California Bill to Blur Schools and Churches

Ars Technica is reporting about a bill introduced by a California legislator about a month ago making it a crime to not blur out government buildings, including schools and churches.  The bill would make the punishment for non-compliance $250,000 per day and a minimum of a year of jail time for the company’s executive officers.  The idea behind this is the normal fears that these buildings could be targeted by terrorists for attack.  The article is fairly biased against the bill and I think its safe to say we at Very Spatial wouldn’t be big proponents if we lived there.  The odds are this bill will die out of the gate, but I think it does require some longer term strategy on data providers.  There needs to be some sort of guidelines published, possiblly at the national level, as to what constitutes a “safe” and “unsafe” risk with arial photography.  Otherwise, if data providers have to take all the local provisions and regulations into account it would become a nightmare patchwork of rules and regulations.