new jersey geographer

The property of a randomly chosen "John Smith"

Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), North Carolina is currently facing an information-sharing predicament. POLARIS, their county-wide interactive web map, currently serves up property ownership information as part of the real property and tax records in the county databases. The county is looking to remove the ability to search by owner to locate land records, mainly because the police are concerned that criminals may use the system to target officers’ homes. I appreciate the concern for the safety of the police force, however theoretically anyone could target anyone else using public records. Just because you have a hammer doesn’t mean you’re going to start hitting people with it. Intentionally crippling a web service and reducing accessibility should always be seen as a major step backwards. (more…)

There’s been a flurry of posts across the web about Please Rob Me, a site that aggregates check-ins on sites like FourSquare, illustrating the fact that we’ve known all along: people are willing to release more information than they realize. Outrage follows once the fact that technology allows information to be easily aggregated and distributed is demonstrated like this. (more…)

Google Latitude has been updated to incorporate new features that make it easier to share your location data. A website badge has been created that shows your most recent position on a web page. You can see an example of the badge showing my current location on this blog’s home page, as well as on the home page of NJ State Atlas. Google has also introduced a basic API allowing you to retrieve your location information as KML or GeoJSON.

Considering someone will likely (ab)use these new features soon, I’m starting a countdown. I’m guessing a week from now we’ll hear about how someone tracked someone unknowingly using a Latitude-enabled mobile device and the API. Personally, I’m hoping the API gets put to good use and is integrated into some groundbreaking projects.

GIS is considered by some to be an invasive technology. Even though some of the “invasive” data like lot lines and ownership are in the public domain, the easy access to large data stores of personal information is a cause for concern among privacy advocates.

Some information is protected under federal laws like HIPAA, State laws (such as our own OPRA) often protect information that could be used to identify an individual. The Government Records Council has upheld redaction of information that personally identifies an individual. Any other information stored by a government entity (with exceptions) can be requested by anyone.

Google is now making the case that complete privacy does not exist. Some agree with Google. I personally feel that if it’s something that’s available to you but not readily accessible, making it accessible through the internet is not an invasion of privacy. What’s your take on privacy? Where should the line be drawn?