A three-dimensional aerial imaging system could help during natural disaster or crime responses, but it has raised privacy concerns.
By SHANNON TAN
Published February 26, 2004
[Photo by Pictometry]
Pictometry's system offers images from above, like this one of Virginia Beach Harbor, and can zoom in at many different angles.
Hurricane damage could be assessed in a matter of days. In a hostage situation, SWAT teams could examine the scene from all angles before deciding their approach. Firefighters could calculate the distance from a hydrant to a burning house.
All from a computer screen.
Those scenarios are possible with a high-resolution aerial imaging and software system that Pinellas County is considering buying, at a cost of $180,000 a year.
If the county enters into an agreement with Pictometry, the Rochester, N.Y., company that has patented the system, a low-flying Cessna would take aerial images once a year of every inch of Pinellas County's 280 square miles. A client can request photos be taken at more or less frequent intervals.
Aerial photography is usually taken from a single angle - straight down - producing a two-dimensional image. Pictometry's three-dimensional images are taken at as many as 12 different angles, allowing users to zoom in on any house or intersection and calculate the length, distance and dimensions of ground features.
But the high-tech system is not without detractors. Civil liberty groups and citizens have mobilized against the use of Pictometry, saying the detailed images into back yards are an invasion of privacy.
Discussions are still in the preliminary stage, said Timothy L. Burns, Pinellas County justice information analyst. He said the county is looking into sharing the cost among several departments, as well as obtaining grants to fund the technology.
"There's a lot of strong interest," Burns said. The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office and local police chiefs have seen the technology; most recently, Largo officials got a look at the software during a commission meeting Tuesday night.
"It would be a very good tool for law enforcement on a number of levels - tactical, SWAT, training, natural disaster recovery, chemical spills," said Pinellas County sheriff's spokeswoman Marianne Pasha.
Burns said the county has not yet decided whether "there's enough justification to pursue it. This really may never happen."
A few years ago, Pictometry officials showed the technology to Pinellas County Property Appraiser Jim Smith, who thought it cost too much.
"I'd love to have it, but there has to be a cost benefit," Smith said. "It was nice to have bells and whistles, but how much do you pay for bells and whistles?"
Burns said he hopes to get local law enforcement agencies, the property appraiser's office and other public safety agencies together in a few months to discuss funding options.
It is unclear if the county would share or sell the information to municipalities, and if the images would be available online to the public.
Citrus County, whose property appraiser's office hired Pictometry to develop three-dimensional views of Inverness and Crystal River but not the whole county, has used the detailed images to check for trees when property owners apply for agricultural exemptions.
"In just a couple of them, the trees were no longer there," said Melanie Hensley, Citrus County's chief deputy property appraiser.
In Lee County, property appraiser Kenneth Wilkinson is able to peek into people's back yards from his computer. Decks or other additions to people's homes without building permits show up in a different color.
The technology, which was purchased in 2001 for $212,000 over two years, according to the News-Press in Fort Myers, "has been well worth the money," he said.
Wilkinson said he hasn't heard complaints from residents about the images being an invasion of privacy. As early as this week, he plans to sell the Pictometry images on the county property appraiser's Web site to help cover costs.
In 2000, hundreds of residents of Orange County, Calif., opposed a proposal to make the images of neighborhoods available for sale on the county's Web site. As a result, officials modified their $184,000 contract with Pictometry to exclude selling photographs for $15 to $25 to the public, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Kenneth J. Anderson, Pictometry regional vice president, acknowledges there have been concerns over privacy. But he said the photos aren't detailed enough to reveal license plate numbers or recognize faces.
"This isn't Big Brother," Anderson said.
Jay Stanley, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C., said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, "We don't have a right to privacy from aerial surveillance."
But the line may be crossed when images capture detail normally hidden from the public view, he said.
"This could easily become one more piece of the ever-growing puzzle that the authorities can quickly pull together about us," Stanley said. "We as a country have not done a good job of confronting the privacy issues brought up by these kinds of technologies so we can gain their benefits without having to worry we're giving up fundamental qualities of American life."
