Countys Aerial Photos Not for Public Sale
Supervisors bow to residents
concerns that the high-detail pictures
would invade their privacy.
By DAVID REYES, Times Staff Writer
Bowing to privacy concerns,
county supervisors backpedaled Tuesday
by agreeing not to let the public
buy the high-detail, digital photographs
that will be taken during an aerial
photo shoot of the entire county.
County officials had
considered selling the photos--a block-by-block
sweep of the county--on the
Internet to help defray the cost of the photo
missions.
"I think residents can rest
assured that there wont be any pictures, any
Big Brother efforts in the county,"
said Supervisor Tom Wilson, before all
five supervisors voted to approve a
$184,000 contract to Pictometry LLC,
a New York-based corporation.
Originally, the company won
approval to fly over Orange County and
take 60,000 photographs from an
airplane flying at an altitude of 4,000
feet. The images would be stored in
a county database and sold to cities
and governmental agencies,
including police and fire departments.
To recoup its costs, the
county was going to make photographs
available for sale on the countys
Web site for $15 to $25.
Instead, supervisors were
forced to reevaluate their decision after
receiving hundreds of complaints by
residents, upset that their privacy
would be invaded or that the photos
would tumble into the hands of
criminals.
As a result, supervisors
modified Pictometrys contract so it would not
include selling photographs to the
public.
The idea of having "Big
Brother" peer into her backyard with a camera
frightened Helen Pegausch of Santa
Ana. She felt strongly enough that she
missed work Tuesday to talk with
supervisors.
"I tell you having the county
take photographs and then handing them
over to cities so they can check
for violations really bothers me,"
Pegausch said. "We are paying more
and more in taxes and voting out more
and more of our rights."
Pastor Wiley Drake, an
outspoken cleric on property rights issues,
urged the supervisors to reconsider
whether the county needed the project.
"Is there a legitimate need
for this type of photography?" Drake asked,
as he sought anyone on the board
with enough "intestinal fortitude" to move
to postpone the proposal until his
questions can be answered.
What makes Pictometry
different from scores of other aerial products is
that, rather than being taken from
directly overhead, pictures are taken at an
angle that--once combined with the
companys software--allows users to
zoom in on neighborhoods and
measure the height, width and length of any
feature in an image, including
gullies, buildings, trees, poles and roads.
It makes the product perfect
for county planners, said Brian F.
Fitzpatrick, West Coast general
manager for Pictometry, who was elated
with the boards decision.
Rather than having a developer
show an artists rendering of a new
shopping plaza, the digital
software allows a planner to test the
developers claims by immediately
seeing how the site will look, he said.
The product conceivably can be
used by hundreds if not thousands of
residents living in a coastal flood
plain that extends through many cities as
a result of the threat of a large
flood from the Santa Ana River.
"The $200,000 the county is
paying can save thousands, even millions,
of dollars to residents who may not
have to pay for flood insurance,"
Supervisor Todd Spitzer said.
Spitzer, an attorney who once
worked in the district attorneys office,
said the courts already allow
police authority to fly over homes and take
pictures. "This new proposal is an
excellent balance."
In other business, supervisors
unanimously agreed on Lockheed Martin
as the prime contractor for an
11-year, $260-million data-processing
contract, which is believed to be
the largest contract awarded by the
county.
The decision ends more than a
year of procurement activity by the
countys information and technology
staff.
Leo Crawford, the countys
chief information officer, said a
procurement team had recommended
Lockheed over the other finalist,
Science Applications International
Corp., the largest private scientific
research organization in the United
States.
http://www.latimes.com/editions/orange/20001108/t000106980.html
