Officials Use Google Earth To Find Unlicensed Pools 650
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."
Google Maps used to justify speeding tickets (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:3, Informative)
They're not that expensive though. Comparably, government employees typically have salaries a good bit below that in the private sector. The benefits (health insurance for example) and retirement plans are much better though. We've still got lifetime pension plans after 28 years where I'm at.
If you dedicated 1 person to this, my bet is they'll probably be bringing in more in recouped fees than they cost annually. Not to mention that like all things government, you have to have some level of enforcement, even if it costs a bit more than you recoup, because if you DIDN'T enforce the rules at all, then many more people would not pay.
It's like property tax seizure sales. If you owe enough back taxes on property, we'll seize it and sell it. We do this with all real property and mobile homes. Sometimes we get older mobile homes that we seize but they won't even sell (people generally don't want a 15+ year mobile home for any price), so they end up sitting and rotting or getting hauled off to the dump if someone else buys the land that they sit on. It's a bit odd to think that we seized a home due to failure to pay taxes just to destroy it or throw it away, but that's the current law, and if it's not enforced then even the people with higher valued properties won't follow it either.
Re:TOS? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/help/terms_maps.html [google.com]
3(a) defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others;
3(e) upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any other content, message, or communication prohibited by applicable law, the Terms or any applicable Product policies or guidelines;
4(b) By using the Products, you do not receive any, and Google and/or its licensors and users retain all ownership rights in the Content. You may not use, access or allow others to use or access the Content in any manner not permitted under the Terms, unless you have been specifically permitted to do so by Google or by the owner of that Content, in a separate agreement.
4(c) Certain Content is provided under license from third parties, including but not limited to Tele Atlas B.V. ("Tele Atlas"), and is subject to copyright and other intellectual property rights owned by or licensed to Tele Atlas and/or such third parties. You may be held liable for any unauthorized copying or disclosure of this Content. Your use of Tele Atlas Content, including but not limited to printing or use in marketing or promotional materials, is subject to additional restrictions located in the Legal Notices page.
http://www.google.com/intl/en-us/help/legalnotices_maps.html [google.com]
3.2(b)Protection from Public Disclosure. If you are an agency, department, or other entity of any State government, the United States Government or any other public entity or funded in whole or in part by the United States Government, then you hereby agree to protect the Licensed Content from public disclosure and to consider the Licensed Content exempt from any statute, law, regulation, or code, including any Sunshine Act, Public Records Act, Freedom of Information Act, or equivalent, which permits public access and/or reproduction or use of the Licensed Content. If such exemption is challenged under any such laws, this license agreement will be considered breached and any and all right to retain any copies or to use of the Licensed Content will be terminated and considered immediately null and void. Any copies of the Licensed Content held by you will immediately be destroyed. If any court of competent jurisdiction considers this clause void and unenforceable, in whole or in part, for any reason, this license agreement will be considered terminated and null and void, in its entirety, and any and all copies of the Licensed Content will immediately be destroyed.
3.3Additional Restrictions on Use of Municipal Boundaries. Tele Atlas Licensed Content containing municipal boundaries must not be used to create or derive applications that are used for the purpose of tariff or tax rate determination for a particular address or range of addresses.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, you generally have to get a permit from the city in order to put in a pool. This isn't anything new nor is it some obscure thing. It's a pretty typical part of city zoning ordinances.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:2, Informative)
A common myth [blogspot.com] that public sector employees believe so that they don't feel bad about agitating for automatic raises.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:1, Informative)
That MSPaint-created graph on some random Blogspot page is just so incredibly well-cited.
Interesting and not unexpected. (Score:1, Informative)
3rd world country? (Score:2, Informative)
They are doing it already in Argentina for years now... Checking for illegal pools and buildings through Google Maps and airborne photos...
Re:This is an appropriate use. (Score:2, Informative)
"The Supreme Court has also ruled that there is no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy (and thus no search) when officers hovering in a helicopter 400 feet above a suspect's house conduct surveillance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley
You might think you have a "right to privacy from the air", but you don't. It's terrifying how the citizens of this country seem to don't know what the hell their rights are.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:3, Informative)
There are definitely restrictions related to Government use of Google Earth or Google Maps. The restrictions appear to be an effect of the agreements the Government has related to use of the Tele Atlas Licensed map information.
Google Earth EULA [google.com]
Legal notices including restrictions related to Government end-users [google.com]
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:2, Informative)
What's next, having to apply for a license to own a fscking charcoal grill on your own patio?
I believe California tried to require a permit recently.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Informative)
most locales the property taxes are a share of the budget. the more improvements on your property the larger your share. a lot of the valuations i've seen will divide it among land value and improvement value. the land value is the dirt and is low. anything you build goes into the improvement value and increases your share of taxes
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want a pool, you get an inspector, they ensure there's no rogue wiring or geographic problems,
On a slight tangent, sometimes a proper permit/inspection can prevent a tragedy [heraldonline.com].
Re:Mosquitoes (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:4, Informative)
It's called zoning and planning, but what it is, is malignant interference with your liberties.
If it's your land, and what you do there does not physically affect anything beyond your land's boundaries (chemical, fire, high level sound waves, overhangs, undermining, water flow... the obvious things) then I really can't see the government having any role at all. Of course, I'm one of those crackpots that think land ownership should be meaningful, and that if you want to control something, you should have to own it first. Radical, I know.
Re:Utility right of way (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:3, Informative)
your property is yours ONLY because there is a society that defends it
It could also be argued that society is there ONLY because of its ability to defend my rights. Society (and land ownership, or HOAs for that matter) are artificial constructs brought about to support the free exercise of natural rights.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:3, Informative)
You sir are and idiot completely lacking in imagination. An improperly designed pool could easily destroy a house. However, outside of a massively poor design, the standard issue is having a properly designed fence to keep young children from falling in and dying. (Yes, this is actually a common problem.)
PS: As a fireman what the standard procedure is for a fire at a pool supply store. It's far more nasty than you might think.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:1, Informative)
That graphic is misleading.
The thousands of minimum wage and below( waitresses and bartenders ect...) workers lower the private sector avg. But their are no comparable job in the public sector.
Yes in the public sector, you can make more money for doing less work. But the fact remains, If you want to make REAL money, you work in the private sector.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:1, Informative)
Do you really think that your land is really your land? Try not paying your property taxes and watch for the results. It's called "real estate" not because it's "real property" but because "real" comes the Spanish "royal" estate...loosely updated..it's the state's estate. Yes you "own" it, and you can do what you want with it...within reason. You undercut your own argument by mentioning water flow. Pools do leak, pools do need to be drained..water has to go SOMEWHERE...most likely to an estuary or your neighbor's backyard(s).
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:3, Informative)
Drowning, disemboweling hazards (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:4, Informative)
People are required to get permits.
The didn't get permits.
They got caught.
Not so much of a money grab. More like equal enforcement.
Plus city infrastructure needs to be able to support it. Backflow device water quality, and so on. They want to be sure it was engineered correctly so you don't kill your neighbors.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, sue them, that bring you dead spouse back to life.
Let me know how you feel when they poison a whole neighborhood, killing the young and elderly because they didn't install a proper backflow device.
If ti was just about someone who flooded my house, you might have a point. It's not.
Here is a clue, how about we ensure the meet some minimum standard to minimize the risk to people outside the persons property? Naw, lets just sue them until the dead are back.
I know, maybe I'll build a coal fired plant and then make you wade through years of people work and legal cases until you can make me shut it off?
twit.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:3, Informative)
Your understanding of the history of the English Empire, its fall, and its current geopolitical importance, is extremely flawed.