Pubdate: Sun, 24 Sep 2000
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Copyright: 2000 The Orange County Register
Contact:  P.O. Box 11626, Santa Ana, CA 92711
Fax: (714) 565-3657
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Bookmark: additional articles on California are available at 
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BIG BROTHER'S EYE IN THE SKY

We're not sure what upsets us the most: that the county is embracing a new 
technology that will let officials more closely monitor every resident's 
home, or the fact that the county Board of Supervisors approved the deal 
without wrestling with the serious privacy concerns that such an untried 
system raises. A front-page Register article on Friday reported that "The 
county government will soon have at its disposal a digital database 
containing three-dimensional images of every square foot of Orange County…"

The board OK'd a $184,000 contract with a New York-based firm that will 
provide aerial-mapping photographs of every property. We're talking about 
high-resolution, 3-D, exterior photos of your house, business or apartment 
building - front, side and back - that will be available to government 
officials and the public. It's no wonder that, as the Register reported, 
it's a "prospect that delights law enforcement, planning and public-works 
officials and alarms a privacy watchdog."

The district attorney, the chairman of the board of supervisors, the 
sheriff's department and local code enforcers are understandably thrilled 
with the new gizmo. From the comfort of their offices, officials can zero 
in on your backyard to make sure that you haven't added an illegal 
addition, or see whether your property meets current codes, or determine 
whether you're growing hemp alongside the cherry tomatoes.

Cops can track criminal activity better, of course. Firefighters battling a 
big fire could survey the property in a database to help them plan their 
attack. Cities can upgrade their zoning plans with greater ease, and tax 
assessors could limit their field trips. But these advantages hardly seem 
worth the negatives. There are two big problems. First, the system will be 
abused by criminals and salespeople.

As a privacy advocate told the Register, the technology would aid burglars 
and stalkers seeking entry into your home. It would also aid marketers, who 
could quickly learn what products your property might need. Second, the 
system will make it easier for the government to monitor and abuse the 
citizenry.

Sure, it will make it easier for, say, code enforcers to do their job. But 
does a free society really want to make it so easy for them to assess and 
fine us?

"It's George Orwell epitomized," Gil Geis told us; he is professor emeritus 
of criminology at the University of California, Irvine. "It's 1984. It's 
just taken a little longer."

Mr. Geis says that "it's not an issue of legality, but of morality." Sure, 
the county has a right to create this intrusive database of every county 
property. Just as police agencies appear to have the right to install 
cameras at stop lights, or devices in cars that enable police to stop them 
with the point of a laser gun.

The question is whether we want to create this sort of society, in which - 
in the name of fighting crime, drugs, terrorism or whatnot - the 
authorities are empowered to use every conceivable technology to monitor 
individuals, law abiding or otherwise.

The board of supervisors needs to put a hold on its deal, and hold hearings 
on the privacy issues at stake in creating a database that can so easily be 
abused. Shame on them for not having already done so.
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