you had to be there.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
No more putting off mowing the lawn.
What seems "very, very fishy?"
From my understanding, this has always been legal. Where we live, the size, configuration, value and tax record of your house is public information. So what would people do with this information that is so sinister?
I dont see how each and every home will be photographed since some communities are closed to the public. What is the point if the data is not complete?
I think I can see my house!
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
There is no way they can get within sight of my house without trespassing on private property. And the view to satellites and planes is obscured by trees year round.
... to our forthcoming invasion. Do not be alarmed.
Actually we have invaded the US 47 times in the last 10 years, but nobody noticed.
Very little of my house is visible from public access. However, driving a hundred yards or so down my driveway will offer you a nice, clean picture. The first time I see photos of my house which I know had to have been taken from my private property, can I have their asses thrown in jail for trespassing?
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
This reminds me of a conspiracy theory my Roomate had going while I was in college. The gist of it is that the Canadians have a widespread effort to subvert government of the United States, and effectively take over the country.
Naturally, it was satirical, but now I'm wondering... what if there was something to it?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Ever hear of Zillow, the real estate "estimator"? They already have detailed pictures of homes in many major U.S. cities, from four different angles (taken by plane, natch). These aerial shots, of course, blow sat images away when it comes to level of detail.
Every new advance in technology comes with new fears. I mean there have been peoples who thought that making an image of you was to steal your soul, so the camera was especially scary. Now we're worried that it will steal our privacy/security. All it does is eliminate obscurity, which as we all know, is no security. Frankly no one's home is very secure without monitoring, which itself is something of an invasion of privacy (for one thing it pretty much gives the cops the right to come on your property and even enter your home any time...) because let's face it, short of a castle it's pretty easy to enter a home. You don't need to open a door when a sledgehammer will get you through pretty much any wall. With a 10lb sledge with a 3+ foot handle, you can go through pretty much any siding including fake rock, wood planks, plywood siding, you name it.
Frankly I think that people who plant all their houses in rows made out of ticky-tacky have nothing to complain about. If you want privacy, move to where the privacy is. Put up a gate, fence everything you want to keep private, and put up no trespassing and no soliciting signs. But there is not now and has never been any expectation of privacy in any public place.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Considering that an individual can be detained and questioned by the FBI for photographing a bridge in this country, why should this Canadian company get a free pass?
Ummm... because... they aren't photographing bridges?
Actually, they should be chased out of townsimply for being a bunch of bloody Canadians.
HA HA HAAAAAAAA! Canuck bastards!
I tease. :)
...has photographed all our houses from above already, right? So what's new here? That they're doing it from the ground?
I'd love to see those Canadians trying to get photos in Compton...
I fail to see why pictures taken in legal way (I'm not talking about trespassing or even breaking-in to take interior pictures) is useful in any way? What bank or real estate agent would gain from picture taken from the street? More information is currently readily available - most people post detailed pictures of interior and exterior when they sell houses, this information only needs to be archived and categorized to get better result than this project can hope to archive.
There is some good in having a 3/4 mile driveway :)
I just have to remember that when it snows...
...a modification of REFLECTION PORN!!! If there's a way of knowing when they will be photographing your house, you could stick an LCD monitor in your front window displaying a goatse.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I am going to Copyright my house and any images of it.. Just like the NFL does thier games, when these Canadians take a picture and sell it to someone I'm going to sue them for $10,000 a picture. I just need to make a little sign to put on the corner of my house that says (c).2007
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
It's the one with the dogs humping in the yard...
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
There is good and bad in this. On the good hand I can see how this would be an invaluable historical resource. How awesome would it be if we had a pristine and exhaustive record of the location of all properties from ancient Rome, or even WWII?
On the bad hand one cannot help but wonder what kind of harmful uses this database could be used for.
As we are getting more and more data storage I am starting to wonder how much privacy we are going to have left in a couple decades...in a century? Well, I won't be too worried about things 100 years from now since I'll probably be very dead. But hopefully I'll have a prosthetic brain and will happily be worrying about.
This whole disappearance of privacy reminds me of the book, "The Light of Other Days", in which all privacy disappears with the introduction of a technology which allows you to view anybody at any time present or past. It makes me wonder if the disappearance of privacy would be so bad after all?
After all, the one place I wish there were less privacy is within the government.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
For God's sake, there are enough rights-curtailing things going on if you want to worry about it. There's no need to take a non-issue like this and get so freaked out. I would be more worried if they told you that you can't take the picture.
New York City did this in the 1920's, and still does it to this day. Several private firms also do this.
Anyone ever hear of propertyshark.com?.
Yeah, pictures of every building in Manhattan, and much of prime Brooklyn. They also have the tax photos from the 1970's.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Yeah, I feel unsafe already. The thought that someone might know what my house looks like sends chills down my spine. Can you get tin foil hats that fit houses?
I'm a proponent of strong privacy rights, but if they're just photographing the view of your house from the street, I fail to see how they're doing anything invasive of one's privacy, they're simply cataloging trivially publicly available information. Anyone can drive down the street and see the house. Presumably, on any given day, on most of these streets, hundreds or thousands of people drive down the street and see the house anyway.
Using something like a high-powered zoom lens to try to shoot pictures inside the house through the window, or trespassing on the property to better see the house, or driving a cherry picker down the street to take hard-to-get views over privacy fences and such would be different. But I don't see how the regular pedestrian view from the street can be considered "private." Presumably anybody with your address could get the same view by going there anytime. And to look it up in this company's database, presumably they've already got your address or could easily retrieve it from other sources. They're just changing the ease of access to this information, they aren't making any "private" information that wasn't previously accessible available, they're just changing the costs of accessing publicly available information.
If you care about people not obtaining information they can get from glancing at your house from the street, then you need a privacy fence or something to conceal that information.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
scary. Would you want to be the person who gets selected to take photo's in the "bad part" of town. Though if they can use footage from COPS for some of the shots, that'd work out great. Then they can add the "As seen on TV" label to those homes.
.... taken? Or is the fact that it's a non-American company doing it the real issue?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
A couple years ago in Seattle we had a photographer accosted by police because he was photographing a railroad bridge - they told him he needed permits etc. from the city and from Homeland Security or the FBI. When someone actually bothered to check with both federal agencies, their replies basically amounted to "no, that's silly".
What it sounds like (to me anyway) is a number of local agencies get overly zealous at times. I suspect part of the problem is there hasn't been much, if any, guidance provided to local law enforcement from the feds. Another part of the problem is these people, from the feds on down, seem to be flying the security ship by the seat of their pants, and worrying about what's actually legal/illegal later - the old "Shoot 'em all, and let God sort 'em out" philosophy.
#DeleteChrome
Three weeks ago a couple in a van pulled into my neighborhood and took a picture of my house. My girlfriend, who was on the porch, gave them a wtf hand gesture, to which they just smiled, waved and drove away.
Wonder if this is related?
I've been photographed! :(
"Number 134?"
"Yeah"
"It's just a door with a number?"
"Yeah like the last 133 units we've shot dumbass"
*Click*
"Okay got it"
Namaste
Time to get some holographic siding so that my house doesn't look the same as the day before.
A new Finnish real estate agent recently started with a new concept. They had photographed almost every building near the capital, and users could look at them on the net. If there was a building you liked, you could give your info so they contact you as soon as something is for sale there. All the buildings would show how many people wanted to be contacted for that building / street / part of town. It caused a fairly big uproar when it started, with people upset about their homes being photographed. Things settled down fairly quickly, and it actually ended up being a pretty handy service. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if the complaints where started by the competing companies...
I already have many pictures of my house.
In Cook County (Chicago, IL) the assessors office has already been taking pictures from the street of the front facade of every property in the county for at least the last 7 years. http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/
With their beady eyes and flapping heads!
Not saying this is me, but, you hit the cul-de-sac I live on, in the country, out in the woods of Washington, and start taking pictures of the few homes here, and you could get a seat full of rock salt.
Hell, even the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses know not to come down the back roads in this neigborhood.
I pity the poor defenseless Canadians. Just a warning, one of our neighbors always has a lot of meat curing, but he never goes shopping or hunting. Odd.
Stay out of Pierce County, Washington. And most specifically, stay out of the Key Pennisula area.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
The same goes for taking photos in airports, minus the security stations and checkpoints or course, and buildings with trademark logos on them or buildings that have copyrighted designs. The later only extends to building other buildings with copyrighted designs and not the taking photos of them.
They've been doing this in a lot of areas for a long time. Here in the chicago area, the cook county assessor's office will show you the front view of almost any building if you know the address.
I'm sure this is nothing new, especially for highly populated areas. This company of couse could offer to provide updated photos, but the service itself has already been here.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I built a facade exterior house outside my actual house with a tinfoil lining. The pretense house has a different address on its mailbox and I use MAT (mailbox address translation) to forward all mail to my real house. I keep all the windows and doors on the proxy house closed. This combined with a good cinder block firewall keeps me safe and from broadcasting my real address TO THE WORLD!
The publishing company will not spend the legal fees for the one page. Now if everyone used a different page, you can view enough houses to read the entire book.
Fight Spammers!
I run the IT Department for a small County. I can tell you that this is nothing new or special. We are constantly being hit up by one company or another that wants access to our tax payer database and our property assessment records. These companies mine our data and resell "comparables" to real estate agencies, banks and property appraisers. They always ask for imaging if we have it as well. Here the assessors visit your property once every two years to evaluate your home for tax purposes. Every time on site they take several digital pictures of your property for the records. These images are then part of the public record and anyone can have access to them. This is extremely common place. How this is a privacy issue I have no clue. Mountain out of a mole hill etc...
The [handout given to people who complain] made it sound like they're doing it for law enforcement, when in reality they're doing it for sales and marketing,' said [a City Council aide], who received several calls about the company.
Their site mentions that emergency services would benefit from the service, which they are allowed to use for free. It mentions they would be shown the daytime/warm-clime (ie snow free) pics so they can plan responses to that particular location. I imagine it would be helpful for a firefighter to know there's a basement window you can't see because it's covered in snow, or for the police to know ahead of time the house is surrounded by a high fence, or that the living room has a good view of the street...
On the commercial side, I'm shopping for a house, and I'm tired of all the "taken 2 days ago while the yard is buried in snow" pics on real-estate sites. It would be nice to have a (relatively recent) summer-time image of houses I'm looking at.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
They are just working for The Man, just like us. Doesn't matter if the dollar is U.S. or Canadian, some soul sucking corporation wants it. Borders don't matter to them, the world is their oyster. BTW, I for one welcome our new Canadian overlords!!!
This is already quite common in Sweden. While they haven't gotten around to photographing very many buildings, at least most of the normal-sized cities are covered.
& UCSB%3AWflWhite=1a1b&UCSB%3AWflPink=4a&UCSB%3AText BoxWho=&UCSB%3ATextBoxWhere=gibraltargatan+80%2C+g %25u00f6teborg#contactlinks
(clicking 'fler bilder' close to the building picture will give you the view to the left and right, as well. Then click the little left and right arrows to navigate around the street.)
It is not used primarily for insurance reasons, but as a complement to online maps (i.e. google maps) where you can 'walk' a street by viewing a building, and how it looks looking left or right from that building. Then being able to change viewpoint from one building to another, following the street, can be very useful.
If I'm going somewhere new where I've not been before I normally check out what the building looks like, and how it looks around.
An example (of 'my' building): http://www.hitta.se/SearchCombi.aspx?SearchType=4
I'm Safe - just painted the following on my garage door:
(C)2007, All Rights Reserved
Maybe this is the motivation I need to put the engine, that is suspended from the tree, back in the car that is on blocks in my front yard. Wouldn't want to give the world the impression that the US is a back water, uncivilized country...
That was good of you to use "whom" instead of "who". Unfortunately this wasn't the right time...
That's the funniest thing that I have read here in weeks. It's bad enough when people use "who" instead of "whom" in the objective case, but when I see "whom" instead of "who" in the subjective case, I absolutely cringe.
They use Google maps to do a mash-up. It's a very clever site.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Don't know where it came first, but here in Finland a company called Igglo photographed every house here a couple of years ago. There are now photos of every building online. And I have to admit, that if your buying or renting something it sure is a very nice service. But I understand the privacy issues. There was some protest over here especially about photographic single-family houses. And I actually saw these guys photographing the house I live in. My first impression about them was to call the police. Kind of funny later on when I figured who they were.
I demand the Cone of Silence!
If your house is copyrighted, they will have to give you royalties.
Anyone got a picture of them, yet? Post it online, then make a point of encouraging people not to beat them senseless. Point out how wrong it would be to use mace and pepper spray on these law-abiding aliens. Condemn anyone who would even think of shooting them repeatedly in the face just for photographing your house in ways that may eventually result in additional junk mail for you.
Insurance companies should instead put their money into having USGS images taken more often, resulting in more-often-updated aerial imagery which we ALL can use.
The company Igglo did something similar for Finland.
That should play with their heads.
This has already been done for many Spanish cities. One example is mine, Valencia :).
There are photographs of every few meters of every street. They use them in photographic street directories.
Here's an example
Yes because canadians have never destroyed any american bridges or houses before. Oh and since when are arabs a religious or ethnic group? It's funny how many pro-racial profiling people don't even know how to racially profile.
I don't know how they're doing this in practice, whether they're just sending people out with regular handheld digital cameras or what, but it would probably be possible to rig up a nondescript panel van with side-view cameras, and just drive up the street photographing everything on both sides. (Or, for better results, everything on the right side, and then drive up one side of the street, followed by the other.) If you had a very good GPS receiver in the van, you could geotag each photo, and then crop them as a batch later on, for each house or building on the street.
What would probably be even better would be to use a progressive-scan video camera for image capture, so that you have a continuous feed of images, and then you don't have to worry quite so much about having one house cut between two photos. (Alternately you could probably sew the images together into a continuous linear panorama, but that might give mixed results.)
You might still get shot at in some areas, but it would probably be a lot lower risk than just walking around.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Whom says that it can only be used in the objective case?
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Ofcourse one could mount an infrared spot/flood light pointing at the street.... It's sure to make their pics turn out nice.
First of all the bit about them getting a free pass is just absurd, despite what the TSA does the idea of these precautions is to catch terrorists not make sure everyone is annoyed equally.
Secondly I think it is unfortunate that the distinction between privacy and anonymity is so often blurred. This technology does not infringe on your privacy, the front of your house is visible to any passerby and has undoubtedly been published in some picture on the web or a newspaper already. Nothing that was not previously visible to complete strangers has been revealed. All that has changed is that it is now easy for people to find that information and make use of it. In other words your anonymity has been reduced though your privacy has not been affected (they aren't always so clearly cut but here it is).
Now I find it pretty ironic that the same vocal slashdot lobby that is so strongly against any sort of free speech restriction or data lockdown technology seem to think that we can and should do something to stop the loss of (physical) anonymity. Frankly the two goals are fundamentally incompatible.
As it gets easier and easier for people to post information to the web they will do it. Today we have camera phones, tomorrow we will have glasses that record video, recognize faces and code geographic information into that data. Either you pass draconian laws that prevent people from posting the snapshots/movies online or that data will eventually be there, and sooner or later better search and geographic information will make it possible for search to organize it in ways that let people determine what city your in on a given day (face recognition on photos taken that day) and certainly they will be able to track down a picture of your house.
This sort of loss of anonymity is inevitable if we don't want to give up our freedom. It isn't all bad, after all this is the way people lived in small towns for most of history. But so long as we keep whining about it rather than facing up to the fact we make sure that it will be lost in the worst possible ways, i.e., useful features that expose the information to us will be stopped but governments and corporations will be able to use it as they wish. What we need to be doing is making sure that anonymity is lost equally, i.e., we don't get situations where the ghetto is filled with cameras but the suburbs are not (it is too easy to demonize 'other' people when the unblinking eye isn't trained at 'your kind'), and beefing up genuine privacy protections in the face of this loss of anonymity.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Photographing houses, addresses, etc. has been going on for years. As part of GIS and E911 projects we've been paying trucks (Ohio State is a leader in this) to drive down streets, take picture and map the pictures of buildings to addresses and addresses to lat/long. It's so emergency responders will know how to find you when you've "fallen and can't get up". Seriously, there have been a number of times when first responders go to the wrong house or building and so a house burns down or the police break down the wrong doors and scare innocent folks to death. The USPS has/had a project where they geocoded every delivery address as well. I'm sure that is valuable to any business that wants deliver to your or determine where you are relative to other things so they can determine which stores and restaurants you might patronize or so they can locate their business so it is convenient to you. As long as they're not coming up and photographing through my windows are backyard, there is nothing wrong.
This has already been done (granted on a much smaller scale) in Israel.
The site is: http://www.zoomap.co.il/ -- (sorry but it is very much in Hebrew).
God made the natural numbers; all else is the work of man - Kronecker
My house is on there bright and clear, and interestingly enough seems to be the definitive location for the suburb I'm in. The little red dot is right on the driveway.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber
sig goes here!
Quick! Everyone go take a picture of every house in your neighborhood and put it in the public domain. It'll make this all a moot point.
a helicopter flies by and takes a picture of all the houses in my neighborhood. Then the company prints them up to look really nice. A rep knocks on the door, and tries to sell you a bird's eye picture of your house. I might even have done it last time they showed up, but they rtook their picture when the house was just built before any landscaping, which kind of sucked--didn't lok very good.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
So wait, let me get this straight: you're concerned that terrorists will use an online picture of your house to find weaknesses in it and come and blow it up? Doesn't your tinfoil hat protect you from that sort of thing?
As much as people want to react to this as though this photographing project is somehow problematic, it's not currently legally problematic.
If there's a problem here, someone is first going to have to do a better job of articulating what it is, not to mention what can be done about it without entirely banning photos taken from public places.
So, now some company can photograph my house mid-construction and it will impact how valuable certain appraisal agencies will see my home as? That's just plain retarded. Homes change in appearance and therefor asthetic value constantly. The outside of my house won't look nice for another year or so, and if I need to finance a home equity loan to pay for the new shingles, I don't want some old photos haunting the value of my home and impacting what I can get for it.
Find a law on the books that says I can be forced to redact a picture that I take of a building clearly visible from a public place.
Hi. That's what I thought. I like to take pictures of architecture. Especially run-down old buildings right next to fancy new buildings. So, one day, I left with a friend of mine. Left my house, mind you, and went for a stroll around my own goddam neighborhood. A couple of blocks away, I was taking pictures of the Brew House, and the local evil hospital, when a security guard came out and said that we couldn't take pictures of the hospital. "We weren't taking pictures of the hospital," I told him. He said we couldn't take pictures anywhere near here, and told us that it was a security violation, and that he'd call the cops. He got real close to me. We left quickly.
Later that day, I found that there was no ordinance, law, rule, or anything that would prevent me from taking a picture of the Brew House, hospital, or even the security guard.
I live in Pittsburgh. This is fucked up right here.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
They are completely in their rights to take a photo of my house, me, or anything else they can see from the street. However I don't think it's legal to make a profit from that photo (except for some edge cases like art and journalism). There are different laws governing commercial photography and amateur photography. With commercial photography you need model and property releases. I'm not sure how they plan to get around needing a property release from every home owner since it seems these would be classified as commercial photos.
Hobby Robotics
Good luck! I live in an apartment building. All you'll get is 3 little windows that face the street. You won't see all the innards (ie, the good stuff!) When I go to buy an apartment, I sure won't use this service, because who cares what the outside looks like?
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
The Cook County Assessors office already photographs homes and makes the photographs available online.
t ml
http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/ccao/startres.h
You can just search by address and find a lot of the public information about private residences online, including photos in most cases (in all cases in the small sample I've tried).
I wonder how common this is with other regional governments?
Are they actually gonna drive miles and miles out of their way just to photograph that house in the middle of nowhere? This whole project seems pretty braindead from a cost-benefit side. I wonder how many years this will take and how many gallons of wasted gas?
From their site:
"There are 7500 Zones in the US, distributed across 250 urban centers. Our research suggests there are 20 million appraisal reports annually.
A standard exterior appraisal report from Zaio is expected to be priced between $100 and $200 per report.
Zone Appraisers get 44% of appraisal report fees, plus an additional 15% if they are involved in selling the report to a client (i.e., get their clients using the Zaio system), for a possible total of 59%.
We believe it is reasonable to expect each Zone to generate 20 appraisal reports per month, or 240 per year.
Zone Appraisers will also be able to generate revenue from BPO, Desktop Valuation, Comp Search, Photos, and other services as they are added by Zaio. It is also possible for local Zone Appraisers to share in revenue from contracts that might be won to provide data or valuation services to local county assessors.
Each Zone appraiser simply needs to start making assumptions about the volume of business multiplied by the revenue to calculate the expected future earnings from each Zone.
Note that this discussion considers first and second mortgage "apraisal-report-style" products only - no portfolio valuation or other uses have been assumed. However, revenue sharing is valid on all present or future valuation products"
Wonder how much you pay THEM to snap pics and build their data base?
As a Canadian-born citizen, I'd have to agree with you. There is definitely something very wrong with Canadians being able to take pictures of your public property, while you are not. Maybe I'm just misinterpreting the tone of the above statement. But if anything, this should help open your eyes to the problem America has with overreacting to everything. In my opinion (and an opinion also shared with a lot of other non-Americans) a lot of American citizens don't seem to realize the problem isn't with other countries, it's with your country. You need to lighten up, as a nation.
Blerg.
How is that really different than sites like this, except for the angle: ? http://www.grapheety.com
I live 500 feet back from the street
the sign at my gate says "If you can read this you are in range"
the sign below that says "Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again"
and I don't miss
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
A company here in Dallas used a van to drive by each house taking video as they drove then cut out the best frame for each house. They were either contracted by the Dallas Central Appraisal District (DCAD) or sold the pictures to them. Several minutes later the Texas Senate passed a bill so the records could be kept by DCAD and viewed by the public _there_ but could not be posted to the internet.
http://www.dallascad.org/News.aspx?ID=1
RESIDENTIAL PHOTOS AND FOOTPRINTS ARE REMOVED
The Dallas Central Appraisal Website will no longer display photographs and building footprints for all residential property. In accordance with Senate Bill 541, as passed by the Texas Legislature, information in appraisal records may not be posted on the Internet if the information is a photograph, sketch, or floor plan of an improvement to real property that is designed primarily for use as a human residence. Photographs and building footprints of residential property will still be available for viewing by the public at the DCAD Customer Service Area located at 2949 N. Stemmons Frwy, Dallas, Texas, during normal business hours. Photographs and building footprints of all non-residential property will still be available on the DCAD web site.
There's actually more potential here. Currently, when you look up an address among mapping services, the location is interpolated. The USPS keeps a database of ZIP+4 segments and the potential addresses along that segment. For example, the left side of one city block for Main St. will be tagged as a range 1-99 odd, even though there may only be one deliverable address there.
You can't get to the USPS's master database of actual addresses unless you're a list broker. However, there are tools available to test for valid addresses. But they need to be approved by the USPS and include draconian measures like shutting down the software if it detects that you're trying to build a valid addresses file.
The best/only publically available map database is Tiger from the Census Bureau. They publish a freely downloadable database in their documented but proprietary format. It's a simple chained structure with the latitude and longitude for the segments that they've compiled. The Tiger file has address ranges also but the ZIPs and ranges won't be totally up to date although they've taken great strides in keeping it updated in recent years. It's sufficient for most purposes though and provides a link between the feature and vector data.
Note that there are no individual addresses in this database and they take special care to make sure that there aren't any because of privacy issues. However, the Census Bureau does keep an internal file (called the Master Address File) for their mandated purpose, gathering statistics. This file does have the actual location of each address they poll but it is not for public consumption.
Google, Mapquest, etc. license their mapping data from Teleatlas and/or Navteq (Teleatlas bought GDT a few years ago). Those guys drive the routes but their primary target is accurate street data for navigation systems. That's where they make their money. However, the same concept as above applies; the addresses are interpolated.
The point? A national database of accurately geocoded addresses is very valuable for the purpose of licensing it as a geocoding database. The rub is that data is only really valuable if it's updated. The initial cost would be sustantial but there are significant costs to snapping/geocoding each new house as it's finished.
Don't know if that's their plan but there's some serious bucks that would be overlooked if they didn't. Adjust your tinfoil hats accordingly.
Cops are useless idiots that waste time giving out needless traffic tickets and doing nothing else. Cops don't base their actions on statistics.. they do it on stereotypes. Sure, there are some statistical facts to back up stereotypes, but I'm pretty sure that cops are more prejudiced than mathematical. Come on now. I've been fighting about 1 traffic ticket a month for the last year (and winning every time) because of stupid police traps. My friend had a death threat issued against him and the cops did nothing about it. Fuck off cops and do some real work.
I believe they came to our little cul-de-sac in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) a short while ago. I was standing at our front window with the blinds open, trying to help the dog, who was quite exercised about the strangers in front of her house, figure out who these nuts were. Two women were taking photos of every house. They took what appeared to be several snapshots of each house. I'm sure dog and I both appear in their photo(s) of my house as we were clearly visible thru the window. However, you probably can't really make out our faces as they were taking photos in the *middle of a snowstorm*.
The business model:
1. Drive minivan thru snowstorm
2. Park minivan without proper snowtires in deep snow in unplowed cul-de-sac
3. Exit vehicle, hang on to open door for dear life
4. take detailed flash photos of cute snow-covered houses, fluffy snowflakes and irritated labrador retriever
5. re-enter vehicle, make futile attempt to remove snow from car seat
6. remove remaining tread from tires by spinning them trying to get out of unplowed cul-de-sac
7. Upload crummy photos into SQL database
8. Profit!
Folks, this has been going on for years to a degree. I'm a real estate appraiser and I take photos of peoples houses from the street every single day. Also, most County tax departments also include at least one photo of your house - and this along with every little detail of your property is available (in most areas) online and completely free of charge. If I wanted to, I could look up your house online and find out what it looks like, how big it is, how many bedrooms and baths you have, when you bought it and for how much, etc. Other companies have tried to do what this Canadian firm is doing but have never finished. It's a hugely daunting task.
Try to find out when these guys will be in your neighborhood and then stand in the window with your butt hanging out. Of course, if you have to work, maybe a life size blow-up will do. Just a thought, probably not worth anything.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
It amazes me how many people don't see the difference between photographing a single house that you think is pretty and saying its public information vs photographing every house and putting it into a database and saying its public information. No law envisioned the later happening even a few years ago. It should make you very uncomfortable and if it doesn't I think you lack imagination.
This database isn't the sort of thing that can be updated very often. So imagine if insurance companies start relying on it heavily, and the photograph they took no longer reflects your house - you added an extension or something. Then your house burns down. Insurance chooses not to cover the extension because its not in their photograph, and they really don't want to pay you anything anyway.
Whats next. Since its legal to take photographs of your house, since its already public information - someone setting up a camera that can take pictures of your house at 25 fps, and putting that on the net. You had no expectation of privacy though right so its OK.
Some company, I think it was MS if memory serves, had a van going around cities with cameras sticking out of every corner, taking pictures as it drove around. What absolutely stunned me about it was how long you could follow with this thing even seeing where it pulled off and when the driver got out. Heck, the cops can even stick a GPS tracking device on your car without a warrant if they want to. No expectation of privacy right - your on a public road obviously.
Sure you had no expectation of privacy but you also had no expectation of unwanted publicity in the form of an easily searchable database available to anyone in the world.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Trees. Lots o trees. My house has 'em. I notice that these newer subdivisions don't. It makes all the difference. You can't see my house on google maps now, but you can see quite a bit of detail on the the houses in the subdivision a block away from me. And google doesn't yet have the high res for either yet.
There is a company in Israel , Zoomap, that has actually done it to all the buildings in Israel . You can just type in any address in Israel and it will take you to a picture of that building. Hope this link works for you - its an example
My Starcraft 2 Blog
http://www.bridgepix.com/bridgeblog/?p=451 I know I am trolling
The 'about to be photographed' point is moot. Photos of all residences (in Canada) are already complete. I must say that I was quite impressed by the server hardware they had....and the fact that the database of photographs grew by 20 gig a day! (a rather large amount 6 years ago)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... by taking a picture of my home, you agree to all of the terms and conditions outlined in my home's EULA. Those terms include a 99.99% revenue share on any income related to use of said picture...
Ad Space. I'm hardly home, so I don't care that much. But I'll start selling parts of the exterior wall for ad-space. They can photograph all they want, I don't care.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
...for world domination: http://cwd.ptbcanadian.com/
It is destined to go away completely. The problem is imbalance of information and power. Some people have a much greater ability to gather information about you than you do about them. They also tend to have a greater ability to use that information to harm you. If everyone could see what everyone else was doing, no one could misuse information to harm others without everyone else knowing about it.
The real problem will be if privacy DOESN'T disappear completely. Because privacy for the poor and powerless certainly will.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Considering that an individual can be detained and questioned by the FBI for photographing a bridge in this country, why should this Canadian company get a free pass?
Who said anything about them getting a free pass?
The FBI detains people they have reasonable grounds to be suspicious of plotting an act of terrorism. If they suspect these people of plotting terrorism, they'll most likely detain them until their story can be confirmed too. There's absolutely no difference in treatment nor any kind of free pass being given.
Similarly, if the guy photographing the bridge contacted the local police department and said, "Hey, I'm going to be photographing such and such a bridge. If you want to run any background checks to verify I'm not a terrorist, go right ahead. No, you can't tell me not to do it - it's a legal right - you can only confirm I'm doing it for lawful reasons which I both am and am giving you an opportunity to check in advance." they would most likely have completely ignored him. I'm guessing, to simply avoid hassle, this company's going to have a prepared statement and will contact local PDs before going in to each area too.
In short, it's totally legal to do things like film a scene of a kidnapping but you're most likely going to get temporarily detained if you don't notify the police first. Film companies don't get a "free pass" either - they simply make sure the police are notified. The same goes for fears of terrorism and photographing potential targets and fears of burglary and and photographing homes.
Is it unfortunate that we're in a world where the gut reaction is to arrest first and ask questions later? Sure. But that should be addressed on its own merits rather than accusing people who're smart enough to recognize it sadly happens and thus take precautions of getting some kind of a free pass.
Back in the 1960's a company when all over our city and photographed every house from the street. They then went back to each house and tried to cell them keychains with the picture of their house in a little viewer. They also made the photos availible in book form to house agents.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Tower, airplane or helicopter. Your house is not safe from them. I suggest that you stop parading around in your underpants.
This article just made me realize that my neighbors can see the front of my house and even know when I leave and come back.
Oh, my privacy! We need to outlaw neighbors...
On the other hand, when I forget to close my garage door, one of the neighbors will probably keep an eye on the place to make sure no one walks off with stuff, and may even walk over and close it for me. Nice thing about having neighbors where you know their names...
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These public views are public - and what's more, for the most part already publicly collated and available in many major cities.
If they're doing anything wrong, it's that they're maybe throwing in some information that should be private - live everybody else is. The rampant buying and selling of private information needs to be criminalized.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
http://www.nassaucountyny.gov/mynassauproperty/mai n.jsp
I don't care.
The end.
Good karma sticks to me like velcro on a piece of plexiglass.
Move along, citizen.
Does anyone remember the photo approval on their Mechanical Turk program? There were many residential photos and I believe their plan was along the same lines.
A better picture of your home than on Google Earth can usually be found on http://www.zillow.com/ and most cities are running around trying to get every piece of property on some type of geospatial system, so why care?
First, most terrorism against America has been perpetrated by Americans. Second, if you target a specific group, they will simply recruit people who don't look like what you are targeting. Profiling based on race is worse than useless, it provides a road map to success for terrorists. Profile based on behavior. That is what the officers in your example are really doing, if they are doing their job right. They look for someone out of place, not a particular race.
You could have said everything you wanted to say (and been just as useless) without mentioning the "liberals here." What are you trying to imply? You aren't beating a sacred cow, you're just beating off. "uh, uh UH UH, YEAH! Take it right in the face, you dirty liberal whores!"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
did a great job of cleaning up the tax assessor's office after it got all shot up!!!!
The question is can I, as a Canadian living in BC put up a similar "FUCK YOU" banner on my Medical Records which were held by an American Company, and thus subject to inspection and copying (without notice of any kind) due to the Patriot Act?
a cy040724.html Of course, the records could have been copied long ago. House pictures is one thing. Having my medical records siezed by a foreign power worries me more.
http://www.nupge.ca/news_2004/n28oc04d.htm
Granted, that is old news, and I don't know how it panned out. The latest story I am aware of is here: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2004/07/24/bc_priv
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
This company first started local (photographed houses in Calgary), then nationally (photographed houses in Canada), and their doing the USA now.
I was in town when they first started on calgary. It has a population of 1 million and about 400,000 houses and they said it would take them a year to complete. Their project created a great resource for those buying and selling homes (and now just think of kml integration with google earth)
But seriously, how long do you think it would take them to do the entire USA? (they would likely hire photographers but its still a huge project, and they'd have to pay american photographers in canadian dollars so they can't afford to hire THAT many).
First they start taking pictures of every house in America and accessing blueprints and floor plans, then they're set. I know they're scheming for the day that they invade. After they have their pictures (which would be quite some time considering all the houses in America) they prepare their war plan and send in the roller troopers! Armed with M16s, Glock 9mms, and hockey sticks, they bring the war to the civilians.
Their vile plan to get the information on our homes must be stopped!
Viva la resistance!
So let's go up there and do it to THEM and see how THEY like it, eh?
"A pamphlet that photographers give to residents who question their activities says first responders, such as police and firefighters, could save 'precious seconds' if they..." ...look for the house with the smoke coming out of it...
Your larger point is very valid, but the people who actually take the pictures will probably not be undergoing border security. They'll be hired/culled from the surrounding areas to each "Zone."
My company doesn't speak for me, nor do I speak for my company.
So if you leave, they're going to make you leave?
http://zillow.com/
It's teh same aerial/sat pix as Google Earth. Feh.
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?"
This is really no big deal. Amazon had trucks driving around with cameras taking pictures of businesses for A9 a while ago. There are services for real estate agents to take pictures of houses, as well as it being common practice for appraisers. Google has sat images, local.live has aerial shots, many MLS services have "neighbor photos" sections with pictures of surrounding homes. Your house has probably been photographed before, and it'll probably happen again. I do like the idea of a banner though ;)
Oh well, mkay. I have forgotten so please remind me the last time thousands of Canadians were killed by a terrorist attack on Canadian soil? I'm still waiting.....
Maybe the major point is not just this article, nor the ones about Google blurring 'sensitive' locations on request. Many would contend that mankind's social behaviour & organisation has lagged behind his ability to invent / innovate. We moved from stones to spears to guns....to A-bombs. We no longer had to face - or even see - our opponents. Maybe violence did not increase, but leathality did. Even outside wartime, there are more violent deaths in countries where firearms are readily available. What privacy and citizens activists are concerned about is when all of these things are (finally/ever) linked. *puts tinfoil hat on* The real concern here is that technical / interoperability problems seem to pose a greater barrier to such a linking than carefully-considered legislation. Oh yeah, and that's before we talk about illegal access to social security numbers and stuff...that *rarely* happens
I'm all about photographer's rights. I am not in support of corporate rights.
Though I'd rather catch the bastard in front of my house, this may be the only recourse.
http://www.zaio.com/PublicInterest/Remove.asp
Someone objectionable?
What was once true, is no longer so
paint your house in non-photo blue paint. That way, when they publish it it will be invisible!
Where I live, the city takes photos of each neighborhood from a plane every spring, and also sends out squadrons of seasonal employees to photograph and compare each house. Why do they do that? To find out who has made an addition to their home without getting a permit, thus "robbing" the city of property taxes.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
To get close enough to photograph one of my houses would take at least a 20 minute drive in a 4x4, across *private* property. If they try that, i get to shoot them as trespassers.
I also agree this is fishy. While i do realize its legal to stand in the street and take pictures of anything you can see, including people's private belongings, perhaps this legalty should be reconsidered. Whatever happened to 'expectations of reasonable privacy in public'?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Theoretically, couldn't you copyright the likeness of your own house? It is your property, as long as you don't default on the mortgage. Any work you do on it would be your own IP, I guess. So then, what right does some company have to make money off of selling the image of your house? What if you wanted to sell images of your own house? IANAL, so I don't really have a good base of knowledge on this, I'm just going off of general sense.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
(Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Valencia, Santander, Valladolid.)
It has aerial photos and street-level photos of streets too. You can navigate as if you were driving.
Intriguingly, the photo of the building I live in must have been taken more than five years ago, as there's some grafitti of a willy on the front wall. Dunno what it says about the previous owners.
Mondo props if you can find it, though :-)
IX CCXLIX XVII II CLVII CXVI CCXXVII XCI CCXVI LXV LXXXVI CXCVII XCIX LXXXVI CXXXVI CXCII
But its still fishy.
And what is wrong with doing it? Well, its a big difference going from a texutual description of the size and value of your house and a nice clear photograph of where every bush, lamp, and door lock is. Or what valuables that can be seen thru the windows with a zoom lens.
its not paranoid to ask why someone wants to have this level of detail of a private residence.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Never been involved in urban combat have you?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
and you are right, the fact that you actually live there is fucked up.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
While it might be legal to do, they could be infringing on your rights as a property owner.
Generally, it would be okay to use as long as it was not for commercial purposes, but it clearly sounds like it is for commercial purposes, in which case they would need a property release from you in order to use the images and you can charge whatever you want for the property release.
This was an issue during one of the spiderman movies where the property owners wanted money for digital reproductions of the buildings in times square.
The Economics of Website Security
What about private driveways leading up to a group of houses? What to do then?
Just declare the paint on your house to be a work of art.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
What would people do with this information that is so sinister? How about simple invasion of privacy, or even home invaders using the info to case your house and cut off avenues of escape, etc., all with the convenience of sitting at their computers?
I have another idea.
Instead of allowing any personal information to become public property, why not treat personal information as personal property? Only the Government can have it for free. Everyone else already profits from using your personal information, why not make it your private property to determine how it is used and how much they must pay you?
Why shouldn't a marketer have to pay you to use your house photo or your name and home address, etc.? They profit from it, don't they? Private investigator houses like choicepoint.com profit from you by digitally talking about you to employers, etc.
These people profit by sharing "public information" about your personal details. There is a major incongruity there. Why should they be able to profit and you can't?
I say expand copyright law to include your right to control how your personal information is distributed. Call it a personal information DMCA.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
My county government already does this. Photos from the road are included on the web page for each property in the online database. Anybody can access the county site and find out the size, tax value, date of last zale, zoning info, etc. The database is searchable by name or address. There is no need for a corporation to sell this info when it is already a matter of public record.
You get Montréal and Toronto already geocoded photographies. And it's clear from their press release, they're going after the U.S.: "Over 4 million photographs were taken of the Toronto area, as well as 3 million more for Montreal, providing visitors a unique perspective on two of Canada's most popular urban areas. VirtualCity plans to expand into the United States before the end of the year, beginning with Miami and continuing into the New York, Chicago, and Boston markets in 2007."
Animoog.org
Hey, I think I own some of the design elements of my house. I don't see how they have the right to sell images of this without paying me a royalty. So, what about writing any of these services a short note letting them know that I don't consent to them using images of my house for their for-profit business. Well, actually, on second thought, I might consent if they're willing to pay me a royalty I consider sufficient. Okay, a man's home ain't his castle any more, but a man's design must still be copyrighted if Micky Mouse is!
If this service is available, how long till Law Enforcement starts using it? 2 seconds after you can say "um...".
Of course it could be used in a good way or a bad way by law enforcement. A good way is that Fire and Police could tie it into the 911 database. When a call is sent to the police or fire dept from 911, besides the map they currently get, they could get a picture of the house in question. Up here in Alaska a few years back, an off duty Alaska State Trooper died because the emergency response couldn't find the house. Maybe a photo of the house would help, letting them know if they can or can't see it. Of course the report linked also mentions how information can be misused.
A discussion should be held in the public at least adequetely putting restrictions on this if necessary.Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
After all, first they'll have to take pics of all the houses in Canada--that'll take years, then they can do the other 50 states.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
The world's strongest international partnership, held together entirely by mutual appreciation for each other's bacon. It's like a fairy tale come to life.
That driveway is a right-of-way.
I guess this means its a good thing that I have bushes and trees surrounding my house such that there is no way they could get a useable shot of my house from almost any direction without trespassing. The only way they could get a shot and not trespass involves renting an airplane.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Whom says that it can only be used in the objective case?
Does Whom know who said that it's Whom who said that and who is Whom and to whom did Whom say that?
And is either of them on first?
I think it says something very interesting about Americans that the "how can I turn this into a lawsuit?" response has come up so many times now. What exactly is it that makes Americans so incredibly hateful and stupid that all they can think of in response to any situation is how to make other people's lives miserable? WHO CARES if some people walk up a little ways up your driveway and then leave? Y'all need to get a life.
This is why in the old days, people had archers on their battlements ready to fire at anyone who approached. Marketing people and those who aid and abet them would be taken out immediately. And using zoom wouldn't keep them safe from a longbow.
I would like to welcome our new canadian overlords....
luckily i am homeless.
How about you hang a painting on your front door. That's protected by copyright and not an architectural feature. Can't you sue for damages?
... obscenity laws apply?
And, aren't there laws about photographing juveniles without permission?
What if you write an obscene statement across your house
How about if you libel someone and they publish it?
Seems like there's a whole heap of money for lawyers in all of this.
There isn't a state in the Union that allows you to use deadly force simply because someone is trespassing. You might want to double check the laws in your state before you start shooting, otherwise the photographer may wind up owning your house.
While this activity is legal (as long as the photographers don't trespass on private property to get their shots), there are obviously concerns about security and privacy.
As long as your house is visible, anyone can see it, and photograph it.
If you want true privacy, build your house underground and live like Dick Cheney.
Somebody should put up a tracking website that uses user sightings to figure out where they are in america at all times. Then we can predict their movements and harass them.
Go internet.
Go!
No wait, that was the punchline.
I have ridden the mighty moon worm!
Remember mturk? It never got off the ground. The simple fact is that it is WAY too much work to do all of the photos by hand. The company will result to automated cameras mounted on vans. The amount of work required to actually SORT these photos is much much more that what the end result would actually be worth.
Not to mention that a lot of the neighborhoods in this part of the country (phoenix) are gated. (mine included)
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
If you haven't looked at your friendly County Assessor or Auditor's site lately, you might be surprised to find that many of them ALREADY HAVE THESE PICTURES.
Being half-Canadian, I guess that makes be half-stupid.
STEP 1....Take pictures of all the American's houses, eh?
STEP 2....????
STEP 3....Lots of money. Beauty, eh?
Why not build a distributed vehicle tracking system. Here is how it would work, users would aim a camera at the road infront of their house, enter the lat/long of the cemera location into a web site, and the web site tracks images at that site scanning the images for car license plates, it then connects this information with the information of other users to create a tracking system for all vehicles. So this way we can track those Canadian ham eaters! Of course governments are already working on and using such systems, the difference is that this system would be for citizens only. Users would have to agree not to use the information for government or corporate purposes. Hmmm, can you do that? That last part that is, the technology can be done, its the legal part that is real hard given the fact that Republicans exist.
I want to know when they'll be in my neighborhood so I can plan rough loud anal sex on the front porch with the wife. That'll surely increase the value of my property.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
About three weeks ago a guy walked up my private driveway, took a picture of my house, and then walked away. My house is on a "recessed lot" so the driveway is 170 feet of my private property. You cannot make out any reasonable details of my hose from the public roadway because of intervening cover including shrubs, trees, and the guy who lives in front of me is overly fond of temporary buildings and bad landscaping.
I wonder if this is what he was doing? I had just stepped out of the shower so, while I saw him through a window, I didn't have a chance to ask him what the hell he was doing before he got away.
If I find a picture of my hose on this service and find it was taken from my private driveway, do I have recourse? It was clearly a trespass and the angle and content of the picture would prove that...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
The way development housing is shooting up they've got a long task ahead of them. :)
Zaio Corporation residing at: Suite 330, 1201 5th St SW Calgary, AB, T2R 0Y6 (hereinafter referred to as ZAIO) All agents, employees or contract personnel of ZAIO are prohibited from photographing any personnel property or structures inside the property boundaries of ***************, California. ZAIO will refrain from crossing the property lines bounding the address ******************, CA. Any attempt to photograph this property it occupants or structures from anywhere but the public access road will be met with prosecution under california PENAL CODE SECTION 602(l) [occupation] Images of this residence are copyrighted by ************* ***** et al. Any use of digital photographic imaging hardware and subsequent transfer of said images over an internal network or external internet connection are subject to possible prosecution under the THE DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1998.
I don't understand how such a massive undertaking has any value -- anybody want to fill me in?
Especially if this is for real estate purposes, then I *really* don't understand the point.
Here's my example: Let's say they take a picture of my house today.
Chances are, in another 5 years we'll put it on the market. Five years from now, what good will a picture from the street of the front of the house be to anyone seriously interested in knowing more about the property? For that matter, you'd be hard pressed to get a decent picture of our house from the road. The pictures our real estate agent had were awful, and it was only because we listened to them and drove out to see it that we were even remotely interested.
Within my own family, almost everyone has lived in their houses for between 10-20 years. During that time, a lot of remodelling has occured. What would be the point of a 15 year old picture?
For that matter, the US is, shall we say...a big place. I'm only a few hours from the Canadian border, but I can't possibly imaging why someone would want to travel all that way just to take a crappy picture of part of my house. Think of all those little old farm houses out in the middle of Kansas or Iowa or something. Or, all those shacks you know are in the backwaters of the south. Why would anyone want to undertake this venture is... well beyond my comprehension.
I can see more benefit to the US government, for tax purposes. But even then, the guy out in the woods in the cabin probably isn't worth going after...
Ah yes, but not back in 1812 when Washington got burned. That should have learned you, does it need to happen again before you get the message? Obviously your president of the time knew about Canada, all too well actually. History (herstory, or his(er)story) doesn't lie.
I wonder about the practicality of sending someone around to take pictures of everyhome.
But I have the unique perspective of some experience. I spend my summers driving around Harford County, MD, a moderate density area. I and a partner drive at about 10 mph to inspect the roadway for potholes/cracking/oxidation/etc. We don't rate when it's raining or recently rained, since it covers up the defects in the road.
It takes us about 6 weeks of driving 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to cover the whole county, representing about 1,050 miles of road.
I think it wouldn't be too unreasonable to think that the an automated, well practiced crew could work at a similar rate. Couple GPS tech to the camera and you shouldn't have to manually enter address information. It shouldn't be too hard to attach a digital camera with a couple servo motors to the side of a car, with a remote control inside the car in the passenger seat. The passenger could just sit there hitting the capture button when the next house is in frame.
According to the US Census, there are 3,141 counties in the U.S. I'd say that Harford County is probably a fair average for both the densely populated urban areas and the rural.
That puts the car-weeks up to over 18,000, or more than 360 years. That might sound unreasonable, but consider that the whole region (or the vast majority) is covered each year by pavement rating crews.
The catch is that it costs a lot. Not so for municipal governments, because each one only covers it's small area. This company would have to single handedly cover the whole area.
Here's my bet: they're going to mass mail real estate agencies around the country for copies of their photos. Then they're going to go back over and get more detailed photos of those areas not covered at all AND those areas with really expensive homes.
(Just my two cents. Not redeemable for cash value.)
Although my house can be seen from the street, my cousin's ranch would be little more difficult to get to.
Considering that it is behind a mountain, which has about a dozen very large pastures between the mountain and the road, and sits on the banks of a river, and is heavily obscured by trees from the air. It would be very difficult to access. Also, there are about 4 houses (all relatives) that sit next to each other (he owns the vast majority of the land), it would be impossible to just stroll up and take a picture of the correct house. Further, they would have to jump two large iron gates and cross about 700 yards of land and walk behind the mountain just to get a photo of anything.
What's more is that anybody trying to get a shot of the house would likely have a shot or five returned back towards them. I hope that photo is a good one because they will be verrry lucky if they get one at all. Even if they do get one, it will have been illegally obtained, since they had to leave a public roand and drive down a private road over privately over land just to get it.
It's getting ridiculous when I have to protect my property from photographers.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
This makes me angry. I am unclear from this article if your name is attached to the picture of the house in any way. With that in mind, I realize that I am probably coming from a paranoid point of view here, but feel that safety issues are being disregarded. I am a therapist who works for county Mental Health and many of my client's have been sex offenders, perpetrators of violent acts etc., and being female I have also had to deal with stalkers. I would like to prevent in all ways, unsafe clients from stumbling upon where I reside. Including the possibility that while searching for property in our town they come across a picture of a house with my car of it, which they would likely recognize from the clinic, on the web. I feel like it has often been made difficult to ensure that where I live is not made public or handed out to persons or agencies that I have not authorized. You have to pay to not be listed in the phone book. People buy your address from other businesses in the area in order to sell you crap. Even this article it states "The pamphlet tells homeowners who want their dwellings' data removed to go to Zaio's Web site, where they must provide an e-mail address to complete the process." So are they going to sell my email address to a company that will repeatedly spam me with e-mail spewing titles such as "Watch father r'ape redheaded daughter in ass"? (actual spam I received btw). While my concerns about the safety issue may err on the side of excessive, this whole thing still pisses me off.
A9 maps are gone, dude. Nice idea, though. Maybe somebody *cough*Google*cough* else will take it up. It is so cool to be able to scope out a business district without driving there first.
Are they at least going to call before they come ?
I want to have my neighbors yard filled with pink flamingo lawn ornaments before they get here.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
We know home invasions are just science fiction. And so are stalkers.
Nobody ever stalks anyone in your universe.
Then again in your universe you can't even see the polkadot skies because your head is buried in your a$$!
STFU you flaming retard.
...selling wax BA's
Table-ized A.I.
Live in a PRIVATE community. Then they WILL have to get your permission once they get past the gate enclosure. that is 100% private property, and the only thing you'd get without scaling the brick wall would be pictures of the roofs of the houses, therefore REQUIRING you to enter the bounds of private property to take a picture, which goes against the freedom to photograph architecture. If it's a public street, un-gated and uncontrolled access, yes, they can. Disclaimer: I used to fuck a professional photographer.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So tired of that.
When you look up an adress in the core of Stockholm, you get a picture of the house... Pretty nifty, although it hasn't spread to the suburbs yet... Linky: http://www.hitta.se/SearchCombi.aspx?__VIEWSTATE=% 2FwEPDwUKMTg4NDI3NTMzNWRk&UCSB%3AWflWhite=1a1b&UCS B%3AWflPink=4a&SearchType=4&UCSB%3ABBX1=&UCSB%3ABB Y1=&UCSB%3ABBX2=&UCSB%3ABBY2=&UCSB%3ATextBoxWho=&U CSB%3ATextBoxWhere=sveav%E4gen+50+stockholm&UCSB%3 AButtonSearch=%A0%A0hitta!%A0%A0&CombiResults%3AUs erControlMapControl%3Acx=1452661&CombiResults%3AUs erControlMapControl%3Acy=6704833&CombiResults%3AUs erControlMapControl%3ApointsHidden=&CombiResults%3 AUserControlMapControl%3Az=9
I'm not sure what the hoopla is all about. City of Bloomington (Illinois) already photographs each house and posts them on the net at the Assessor's website. There is a good chance that the city you live in already has a photo of your house and on file somewhere. So someone else will have a photo of your house. No big deal.
1.) Let's spin the clock dial ahead 15 years.
2.) All affluent citizenry can see most any passive electromagnetic radiation. Satellites can too.
3.) ???
4.) Science fiction
Options for 3.) seeing who has tumors, looking through walls, etc.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
You say, "On the note of the pictures. I'm not sure they can use the pictures as the primary way to make profit without owing some of that profit to the people in the picture." However, that is exactly what the paparazzi do and they don't limit themselves to public areas.
How do we know the information won't be used by terrorists? Would give a lot of insight to things like:
- line of sight
- geographic layout
- landmark references
- building type, material, possible strength
There is a possible risk to what our government calls "soft infrastructure"... IMHO.
I had someone photograph my house, then a month later my insurance company sends me a notice that I needed to paint my house to keep my insurance. I have siding and told them so (siding does not need to be painted). The insurance company wanted me to take pictures of the siding to prove it! Do they not have the records from previous coverage? They are such idiots! I had to take the pictures and email them in several times before someone with brains put a stop to the madness. In addition, other of my neighbors started to paint their home. I guess I was not the only one.
From actually visiting their website, you can find the link http://www.zaio.com/PublicInterest/Remove.asp to remove your house from the project. For some reason they require an email address to verify that you are the owner. In what way is an email address linked to a house address?
Attention all Slashdotters, get up out of your mother's basement and tell her to opt out before it's too late!
I emailed them and got the link to remove yourself off the list. http://www.zaio.com/PublicInterest/Remove.asp Have fun SimonTek
SimonTek
I have not read anything about this particular case, but please let me assure you that photography permits are a real thing. If you don't believe me, take a bunch of photo equipment onto a busy New York City sidewalk and start snapping away. You'll get a visit from New York's finest very quickly if you don't have a permit.
In NYC, permits are free and are generally given upon request. Depending on what you are doing, they may even dispatch police to help you close off a section of sidewalk for a while, also free. Go here for more info.
I do not know or care if Seattle has a similar system, but just so you know, photography permits are not akin to the easter bunny or the tooth fairy. They are real. In NYC, you don't need one to whip out your little disposable camera and snap off a few shots. But if you start setting up tripods and lights and stuff, you better have a photo permit, or you're getting shut down.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock