Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
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?
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:
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.
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 ----