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The Courts Government Your Rights Online News

CT High Court Rules GIS Data Can Be Kept Secret [UPDATED] 243

Posted by timothy from the dihydrogen-monoxide dept.
kinema writes "A few days ago the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that the town of Greenwich's Department of Information Technology does not have to release the images and GIS data that the town keeps. The court found that mandatory disclosure of the data under the state's freedom of information statues is exempted under a recently passed state law that allows information to be kept secret 'when there are reasonable grounds to believe that their disclosure may result in a safety risk.' I'm sure I'm not the only one in the audience that has a hard time swallowing this. I am looking into filing a similar request to obtain the GIS data for the Portland Oregon metro area. As the data is currently available to anyone willing to shell out the nearly $900 per year, the local government isn't going to be able to argue that the data could be used by terrorists and should therefore be kept from the public which paid untold amounts for the data to be collected through their taxes." Update: 01/11 16:51 GMT by M : This story is incorrect. Although the case was just heard by the court, there has been no decision either for or against the disclosure of the GIS information.
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CT High Court Rules GIS Data Can Be Kept Secret [UPDATED] More

CT High Court Rules GIS Data Can Be Kept Secret [UPDATED]

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  • Outrageous... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BJZQ8 ( 644168 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @03:29AM (#11302471) Homepage Journal
    Security Schmurity...if there is not a very, very compelling reason to keep people's noses out of such information...EVERYTHING should be released. I, for one, would like the rule to be if you want to come in and get it, it's TAXPAYER OWNED/FUNDED and you can do so. Short of plans for nuclear silos or locations of CIA monitoring stations, what compelling reason is there for not letting people know the location of water/gas services? Terrorists don't want to cause a water main break, they want to kill 1000's of people in spectacular attacks. In my opinion, it's just a cop-out so they don't have to do any extra work to provide it to the public.
    • if there is not a very, very compelling reason to keep people's noses out of such information

      There is. If a bad person does something the town does not want to be the source of that person's information. There will be no shortage of ambulance chasing lawyers suing the town if something happened and the town had provided info of its own free will, as opposed to be compelled to by a court order.

      In my opinion, it's just a cop-out so they don't have to do any extra work to provide it to the public.

      It
      • There will be no shortage of ambulance chasing lawyers suing the town if something happened and the town had provided info of its own free will, as opposed to be compelled to by a court order

        If by "of it's own free will" you mean released under a federal law requiring that information to be given.
      • It's actually the earth that "provided" the info by having the various elevations that it has. Ohhh lets sue the earth. What a cop out statement. The town could not feasibly be sued for this and you know it. The information is already available from commercial sources; all this is is ignorance.
        • It's actually the earth that "provided" the info by having the various elevations that it has. Ohhh lets sue the earth. What a cop out statement. The town could not feasibly be sued for this and you know it. The information is already available from commercial sources; all this is is ignorance.

          If by "all this is is ignorance" you are referring to your own post, I agree. If you had bothered to read the article you would have known that the data involves more than terrain elevations.

          Secondly, it is irr
      • There will be no shortage of ambulance chasing lawyers suing the town if something happened and the town had provided info of its own free will, as opposed to be compelled to by a court order.

        If the lawyer could win (see above on whether or not it could), then this says a lot on the current state of America.
        • If the lawyer could win (see above on whether or not it could), then this says a lot on the current state of America.

          It does. That is why tort reform is such a big issue over here. Unfortunately many senators and representatives are lawyers and the trial lawyers are pretty big campaign contributors. In the US criminal law, when the government takes you to court, is very different from civil law, when a "person" takes you to court. In criminal law the threshold for guilt is pretty high, "beyond reasonabl
        • If the lawyer could win (see above on whether or not it could), then this says a lot on the current state of America.

          Ammusing and sad at the same time:

          http://www.nylawyer.com/news/04/12/122004n.html
    • A major reason being that politicians are bombarded with bullshit security concerns all day, every day, by departments, consultants, etc., that want funding for this-or-that. And of course the paranoid citizens who have a year's worth of duct tape surrounding their sofa as they watch fox news...

  • Another Fine Edit (Score:4, Informative)

    by aardvarko ( 185108 ) <webmaster AT aardvarko DOT com> on Sunday January 09, 2005 @03:32AM (#11302477) Homepage
    Here's the actual link to the Wikipedia article about GIS. [wikipedia.org] Editors, or button-pushers?

  • A bit naive if you ask me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by koreth ( 409849 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @03:33AM (#11302482)
    the local government isn't going to be able to argue that the data could be used by terrorists
    Wanna bet?
    • I think carrying my license around can allow terrorists to use it against me. Can stores be forced to stop asking me for it?*

      * I don't actually live in America so this doesn't happen, but I see people complaining about it all the time so I assume it happens somewhat regularly. And yes, I know technically stores aren't allowed to force you and probably won't if you kick up ENOUGH of a stink, but the point is such laws often protect the government(s power), not the people(s rights).
  • I kinda understand where they are coming from. Stuff like water facilities, power grid info, etc, probably should be kept secret. Some of the stuff is above groud, but just giving away high-quality maps of underground facilities is leaving yourself open, and failure analysis and worst-case-scenarios should definately be kept secret. I wouldnt see any reason why stuff like parcel data should be kept secret.

    FWIW, I work in the GIS dept at a Water Company.
    • But see, the information is still available to anybody who wants to pay the money to see it.

      This isn't about national security. This is about the mighty dollar.

  • Most of the GIS data in the world is unavailable (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 09, 2005 @03:45AM (#11302529)
    In europe, GIS data isn't free, and is only available with non-disclosure agreements and steep yearly license fees. It's considered as a valuable commercial resource that can be milked for years and years.

    The US government is still refusing to release VMAP2 GIS data for european countries, because of partner deals with GIS agencies of those governments, even though the data was collected by american satellites with US taxpayer dollars.

    They absolutely refuse to respond to FOIA requests.
    • But I can get this sort of thing: Where I live in London [streetmap.co.uk] without any trouble.
    • The whole GIS thing is a huge con. When I remember the famous explorers that were sent by the kings to map the unknown lands, I am filled with disgust for the greedy bastards that seem to occupy this business today. And because these companies are so greedy, they are killing the huge market before it's born. There are practically no useful applications of maps used in practice. There are a few ad-supported online services (MapQuest, Yahoo, etc.) that are used for the lack of a better alternatives, there are
    • because of partner deals with GIS agencies of those governments

      I would guess it would be more akin to the security agencies in Europe would rather not risk release of data they can't screen, and consider it a security risk.

      The GIS folks just milk it harder..

      Besides, why worry about the Americans? You can buy the Russian's data on Europe on the cheap.

  • Greenwich CT??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ekeup1 ( 847343 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @03:46AM (#11302532)
    Why are we even remotely worried about the possibility of a terrorist incident in Greenwich, CT????

    I'd be much more worried about the VERY detailed satelite images available at http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com].
    You can get sat images of ALMOST all of our military bases and probably every big city.

    • I was curious about this exact issue when the Terraserver first went online (I was working for the military at that time). When I tried to look up some military bases, I didn't have much success. I found that entire blocks of land around all the military bases I checked were missing.

      I just checked, and those images are now there; that's new... but after looking at the dates on the pictures, I'd suggest to you that those images are old, and not current enough to be of serious value to a terrorist enemy.

      L
      • Speaking of the pizza delivery guy.
        I was a manager at a pizza delivery place when 9/11 happened (heard the news on my way to work).
        A couple days later we got a delivery order from a nearby government building (mapping agency, coincidently) and the driver came back just a tad rattled. He had nearly overshot the FIRST white stop line (double gate system). The guard told him it was good he'd made the stop. When he joked back about getting arrested the guard simply said "that's not what would have happ
      • If I were a terrorist, or even a run-of-the-mill foreign intelligence service, the first and most trivial thing I would do is an automated scan of Terraserver or any other similar system.

        Any coordinates that turn up blank, or which can be detected as out of date, would immediately become a priority point of interest. Often the ABSENCE of information can be even more revealing than the information itself.

        -

    • Re:Greenwich CT??? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) *
      You don't seem to understand what Greenwich is. Many of the CEOs and financial leaders of New York live in Greenwich. It's probably the wealthiest suburb of New York City.

      In one high profile event two years ago, Eddie Lampert, the famous investor and private equity dealmaker (same guy who led the buyout of KMart this year and was in the news for that) was kidnapped and held for ransom (before being released by his incompetent kidnappers).

      As for terrorist events per se, I don't know that it seems terribl

  • Portlandmaps.com (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrnutz ( 108477 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @03:50AM (#11302539)
    The City of Portland operates portlandmaps [portlandmaps.com] which provides free access to limited GIS data.

  • Security through obscurity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by affliction ( 242524 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @03:52AM (#11302544) Homepage
    is no security at all.

    I can go down to the airport and pay someone to take me an hour long tour around town. I'll take my new Canon 8 megapixel camera along. If I wanted to do some damage, those pictures are going to work just as will as the GIS pictures. Might cost me a little more in short term, but what does that matter?

    As an aside, Helena, Montana gives away GIS data to anyone who asks for it. The taxpayers of Helena payed for those pictures and that information in the first place. It's only right that we have free access to it. As a matter of fact, I have a hard drive around here with 10 gigs of photos and infrastructure maps of Helena and the surrounding area just for asking.
    • Once Helena starts reaping the economic boom that comes with open GIS data, other towns will fall in line and release their own data, with towns in Connecticut being last, due to bureaucratic wrong-headedness.
    • Free data is nice, but it's not very common. Usually the units of government (typically counties or metropolitan planning organizations) that create the data charge a rather hefty fee for the really good stuff. And I actually don't begrudge them that, because usually there is quite a bit of value added.

      Later this month the seven counties that make up the Twin Cities metro area are FINALLY going to be making the region-wide parcel dataset available, which as been promised for about as long as Duke Nukem For
    • Obscurity is hardly useless, it just gets a bad name because people tend to try to use obscurity in place of real countermeasures. Obscurity is a valid part of an overall security strategy. When obscurity and real countermeasures are combined, they are much more effective than either alone, since attackers cannot know how to prepare to defeat the countermeasures.

      I suppose half-assed and ultimately ineffective efforts at obscurity also give it a bad name, especially when obscurity is chosen for self-serv

  • USSA (Score:2, Interesting)

    by suckfish ( 129773 )
    In the old soviet union they didn't have phone books because terrorists ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H dissidents might use them.

    It's only a matter of time.
    • and now you can use them to get data that you coulnd't get other places.. (someone above mentioned the GIS info for europe that you can get from them).. and the terraserver stuff for area51.. funny how times change lol

  • I just *love* the smell of BS in the morning... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @03:56AM (#11302559) Journal
    Please, show me a terrorist who would attack anything in Greenwich, CT over in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., or any other major metropolitan area in the US.

    And have you checked out their website? They have such genuinely useful things as e-mail notification of town emergencies [greenwichct.org] to any affected residents. Please tell me that some of you also think that to be a marginal waste of resources. And what's this crap on the front page about needing permission to reproduce the town seal? Apparently the fair use train doesn't make stops in Greenwich also.

    Congratulations, Greenwich, CT: you have successfully pissed me off.

    I'm going to sleep now. Good morning, and good riddance.
    • Please, show me a terrorist who would attack anything in Greenwich, CT over in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., or any other major metropolitan area in the US.

      The folks in the cities are stressed because they feel targetted. The folks in the suburbs and country feel safe. Naturally the later are a perfectly logical target. You naively assume that the purpose of terrorism is a large body count. It is not, it is to make everyone feel unsafe. Right now large chunks of the country feel safe.
      • It is not, it is to make everyone feel unsafe.

        The current administration - legislative and executive branches both - have done more to make me feel unsafe in my own country than any religious dipshit with a pair of boxcutters and a planeload of pussies ever could. By your definition Congress and King George qualify as terrorists.

        And of course you haven't addressed either of these points:

        - exactly where does this stop? The government could classify just about any goddamned thing as "need to know" due

    • Apparently the fair use train doesn't make stops in Greenwich also.

      I'm curious to know what exactly you think "fair use" means. It's a short, somewhat loaded (and frequently misused) phrase that actually means something specific in US law.

      Wikipedia has a decent explanation [wikipedia.org] of what fair use really refers to.

      Duplicating the town seal without permission might or might not be covered by the fair use doctrine. It would depend on the context: if you reproduced it as an example in an essay discussing the h

    • I read this article [townhall.com] by William Bucley some time ago. The neurisis and moot arguments have been going around for a long time. This excerpt is a funny read:

      In l962 Michael Di Salle was running for governor of Ohio. It was a season in which U.S. officials were calling out an alarm against possible air attacks. Governor Rockefeller came close to writing into the New York State building code a requirement that new houses have individual bomb shelters, and he led the way by constructing a shelter in his own h

    • Safety reasons does not just mean terrorist. Battered wife move away? Just look in the local GIS to find her new house's address. No charge! Quick and easy access! Just dig through GIS to find out where she lives!

      Terror isn't just for NY either. Heard of the arson in Maryland with possible ecoterrorism ties? Not exactly looking for New York in that case. Just how to trash a few homes they don't like. Easy with the gas main easily found in an anonymous GIS access from a public browser.

      Town emergencies do n
    • If you actually knew who lives in Greenwich, and how close it is to NYC, then you might guess as to why they are concerned about their safety. There are some VERY wealthy and powerful people who live there. I don't think they should be special and prevent GIS data from being available to citizens though. I thought that the state was going to side with the researchers (not with the town).
  • The information is available on a fee basis. In fact, it is available as a subscription, if you would prefer the annual updates.

    This is a fee, not unlike fees to use parks or fees to use roads (taxes).

    The government already provides a means of obtaining this information but is not obligated to provide multiple ways of getting it.

    • The government already provides a means of obtaining this information but is not obligated to provide multiple ways of getting it.

      Perhaps, but given the choice between vomiting out raw data for people who are interested in the stuff to look over, or giving out ready-made GIS maps, it seems that the former would make more sense and be far less labor-intensive. This is how a lot of the Census data is done (last time I saw) - if you want the whole dataset, that's fine and dandy. However, if you want it aggr

  • Terrorism paranoia (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @04:00AM (#11302575) Homepage
    According to the U.S. Department of State, 2003 was the lowest year for terrorism in over a decade. [globalpolicy.org] (The 2004 figures aren't out yet.) The US hasn't had a terrorist attack since the anthrax fiasco in late 2001.

    For better or worse, the US's aggressive anti-terrorism foreign policy has had an effect. It's the invasion of Afghanistan that did it. The Taliban thought they were safe backing bin Laden - they'd beat the Russians, their country was landlocked and a long way from US allies, and the terrain favored them. Big mistake. Three months later the Taliban was out of power with its leaders dead, jailed, or on the run.

    This made a big impression on dictators and warlords worldwide. Allowing terrorists to operate from your territory against the US is not survivable.

    We'll probably have trouble again. But we have bigger problems. Compared to AIDS, hurricanes, and other problems, the death toll from terrorism is low.

    • Re:Terrorism paranoia (Score:4, Informative)

      by AEton ( 654737 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @04:30AM (#11302654)
      Data aggregation in the State Department ran into some serious problems with that report. The article you cite is dated in late April 2004; by June Per CNN was carrying the story that they had grossly underestimated the issue:

      The State Department eventually conceded that the original report failed to include a number of deadly attacks in the latter part of 2003, including a car bomb that exploded in a housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and a series of attacks in Istanbul, Turkey, all of which took place in November.

      Black said the report was "marred by significant errors" when it was originally released. But he said those errors were the result of "honest mistakes, and certainly not deliberate deceptions."

      Allegations have been raised that the Bush administration deliberately made the State Department advertise a reduction in terrorist attacks - i.e., demonstrate a tangible 2003 victory for the "war on terror". Of course, when the data point the other direction, it's just as easy to say that the Bush administration abused the State Department's fearmongering abilities to hype a security claim in an election year.

      I personally suspect that it was a simple error of data aggregation; these things happen in bureaucracies.

      The summaries, original [globalsecurity.org] and revised [globalsecurity.org], illustrate the difference.

      Original:

      There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight decrease from the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, and a drop of 45 percent from the level in 2001 of 346 attacks. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969.

      Revised:

      There were 208 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight increase from the most recently published figure of 198* attacks in 2002, and a 42 percent drop from the level in 2001 of 355 attacks.
      *As new information becomes available, revisions are made to previously published statistics. The current running total for international terrorist incidents in 2002 is 205. [huh?!]

      Original:

      A total of 307 persons were killed in the attacks of 2003, far fewer than the 725 killed during 2002. A total of 1,593 persons were wounded in the attacks that occurred in 2003, down from 2,013 persons wounded the year before.

      Revised:

      A total of 625 persons were killed in the attacks of 2003, fewer than the 725 killed during 2002. A total of 3646 persons were wounded in the attacks that occurred in 2003, a sharp increase from 2013 persons wounded the year before. This increase reflects the numerous indiscriminate attacks during 2003 on "soft targets," such as places of worship, hotels, and commercial districts, intended to produce mass casualties.

      Original:

      In 2003, the highest number of attacks (70) and the highest casualty count (159 persons dead and 951 wounded) occurred in Asia.
      There were 82 anti-US attacks in 2003, which is up slightly from the 77 attacks the previous year, and represents a 62-percent decrease from the 219 attacks recorded in 2001.
      Thirty-five American citizens died in 15 international terrorist attacks in 2003

      Revised:

      Thirty-five U.S. citizens died in international terrorist attacks in 2003 [the other paragraphs disappeared - no mention of whether the number of anti-US attacks changed]

      The House Democrats released a report [house.gov] analyzing the changes in the revised format. If their analysis strikes you as biased, content youreslf with the presumably ve

    • The US hasn't had a terrorist attack since the anthrax fiasco in late 2001.

      Well, I'm not sure that's saying much. The worldwide stat is more impressive. The U.S. didn't have many terrorist attacks (on the homeland) before 9/11 either, and the latest one was by an American citizen. (The anthrax scare may have also been by an American citizen).

      Until we have a few more years worth of data I wouldn't be so convinced the U.S. has made a dent in overall terrorism events. After all, crime statistics within

    • "It's the invasion of Afghanistan that did it. The Taliban thought they were safe backing bin Laden - they'd beat the Russians, their country was landlocked and a long way from US allies, and the terrain favored them. Big mistake. Three months later the Taliban was out of power //with its leaders dead, jailed, or on the run.//"

      Wow..been watching too much Fox News? Who do you think is still raising hell in Afghanistan and Iraq?

      "Allowing terrorists to operate from your territory against the US is not surviv
  • First, the Greenwich "safety risk" thing is a crock when the information is already available to anyone who fills out a form and pays the fees. The form is right there on the Greenwich site.

    But the real issue here is that the poster seems to be trying to obtain this information for free, rather the paying the fees/subscriptions required by the states for providing the data in a presentable, standardized format. It seems to me he wants the all taxpayers to bear the burden of costs rather than the end user
    • "Any township is going to incur significant costs collecting, sorting, organizing, formating, and duplicating this data. Giving all of that data away free means other services will suffer, or taxes will have to be raised."

      Excuse me?!?! If they already have this data in a GIS then the cost will be near $0. Maybe a few dollars for the time it takes to query the information and burn the data to a CD or upload it. If it is a non-standard query, then it may take more time-I can see doing this when it is conveni
      • You're over simplifying things. Just because something is paid for with tax money doesn't mean the expense has been covered and the project should be available to everyone for free. Many projects are granted a budget specifically based on the notion that the costs will be covered by access fees.
        • Intent matters. Not effect.

          If the city decided they needed the data to deal with an existing problem, and could budget it at the time, then it was paid for by tax dollars and should be free. The city needed it anyway, right?

          If the city decided that it would be nice to have GIS data, but they could neither see any dire need for it at the time or could not budget enough at the time, they should never have done it.

          If they can't justify doing it without whoring themselves out to either cover the cost of it
    • But the real issue here is that the poster seems to be trying to obtain this information for free, rather the paying the fees/subscriptions required by the states for providing the data in a presentable, standardized format.

      Even the GPL lets you charge a fee. I don't have to make my source freely available on a website. I can require you to be a "customer" and I can require a "reasonable" fee.

  • We *can* have an effect, people (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ErichTheWebGuy ( 745925 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @04:14AM (#11302608) Homepage
    Remember the recent fiasco [slashdot.org] about the National Weather Service wanting to give us access to our data, and people like Accuweather wanting to stop them? We screamed, and they listened.

    Granted, it was under a completely different set of circumstances. The govt. agency *wanted* to give us the data, it was a relatively minor threat of us losing access to it, etc. However, the point remains that we still live in a democracy. If enough people make enough noise, some politician is bound to at least raise a minor stink about it, if for no other reason than to pander to some people for some votes.

    So, having said that, write to your congressman [congress.org] and request that the data you paid for, and deserve to have, be made available to you.

  • Should we have less freedom because of fear? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @04:31AM (#11302656) Homepage

    The fundamental issue here is not about map data, but whether we should allow ourselves to have less freedom because we fear terrorists.

    Regarding this, it is valuable to educate ourselves about what we are fearing. Regarding that, it is valuable to know more about the activities of the U.S. government. Only a small percentage of U.S. citizens understand much about the involvement of the U.S. government with other countries. There is plenty of reliable information available, but learning more takes so much time most people haven't done it. Here is a small overview that I put together: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories [hevanet.com]. There may be other articles and books that are far more valuable to you, that article is just a contribution of mine.

    Most U.S. citizens believe that the terrorists attacked without provocation. That is not true. The terrorists attacked after many decades of experiencing U.S. government violence. (Violence does not justify more violence, of course, but most people don't believe that, including the leaders of the U.S. Defense Department, and the terrorists.)

    Am I saying that the U.S. government is a net evil force in the world? No. What has happened is that the government decided two things several decades ago. I'm sure those in power then did not understand that their decisions would eventually corrupt the entire government. At the time, the decisions seemed logical.

    First, the government decided that it could act in other countries in secret. Second, the U.S. government decided it could act in secret to protect U.S. businesses in other countries.

    What probably no one realized then was how much that would come to be a corrupting influence on the government. What no one realized then was how much additional profit there was to be made by arranging, in secret, for U.S. taxpayers to pay for the security arrangements needed by U.S. multinational businesses.

    Soon huge businesses were arguing that the U.S. government should subvert democratically elected leaders, as the government did in Iran. Soon U.S. businesses would arrange unfair contracts with corrupt leaders, and when there was a protest, call for U.S. government intervention in the name of patriotism.

    That's partly how we got to the present situation, where two men, whose family and business associates and friends have extensive investments in global oil businesses, are president and vice-president of the entire U.S. government, even though there is conflict of interest in such an arrangement.
    • "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

      - Benjamin Franklin

      IMHO 'nuff said

  • A year or so ago I was running scripts to download all the aerial photographs from portlandmaps.com. Imagine my surprise when I got a phone call the next morning from the admin of the site, begging me to stop killing their servers! Turns out the GIS server really didn't like the particular requests I was sending it, and I'd actually crashed one of them.

    Of course, they charge $900/seat for the "license" as mentioned in the article, and I questioned that on the spot saying that it was a city-acquired reso

  • Insane (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @04:45AM (#11302694)
    If the GIS data in question is anything like the stuff I work with, there is absolutely no information that I can think of which a)is useful to terrorists b)couldn't be easily discovered with a quick drive around the neighborhood. Information about bridge architecture, maybe, but not much else.

    This 'terrorism' straw man is getting ridiculous - it's encouraging government offices to keep things a secret just because they want to. Granted, if you're running a government office, this is probably a good idea. I won't name names, but I can say that there are states with D.O.T.s out there with records that are inexcusably inaccurate or horribly out of date (cue '40s radio drama organ because everyone is surprised). Being beauraucracies, the natural solution to this kind of situation is to keep anyone from finding the problem by limiting flow of information as much as possible rather than to simply fix the problem.

    Of course, doing this requires that you start keeping as many secrets as possible - you see, if the American public ever found out how terrorists actually operate, they would realize that all of thse terrorism-related justifications for huge wastes of money, freedom, integrity, and time are just one huge bullshit excuse, and the whole thing would come tumbling down. We can't have that, because then every government official from the lowest county clerk all the way up to George "Paid Vacation" Bush would have to actually put time into carefully considering policy decisions and competently piloting the areas they govern rather than smoking rock and blaming hippies and muslims for their mistakes like they do now.

    --

    Politics: coming from the Latin roots 'poly', meaning many, and 'tics', meaning small blood sucking parasites.

  • An earlier poster correctly states that any terrorist who wanted GIS data for nearly any part of the country could simply purchase the data on the open market, so lets move past that motive for secrecy and examine other possible motivations.

    While most towns in Connectivut and across the country are striving to make GIS data available in the most convenient way possible, in order to stimulate development and growth of their tax base, Greenwich is one of those towns having the highest per capita inco

  • forget $900 THIS is free in Portland Oregon (Score:3, Informative)

    by scotch51 ( 108624 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:05AM (#11302726) Homepage
    Perhaps you will be amused to know that the city of Portland Oregon puts most of that stuff online now... for free. The home page is http://portlandmaps.com [portlandmaps.com] but that won't suggest how much fun it can be. Let's pick on one of my neigbors at random:

    General Info [portlandmaps.com]

    Satellite Mapping [portlandmaps.com]

    With Property Lines [portlandmaps.com]

    Elevation [portlandmaps.com]

    Crime Stats [portlandmaps.com]
    Well you get the idea.

  • That was a rather nonsensical decision by the court. So the city doesn't want to give out its parcel and assessor's data because then he could figure out where the rich people live. Oh noess!! You could drive around a city and get a pretty good idea of that anyway.

    At work I have Ramsey County, Minnesota's full set of color orthophotos on my computer (I'm a GIS guy myself). They are of excellent resolution, to the point where a guy I know at the City of Roseville (who knew in advance what day the county was
    • When I went to Greenwich 6 years or so back, I saw three high-end car dealerships. Something like Jaguar, Porsche and Ferrari. At the time, Greenwich was the second most expensive place to live in America, the first being Beverly Hills. Any thief who felt like burgling a house could hit any one in town at random and come out nicely. It's not hard to figure out where the rich people live in Greenwich...you can't swing a stick without mugging one.

  • It appears that Greenwich Town provides access for A GIS map request [virtualtownhall.net] from its site. It seems silly to me that the actual back-end data be obfuscated and off-limits, when the front-end data (e.g. the map) is available. Granted, I've not actually opened the PDF and seen if a fee exists, but it should be only nominally difficult to get a GIS map from these guys. I do not believe, then, that the orthophotography [google.com] in use here is the issue. Then again, the map (link above) could just be a low-resolution versi

  • If you showed up to the office personaly you could get the data you were intrested in for free. Its the handling of all the presonal requests that eat up time hence the charging of data.

    In my department the issue was raised if we should limit access on the internet of our waterline maps. We in the department figured that was crap since you could go and get for a minial fee copies of the paper copies on file.

    We in the utilites have figured we will give you data to a certain point for free until the r
  • As a GIS professional, I have mixed feelings on this. Mixed in the sense that I believe that there should be controls over data access, but I strongly feel that the argument that ALL data should be restricted on security grounds is completely bogus.

    As others have pointed out, the data was developed at public expense. So I tend to strongly advocate that the public be given access to the bulk of it. For personal, educational, or non-profit use I believe that the data should also be available free of charge

  • Take this classic example -- left, August 7, 2004; right, August 21, 2004 [quintessenz.org] -- of a missing safety sign from the RNC convention in NYC this summer. Cryptome [cryptome.org] republished public-domain maps of major high-pressure, high-volume gas distribution lines in manhattan. One went under the Hudson River, near West 75th Street. There was a huge sign posted for ships that went over this pipeline: "Warning: Do not anchor or dredge - Gas pipeline crossing". I wonder who's going to take responsibility when one of the zillion

  • Red Herring? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hwestiii ( 11787 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @08:45AM (#11303344) Homepage
    If I recall this from an earlier submission, the real issue isn't security at all, but economics, although the City of Greenwich has chosen the security issue to hide behind.

    It is my recollection that the person requesting the data is a businessman who wants the data for some sort of real estate sales analysis and is leveraging the public availability of the data to his economic advantage.

    This guy wants the full data set. I think the City will give him small chunks of it at a time with no problem, but sees giving out the full data set as essentially poor stewardship of tax payer resources.

    Who wouldn't agree? If I'd shelled out $10,000,000.00 for something, I'd be a little testy with someone expecting to get it for free.

    In short I question the motives of the person requesting the data, but more on grounds of economic exploitation that on grounds that he may be any sort of security risk.

    Having said that, one thinks they could come up with a better argument. "Security" has become so overused as an excuse to cut off debate on things in the past four years that we seem to have lost any sense of descrimination at all.
    • Who wouldn't agree? If I'd shelled out $10,000,000.00 for something, I'd be a little testy with someone expecting to get it for free.

      This may come as a shock to you, but the 10,000,000.00 the gubmint spent on that data came from TAXPAYERS!!

      I realize that the lifetime you have spent in your mom's basement makes it hard for you to comprehend that people who actually work for a living have a huge chunk of their money taken by the gubmint "for their own good". But even with that handicap, you should be able to

  • Nope, must control what everyone can see, know or even think about.

    Might be used in a bad way.. Must protect citizens..

  • The solution to all this is to produce "open-source maps". OpenStreetMap [openstreetmap.org] has made a start (although they don't appear to have got very far yet).

    Mapping would seem to be the ideal open-source type application - it's inherently distributed, so lots of people can work on it in parallel. You don't have to worry about dividing up the workload - each contributor can simply map the area around themselves.

    Unlike coding, which is a specialised skill (even more so for things like the Linux kernel), mapping is e

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by Seanasy ( 21730 )
    The court found that mandatory disclosure of the data under the state's freedom of information statues is exempted under a recently passed state law that allows information to be kept secret 'when there are reasonable grounds to believe that their disclosure may result in a safety risk.'

    Which link supports this statement? This link [state.ct.us] states:

    The court further found that the department had failed to prove its claim that the records were exempt either under General Statutes 1-210 (b) (5) (A), which provides

  • Quoting from the story lead:

    I am looking into filing a similar request to obtain the GIS data for the Portland Oregon metro area.

    Why do you want this, when the City of Portland Oregon already provides free web access to this information?

    With a simple interface, too: enter a street address and you get the plot map, links to aerial photos, utility maps, crime maps, tax and permit history, census data for the neighborhood, etc etc.

    My gf and I have been using this a lot as we look for a new house. It is

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