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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."
but how much did it cost?
"Lame" - Galaxar
It is the government office saving money instead of hiring a plane to fly over the neighborhood and take pictures. Or are you going to say that you have a right to privacy from the air? Get real. A $300 fine ($75,000 / 250) doesn't sound excessive for a permit violation either. Now all those pools also need to be inspected for possible code violations. That is where it might get expensive.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
A few years ago I was in a speeding ticket dispute (that I eventually won) where the traffic court was using Google Maps' Satellite View in order to count the number of mailboxes along the road to determine the number of houses on the road, and therefore to determine if the area was "densely populated" and therefore qualified for a lower unposted speed limit.
...the government caught me in the act of doing something illegal using public information that's been available for years now! Bad Big Brother!
Permits are hard to get around here to do anything though. Which sucks. But if you choose to break the law, you should be aware of the potential consequences and the chance of getting caught. Given the public images of homes it should not be too surprising that something like this would happen eventually.
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.
The speaker moxie said basically, what the gov't had been trying to do but would never be able to is what google is doing now. To put it in perspective, he asked: "Who do you think knows more about the people of Iran? It's government, or google?"
So for all the good google does, this is one small way that it hurts some. That's not to say though, that the people who have these pools are innocent. Yes, we're a capitalistic society as many think, but no, you don't pay to have the roads you drive on to be paved, you contribute like everyone else does in small amounts. And without those small amounts almost nothing would be possible as we get much more and further by working together than alone.
http://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-18/dc-18-speakers.html#Marlinspike
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
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.
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
They are not using it to increase taxes, but to find people that are not paying their fair share. Whether you agree with the taxation or not is totally different than enforcing a level playing field.
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.
busy filling out the paperwork to get your (already built) pool approved by the city council?
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
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They are doing it already in Argentina for years now... Checking for illegal pools and buildings through Google Maps and airborne photos...
a pool is not a rich mans toy... they aren't *that* expensive, there are many houses well within the $100-200K range around me that have pools.
As far as pool maintenance, that has nothing to do with permits. Once it's in the books, it's not on some HP Openview in the city office while they're monitoring your pool water quality. The way that works is if the neighbor feels their yard being inundated with mosquitoes they contact the city. They come out, and fine the person if they find the water has not been maintained, then they make sure a shock treatment is applied to the water to neutralize lifeforms and to bring the water back into a stable range.
I know this because I have studied it when buying a house when I owned one, and also my neighbor decided not to maintain a pool and mosquitoes were hitting my yard, hard. A phone call and a week later, everything was back to normal.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Pool covers... that look like grass!
Someone make them now, they'll sell like hot cakes. Also pool canopies that look like lawn from above too.
seems like the kind of thing only an idiot would do.
You seem to be under the assumption that no idiots are involved in planning and building these things.
To be fair, outside of planned developments, real world considerations often lead to piss-poor comprimises. For example, I don't have gas on my street, but I'm pretty sure the next street over has it. If I wanted it, the utility company would either have to dig up a bunch of pavement, or reach an agreement with my neighbor to run a line through his property, preferably near the edge.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
... which is vital. If a person builds a pool and skips out of the permit, they could find themselves in dire straits should someone ever drown in said pool. If proper safety specs are not met, the pool could be dangerous in how it was designed and built. And in some cases, if a person is too cheap to get the permit, they're likely getting the pool for as cheap as possible.
Permits are necessary for displacement of land. If you remove trees to put in your pool, you're losing one of natures ways of keeping erosiion under control and other environmental issues that might take place. When a neighborhood gets some massive flooding, and the county has worked to ensure proper drainage for that home and neighborhood and now someone comes along and builds a pool without considering that drainage, that pool may upset the designed flow and cause flooding in certain circumstances.
Besides, permits that they are dodging, their may be additional taxes and proper insurance that is required. People who do this are very selfish.
I think (not sure) that city govt. personnel don't have permission to just walk onto someone's property even if they suspect unlawful building. Google Earth allows the city/county employees to perform the jobs that we, the tax payers pay them to do without violating any laws.
I'm perfectly happy that they have found a safe and legal way of enforcing city/county ordinances.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Child falls into pool, drowns. Worse yet -- child playing in pool, pool drain unsafe, disembowels child by sucking out colon through anus -- not funny, happened in my home town recently, the girl died a couple of days later.
Are towns on a money grab? Probably.
Is it true that there is "too little discussion about community norms" ...? Of course not -- go surf blogs, tweet some tweets -- this world is not lacking for discussion.
-kgj
So the US pay officials to spend hours poring over Google maps to find violations, whereas India sets up a Facebook page to report violations and instantly rakes in the dough. Knowing suburban neighbours, I'll give good odds as to which method will yield better results for pool violations...
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
In other news the sales of swimming pool sized military style camouflage meshes is up in the New York area...
You can't handle the truth.
Sure. It's ridiculous. Anything else you want to know? Now, have you heard of the concept of raising children with supervision until they are capable enough to go unsupervised, and then letting them go unsupervised?
Perhaps more to the point, have you heard of the word "responsibility"?
Why should *I* be responsible to fence my property in order to try and (inadequately and inappropriately and indirectly) parent your children for you?
If you want to have kids, you bear the responsibility for that decision. In every way. Not me. I didn't ask you to have kids, and I could care less if you do or not. Just keep them out of my yard and you, and I, will never have an issue. Think you can do that? If you can't, please abstain from having children. Thank you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Guess it's time to print up some tarpaulins with the image of a swimming pool and stake them up in the backyard just to fuck these bozos.