[Talk-us] Civil Defense Sirens?

[Lord-Castillo, Brett]

We classify siren maps as homeland security information, just like pipelines, following the precedent from the Santa Clara County case. They are not part of the publically available datasets for St Louis County:
http://www.stlouisco.com/plan/gis/spatial_data.html
I cannot specify precisely why, but there is a good chance that another grassroots siren mapping project was conducted locally for the purpose of data-gathering for a siren hack attempt. Like pipelines and security perimeters, it is one of those areas that may not be that wise to map in an organized way in the United States unless you coordinate a little with local emergency management agencies. Is our agency going to do anything about it if mapping sirens is the OSM project of the week? No. But another agency who finds out about the project and has no idea what OSM is and has no notice from a local mapping that they are mapping out all the sirens on the ground for OSM might not be so friendly to that local mapping (especially if a siren hacker turns around and uses that information to plan an attack).

--Brett

Brett Lord-Castillo
Information Systems Designer/GIS Programmer
St. Louis County Police
Office of Emergency Management
14847 Ladue Bluffs Crossing Drive
Chesterfield, MO 63017
Office: 314-628-5400
Fax: 314-628-5508
Direct: 314-628-5407




-----Original Message-----

Date: Mon, 3 May 2010 12:52:43 -0500
From: Jeffrey Ollie <jeff at ocjtech.us>
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Civil Defense Sirens?
To: "talk-us at openstreetmap.org" <talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
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	<m2o935ead451005031052h10b4da74rb6218ca78882c532 at mail.gmail.com>
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On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Lord-Castillo, Brett
<BLord-Castillo at stlouisco.com> wrote:
> Just wondering what would be the purpose of mapping civil defense sirens?

Because they are there isn't a good enough reason?


> Sirens are also one of those areas (like mapping major pipelines) that do fall under homeland security protections for sunshine laws.

Without some proof I call FUD.  Anyway, sunshine laws are for
governments, not for individual citizens.  I'm not expecting people to
drop in on the local emergency management agency and ask for a map of
all the sirens...

-- 
Jeff Ollie



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End of Talk-us Digest, Vol 30, Issue 6
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