Your October 21st article entitled “County board talks about bonding for projects” was most informative. Without it I suspect we would have never known that they intend to spend a quarter of a million dollars on a “Pictometry machine,” a marvelous device that uses a “patented aerial image capture process that produces imagery showing the fronts and sides of buildings and locations on the ground.”
Unfortunately, we are not informed of the alleged “need” for such technology, the use to which it will be put, the misuse to which it could be put, who is responsible for its employment, nor the associated annual operational and maintenance costs. A Google search revealed that the capabilities of this technology go far beyond those described in the article.
Cook County is 91 percent federally owned and the remainder is private. With a population of approximately 5,100 people, it boggles the mind that this kind of expenditure can be justified. Moreover, similar imaging technologies such as “Bing” and “Google Earth” are available at vastly less cost. However, if the commission’s goal is the abrogation of our Fourth Amendment rights, to assure our adherence to county land use permitting requirements, then it’s probably worth every penny….
Nevin D. Holmberg
Hovland
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