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I used to work for Verisk, an insurance tech holding company, who owned a company that took pictures of people's roofs using airplanes and special cameras. They

I used to work for Verisk, an insurance tech holding company, who owned a company that took pictures of people's roofs using airplanes and special cameras. They got sued over a patent violation with EagleView[1], who claimed the tech idea as their own, and settled. > The strategic alliance allows customers seamless and integrated access to EagleView technology within Verisk’s Xactware platform Xactware is a product that customers (read: insurance companies) use to figure out how much money to pay on a claim. The whole idea is to speed up the claims process. Insurance agents don't need to go out to people's houses to examine roof damage. But we also had a department doing some pretty sophisticated stuff around preventing claims fraud, so I'm not surprised. 1: https://www.verisk.com/company/newsroom/verisk-and-eagleview-technology-corporation-settle-patent-suit/ https://www.verisk.com/company/newsroom/verisk-and-eagleview...

2four2 3y ago
I recently started going through many big data collectors and expressing my rights to know, delete, and stop selling my information. Verisk makes the process notoriously difficult compared to other companies, you have to start an "ethics" report in their ticketing system https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/69464/index.html https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/69464/ind...
- passwordoops 3y ago
  Is there a list of companies out there you can share, or are you going about it on your own?
- kristjansson 3y ago
  Real question: is something like aerial photography of your roof really subject to privacy laws?
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    IANAL, but in the US, it depends on whether could have reasonably expected that their stuff was hidden. If your roof is sloped so that a person on the street could get the same information by walking around the block, then aerial surveillance is just a faster way to get that public observation. In contrast, if you set up a high fence around your pool in order to sunbathe naked, aerial photography would probably be an invasion of your privacy? If your roof was designed in a similar way, one might be able to argue it was wrong for the company to observe aspects of it without permission. (Although they might have gotten permission via the insurance contract...) I think this legal standard becomes tricky (or at least ought to receive more scrutiny) when we start talking about pervasiveness and permanence. Just because I know that an arbitrary person might take a picture of me in public doesn't mean I expect every single thing I do outside to be recorded forever by a technological invisible stalker hovering over my shoulder at every outdoor moment.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      Privacy in the US is defined as property rights, and your private property does not extend infinitely upwards into space. Anything over a certain high is public and regulated, and so if it is visible from above, it is not protected. Otherwise, it would be illegal to fly a plane or even a hot air balloon pretty much anywhere, and even things like google maps satellite view couldn't exist.
      - gjs4786 3y ago
        Why then is the opposite true? Just playing devils advocate. Do you see the lopsidedness between the two? They [the 'rights'] don't extend infinitely into space. okay, fair enough. Why does theirs extend all the way to the ground? Exceptions / loopholes could be made to accommodate non-visually penetrable mediums and means, like weather technology. And if the government really wanted to spy on their own (as if), they could just say it was a weather balloon that had the legal clearance. if it ever crashed, I mean. point is, there's lots of language that could be defined in order to allow spying, allow air traffic, but not allow a telescope, nay-- microscope, effectively--of studying us down here on earth. while naked. (us, I mean, maybe them, too). the government is just going to do whatever the hell it wants anyway, just put that in the legal work, gov: do as you will. problem solved question: can a spy telescope, when it comes to apertures, lenses, focal point and scale, but most importantly perhaps, intent, be considered a microscope depending on which way its pointing? it seems to me that given the size of earth, the size of humans in realtion to that, how is it any different than monitoring a bacterial colony Wirth a microscope? functionally. its not different, right? or perhaps its more nuanced than functionally, but surely its closer to being a microscope, than a "telescope"? street maps could definitely still exist. I saw a project here on hn that showed a land surveying satellite that was able to track land parcels and shade them accordingly using AI. and, if they can blur faces out I know they can blur rooftops and naked bums.
  - organsnyder 3y ago
    I work in privacy (as a dev, so the breadth of my knowledge isn’t necessarily comprehensive), and to my knowledge there’s no privacy regulations that would prevent this. Effectively, they’re saying that the roof at a certain address is in a certain condition. I don’t see how that could be considered personal data.
  - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    No.
  - 39896880 3y ago
    Why is that the real question? Shouldn't the real question be: do we want, as a society, to allow something like arial photography of your roof freely accessible to data brokers so that they can form a shadow profile of you and determine how much you pay for insurance? That a law against such a practice does or does not exist today is rather besides the point.
- kbos87 3y ago
  I’ve thought about doing this myself and I wish there was a service that made it easier. The one thing in the back of my mind is also that there’s a risk of this backfiring over time. When you are unknown to potential creditors, employers, etc in whatever platforms they choose to use to look you up, that’s the ultimate sign of risk.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    Yes. Similar to being a young person trying to establish a credit history, if there is little to no info to go on companies will tend to assume the worst about your riskiness and charge accordingly.
- thelastgallon 3y ago
  > I recently started going through many big data collectors and expressing my rights to know, delete, and stop selling my information. Can you share how to go about it? Do you have a blog post?
westurner 3y ago
Did either of the parties move to invalidate the patent claims as obvious as, say, a camera on a stick or a toy airplane with a camera?

2four2 3y ago

I recently started going through many big data collectors and expressing my rights to know, delete, and stop selling my information. Verisk makes the process notoriously difficult compared to other companies, you have to start an "ethics" report in their ticketing system https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/69464/index.html https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/69464/ind...

passwordoops 3y ago
Is there a list of companies out there you can share, or are you going about it on your own?
kristjansson 3y ago
Real question: is something like aerial photography of your roof really subject to privacy laws?
- Terr_ 3y ago
  IANAL, but in the US, it depends on whether could have reasonably expected that their stuff was hidden. If your roof is sloped so that a person on the street could get the same information by walking around the block, then aerial surveillance is just a faster way to get that public observation. In contrast, if you set up a high fence around your pool in order to sunbathe naked, aerial photography would probably be an invasion of your privacy? If your roof was designed in a similar way, one might be able to argue it was wrong for the company to observe aspects of it without permission. (Although they might have gotten permission via the insurance contract...) I think this legal standard becomes tricky (or at least ought to receive more scrutiny) when we start talking about pervasiveness and permanence. Just because I know that an arbitrary person might take a picture of me in public doesn't mean I expect every single thing I do outside to be recorded forever by a technological invisible stalker hovering over my shoulder at every outdoor moment.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Privacy in the US is defined as property rights, and your private property does not extend infinitely upwards into space. Anything over a certain high is public and regulated, and so if it is visible from above, it is not protected. Otherwise, it would be illegal to fly a plane or even a hot air balloon pretty much anywhere, and even things like google maps satellite view couldn't exist.
    - gjs4786 3y ago
      Why then is the opposite true? Just playing devils advocate. Do you see the lopsidedness between the two? They [the 'rights'] don't extend infinitely into space. okay, fair enough. Why does theirs extend all the way to the ground? Exceptions / loopholes could be made to accommodate non-visually penetrable mediums and means, like weather technology. And if the government really wanted to spy on their own (as if), they could just say it was a weather balloon that had the legal clearance. if it ever crashed, I mean. point is, there's lots of language that could be defined in order to allow spying, allow air traffic, but not allow a telescope, nay-- microscope, effectively--of studying us down here on earth. while naked. (us, I mean, maybe them, too). the government is just going to do whatever the hell it wants anyway, just put that in the legal work, gov: do as you will. problem solved question: can a spy telescope, when it comes to apertures, lenses, focal point and scale, but most importantly perhaps, intent, be considered a microscope depending on which way its pointing? it seems to me that given the size of earth, the size of humans in realtion to that, how is it any different than monitoring a bacterial colony Wirth a microscope? functionally. its not different, right? or perhaps its more nuanced than functionally, but surely its closer to being a microscope, than a "telescope"? street maps could definitely still exist. I saw a project here on hn that showed a land surveying satellite that was able to track land parcels and shade them accordingly using AI. and, if they can blur faces out I know they can blur rooftops and naked bums.
- organsnyder 3y ago
  I work in privacy (as a dev, so the breadth of my knowledge isn’t necessarily comprehensive), and to my knowledge there’s no privacy regulations that would prevent this. Effectively, they’re saying that the roof at a certain address is in a certain condition. I don’t see how that could be considered personal data.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
  No.
- 39896880 3y ago
  Why is that the real question? Shouldn't the real question be: do we want, as a society, to allow something like arial photography of your roof freely accessible to data brokers so that they can form a shadow profile of you and determine how much you pay for insurance? That a law against such a practice does or does not exist today is rather besides the point.
kbos87 3y ago
I’ve thought about doing this myself and I wish there was a service that made it easier. The one thing in the back of my mind is also that there’s a risk of this backfiring over time. When you are unknown to potential creditors, employers, etc in whatever platforms they choose to use to look you up, that’s the ultimate sign of risk.
- brewdad 3y ago
  Yes. Similar to being a young person trying to establish a credit history, if there is little to no info to go on companies will tend to assume the worst about your riskiness and charge accordingly.
thelastgallon 3y ago
> I recently started going through many big data collectors and expressing my rights to know, delete, and stop selling my information. Can you share how to go about it? Do you have a blog post?

westurner 3y ago

Did either of the parties move to invalidate the patent claims as obvious as, say, a camera on a stick or a toy airplane with a camera?