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Your House Is About To Be Photographed
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Feb 06, 2007 03:24 PM
from the little-brother dept.
from the little-brother dept.
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."
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That reminds me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That reminds me (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:That reminds me (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Enforcement != laws (Score:5, Interesting)
Be a little careful there....many places in fact use real off duty cops as their rent-a-cops. I know way back in the day when I was in school, and selling clothes at Dillard's...the plain cloths store cops were ALL real life LRPD. I was talking to one of them one slow night, and he explained the different guns he carried. The in-store gun with bullets that wouldn't go through the person...and the outdoor gun where if he had to shoot through a car...it would penetrate...etc.
And in some/many jurisdictions if I understand it...a cop really is never 'off' duty...so, even if working as a rent-a-cop...he has the exact same authority as if he were on direct police duty.
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Re:That reminds me (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:That reminds me (Score:5, Funny)
"Your 30 day free trial of Photoshop has expired.
Please purchase the full version to remove this sign"
or
"Thank you for using a pirated version of Photoshop!"
Parent
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?
Damned Foreigners (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damned Foreigners (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
It's just a prelude... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually we have invaded the US 47 times in the last 10 years, but nobody noticed.
Re:It's just a prelude... (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone could miss Canada, all tucked away down there.
Parent
Re:It's just a prelude... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Assuming they follow the rules (Score:5, Interesting)
Very little of my house is visible from public access. However, driving a hundred yards or so down my driveway will offer you a nice, clean picture. The first time I see photos of my house which I know had to have been taken from my private property, can I have their asses thrown in jail for trespassing?
Re:Assuming they follow the rules (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, not legally. Those easements are for the utility companies and only the utility companies. They do not confer any access rights to anyone else, including invaders from the great white north.
My easements are specific to a particular type of utility (power), so any other one would have to negotiate a new deal with me.
Parent
Already been done (Score:5, Interesting)
How is this useful in any way? (Score:5, Insightful)
More slashdot trolling (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone ever hear of propertyshark.com? [propertyshark.com].
Yeah, pictures of every building in Manhattan, and much of prime Brooklyn. They also have the tax photos from the 1970's.
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.
It can and does happen, but isn't supposed to (Score:5, Interesting)
What it sounds like (to me anyway) is a number of local agencies get overly zealous at times. I suspect part of the problem is there hasn't been much, if any, guidance provided to local law enforcement from the feds. Another part of the problem is these people, from the feds on down, seem to be flying the security ship by the seat of their pants, and worrying about what's actually legal/illegal later - the old "Shoot 'em all, and let God sort 'em out" philosophy.
boring job (Score:5, Funny)
"Number 134?"
"Yeah"
"It's just a door with a number?"
"Yeah like the last 133 units we've shot dumbass"
*Click*
"Okay got it"
I have a proxy house (Score:5, Funny)
Don't know where it came first... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't know where it came first, but here in Finland a company called Igglo [igglo.fi] photographed every house here a couple of years ago. There are now photos of every building online. And I have to admit, that if your buying or renting something it sure is a very nice service. But I understand the privacy issues. There was some protest over here especially about photographic single-family houses. And I actually saw these guys photographing the house I live in. My first impression about them was to call the police. Kind of funny later on when I figured who they were.
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.
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:Canadians Do Know We Are Armed, Right? (Score:5, Funny)
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