GIS and Privacy
I am getting more questions about GIS, privacy, and OPRA (the New Jersey Open Public Records Act) than ever before. The issue is not new, but is becoming more relevant for more towns, as GIS systems become commonplace. I have written on this topic before.
A year ago I blogged about the New Jersey Geospatial Forum (NJGF) meeting in which Catherine Starghill, Esq., Executive Director of the Government Records Council (GRC) of the State of New Jersey, discussed OPRA issues with the New Jersey GIS community.
In March 2005 I published an article "GIS and Privacy" in Directions Magazine. I believe that three years later the article is still relevant, and I invite you to read it.
From the article:
“Seminars dealing with privacy issues in GIS include examples of how a clever burglar can use the New Jersey Open Public Review Act (OPRA) to gain access to information, and then use GIS to analyze that information, in order to determine where to strike next. A typical example is that of the person requesting information about houses with dog licenses, then about houses where senior citizens live, and then about houses with alarm systems. At which point the municipal official becomes suspicious, denies the information request, and prevents the perpetrator-to-be from firing up his GIS application, executing a Boolean logic SQL query, and plotting out a map of his targets. An unlikely scenario, in my opinion.”





Dog licenses, alarm systems, gun permits etc. Cyber stalking will yield so much information that can be used against anyone, especially the unsuspecting.