Your House Is About To Be Photographed 491
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."
paranoid (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:That reminds me (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this useful in any way? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here comes the Transparent Society... (Score:3, Insightful)
What Privacy does this violate? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
so? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It can and does happen, but isn't supposed to (Score:3, Insightful)
You may have that a little backwards. I think that most of these people are deathly afraid of the parasitic lawyers (or grandstanding politicians) that will descend like a plague of locusts on whatever municipality's police department didn't stop an actual terrorist cell from publicly gathering intel they later used to blow up a bridge (or whatever else) with people on it. If someone actually does take out a bridge structure during morning rush hour, and it appears that perhaps it was done with the assistance of detailed structural images that were taken in plain view
Do it from a vehicle? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Anonymity Is Doomed Get Over It (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Damned Foreigners (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh noes, a conspearasee! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:That reminds me (Score:3, Insightful)
Right of publicity [publaw.com]
They're probably not crossing the border... (Score:2, Insightful)
A9 did this for businessesyears ago... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Enforcement != laws (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think so. Rent-a-cops don't have any greater police power than an ordinary citizen, so they have no authority to order you around on public property, but the situation you are talking about is different. You are trying to enter PRIVATE property, whose owners are entitled to control who enters and how their property is used. Just as you have the right to use such force as is necessary to prevent an unwanted person from entering your home or business, so Walmart, via its guards, has the right to exclude you from their premises if you do not comply with their conditions. Walmart may tell its guards to let such things go because they want to avoid lawsuits over excessive force and so forth, but they have every right, without police power, to control who enters.
Not Every House (Score:4, Insightful)
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'?
Re:Enforcement != laws (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not special for the security guard. I can do that, any ordinary citizen can do that, and the consequence is the same: the law does not allow you to be mistaken, and if you are, you have a house-sized legal bill coming 'round.
C//
archers (Score:2, Insightful)