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Officials Use Google Earth To Find Unlicensed Pools
Officials in Riverhead, New York are using Google Earth to root out the owners of unlicensed pools. So far they've found 250 illegal pools and collected $75,000 in fines and fees. Of course not everyone thinks that a city should be spending time looking at aerial pictures of backyards. from the article: "Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC, said Google Earth was promoted as an aid to curious travelers but has become a tool for cash-hungry local governments. 'The technology is going so far ahead of what people think is possible, and there is too little discussion about community norms,' she said."
While not Google Earth, as a county government we look at our own aerial photos (added to a GIS layer) to find unpermitted structures as well (mostly just to get them on the tax books - if someone builds without a permit we often have no idea that the structure exists, so it goes untaxed).
While I'm sure it's a LONG ways off, at a recent conference I was at one of the larger city-level governments in the state was actually discussing the possibility of using a form of sonar to track this. I'm not sure if they're just in the brainstorming phase or what, but from what he said the idea was to use it to map out the structures in the city at periodic intervals. Then between intervals you compare to the previous sweep to see anything large that's been added or removed. You filter that against what parcels have not had a permit issued, and you get a good source of info to start following up on construction without permits.
The same city had recently installed various microphones in spots around the city to auto-alert the police department when it detected gunfire (this is already in place, not conceptual). Apparently it is fine tuned enough to be able to tell the difference between an actual gun and things like fireworks and the like.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
In other words, I bet that very few of those folks built those pools and intentionally tried to get away without paying.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I had a friend who had a neighbor with an unlicensed above-ground pool. I'm not sure what went wrong, but one day it collapsed, sending all of the water into my friend's back yard, destroying everything there. Building permits are required for good reasons, and they're usually dirt cheap (less than 1% of the project cost). If you're hiring a contractor who doesn't get a building permit, then they're probably not doing it to save you money, but to allow them to skimp on important building code details that might end up costing you a huge amount.
How can this be considered acurate when the satellite image of my house still contains our pool that has been ripped down for over a year? I sure hope they check the date on the satellite imaagry if they even can see that (not sure if you can). Using unsolictated tools to that arn't officially sanctioned for use like this is sorta ridiculous. Not in a privacy sense, as it is public images, but in a sense on a basis on how feasbile it is as proof when its not a standard tool for that purpose.
Do you have it in a fenced in back yard?
What about the "traditional" points of view but at other wavelengths? If your house is transparent to spectrum X - should you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in say your bedroom?
Some photography laws allow for pictures of private locations from the street, but not using telephoto optics - does that apply to satellites and airplanes use? Perhaps you could make the jurisdiction argument, but if your "camera" is located outside of the jurisdiction, but the person pulling the shutter is within the jurisdiction (e.g. programmed flight, camera, and receives images) does that muddy the waters?
I don't think this excellent reference even addresses the issue at hand.
Wow..never heard that one before.
What's next, having to apply for a license to own a fscking charcoal grill on your own patio?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This story reminds me of Adam Smith's reasoning of why properties in his time should have been taxed based on the number of windows, rather than hearths: both for privacy reasons (you can count windows from the outside, whereas hearths require entering the home) and to make evasion harder. When tax assessment time came around, people would brick up their hearths. Sure, you could brick up windows, but since they could be observed any time without you knowing, it makes it much harder to do.
But yeah, maybe we have a problem with the fact that the pool requires a permit, but that's a different issue. Hopefully sitting in an office using Google Earth means they're not driving around wasting gas, or hiring a plane as you mentioned.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
To someone who's got enough money to pay a contractor to install a pool in their backyard, a $300 fine is probably the right amount to not be prohibitively expensive but still make them think about their choice of contractor the next time they hire one.
Just like every other permanent construction in a municipality, you gotta have your permits and licenses and everything else in order.
It just goes with the modern view of freedom and property rights in America: my right to the value of my house trumps everyone else's right to do what they please with their property. If everyone in my neighborhood had a better swimming pool than me, my home's value would suffer. That's why we have homeowner associations, zoning laws and so on.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
No, I think he meant the licenses for government employees. I don't think you're allowed to use the free Google Earth if you're a government employee using it for official business. Seem to remember seeing that in the eula, but could be wrong.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Comparably, government employees typically have salaries a good bit below that in the private sector.
Total bullshit. I used to work for the private sector at a museum that was then taken over by the federal government. When the takeover went through, I gained ridiculous pension and medical benefits, along with a $10,000+ increase in my annual salary.
I know I'm taking a leap here, but I'm assuming the license requires the homeowner to purchase a permit to install the pool, which should have been inspected
A safety oriented inspection should not require over $30.
This is pure money raising. $75K/250 pools is $300 per pool. Assuming the "usual" double fee if applied for after work completed, that would be a staggering $150 to pay a city employee to verify there is in fact a fence and a GFCI.
I can safely assume you've never actually participated in a permit inspection. I have, many times. Mostly involves an older semi-retired inspector glancing at the work and driving off. The longest, most detailed inspection I have ever been involved in, oddly enough was a dishwasher where the inspector actually bent over to examine the power wiring (GFCI outlet? etc). That was like 90 freaking seconds, at least three times longer than all the other inspections I've participated in.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
No sir, they do not.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/03/blog-post.html
Professor Perry has many posts regarding the imbalance between private and public salaries. The government pays much better than the private sector in most areas.
"Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me." - Robert A. Heinlein
A deed restriction tells you what kind of mailbox you need and what color to paint your front door, or in the past that colored people and china-men aren't allowed to inhabit the premises unless employed in domestic service. That last one's a direct quote from the deed to my grandfather's house.
It's city ordinances that tell you that you can't have a chicken coop in downtown St. Louis, and that you can't run a junkyard from the 1/8 acre behind your McMansion, and it always has been.
Deed restrictions don't say, "make sure you get a building permit before you build your deck, or your garage, or your pool." The reason we have building permits is so that urban Mr. Fix'it doesn't build a deck that collapses at a party injuring dozens, so that he doesn't build a garage that catches fire and spreads to the neighborhood, and so that the pool isn't a hole in the ground attached to a sensitive wetland into which Suzi Homeowner diligently dumps a 20lb bag of chlorine a week.
All that said, while having actual engineers sign off on actual building projects is a good idea (and don't kid yourself, that pool is a building project), this is a money grab, pure and simple.