County’s Aerial Photos Not for Public Sale

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 won’t 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 county’s 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 Pictometry’s 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 company’s 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 board’s decision.

Rather than having a developer show an artist’s rendering of a new shopping plaza, the digital software allows a planner to test the developer’s 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 attorney’s 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 county’s information and technology staff.

Leo Crawford, the county’s 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.