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Clear Public Satellite Imagery Tantamount to Yelling Fire
TechDirt pointed out a recent bit of foolishness as a followup to California Assemblyman Joel Anderson's push to force Google and other online mapping/satellite companies to blur out schools, churches, and government buildings. When pushed, apparently his justification was that leaving these buildings un-obscured is the same as shouting fire. "News.com ran an interview with Anderson, where he attempts to defend his proposed legislation as a matter of public safety. He claims that there is no good reason why anyone would need to clearly see these buildings online, and that it can only be used for bad purposes. [...] Apparently, Anderson is the final determiner of what good people do and what bad people do with online maps."
As I said last time, this info is available freely from our own US Government.
You can search and retrieve with Lat/Long a list of these "soft targets" using the US Governments own Geographic Names Information Services (GNIS) system.
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/
-mls
DISTRICT OFFICE
500 Fesler Street, Suite 201
El Cajon, CA 92020
(619) 441-2322, (619) 441-2327 fax
CAPITOL OFFICE
State Capitol
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 319-2077, (916) 319-2177 fax
email him At His Feedback Page
He's dork from the exurbs of San Diego. So be firm but polite.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I do too, although arguably street view is a lot more useful for that. You're not going to be looking at where you're going from 200 miles up when you get there, so why do you need to see it from that angle if the purpose is to get an idea of what it will look like from the ground?
I live in Upstate NY, and around here we don't get a street view of much.
The satellite imagery is actually pretty helpful. A map just basically shows you a bunch of lines representing streets, it doesn't give you a feeling for what's in the area. The satellite imagery, however, will show you whether it's a residential or commercial area. And if you see a big building with lots of long, yellow vehicles in its parking lot you can guess that it's a school. Or you might see an interesting structure or grove of trees or something that makes a decent landmark.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Don't let Joel Anderson find out about street view, he'll want that blurred out as well.
I'm afraid he's already got that covered: (Directly from the bill text.)
The bill would also prohibit that operator from providing street view photographs or imagery of those buildings and facilities.
Once again the California State Legislature shows that stupidity has no bounds.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
The original "fire in a crowded theater" case didn't concern a fictional proclaimed conflagration in a movie-house. It concerned people who were producing and distributing to potential draftees pamphlets asserting that the draft was a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment of the US Constitution (which is is, but that's another issue). The stretch Oliver Wendell Holmes had to use to get from "fire in a crowded theatre" to "pamphleting against the draft" is no greater than the stretch this Assemblyman is attempting. So yes, it's ridiculous... but it's ridiculous with precedent.