Of Interest: Privacy

A few articles of interest that deal with privacy and geospatial technology:

Mike Elgan argues that the use of satellite imagery by local governments to monitor compliance is a violation of the 4th-Ammendment protection against unreasonable searches.  As part of his opinion piece, Elgan cites the example of the town of Riverhead on Long Island which used Google Earth to search all back yards in the town for swimming pool transgressions.  See: Big Brother is searching you – Computer World.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal of Juan Pineda-Moreno who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to grow marijuana.  Part of the evidence against Pineda-Morena was GPS data that tracked the movements of his car and showed he visited several remote areas where marijuana was being grown.  Drug Enforcement Administration agents attached the GPS unit to Pineda-Moreno’s car that was sitting in the driveway of his home.  Pineda-Moreno had appealed the conviction, claiming the GPS tracking was a violation of a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Read more: Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers on cars – CNN.com

Beware of geotags in your photos; privacy and security can unwittingly be comprised by posting geotagged photos online.

“I’d say very few people know about geotag capabilities,” said Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, “and consent is sort of a slippery slope when the only way you can turn off the function on your smartphone is through an invisible menu that no one really knows about.”

Read more: Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live – NY Times (via The Map Room)