Lithuania And Estonia Use Google Maps Street View To Catch Tax Cheats
from the small-pieces-loosely-joined dept
As we've noted before, the information captured by Google's Street View has been put to some surprising uses, and the Boston Globe has come across a further fascinating example from Lithuania:
Sitting in the comfort of their own offices, inspectors used the free Internet program for a virtual cruise around the streets of some of the Baltic country's big cities, uncovering dozens of alleged tax violations involving housing construction and property sales.
Ars Technica points out that Estonia is doing the same. This might lead to demands for houses to be blurred, as can be requested in Germany. But the Boston Globe article notes that it's not just Street View that tax authorities are mining for clues about people not paying all their taxes:
They identified 100 homeowners and 30 construction companies as suspected tax dodgers thanks to Street View, finding homes where they shouldn't be and other suspicious activity, Darius Buta, a spokesman for the State Tax Inspectorate, said Wednesday.In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service has said it would be cross-referencing information from taxpayers' Facebook and Twitter accounts if their returns threw up any red flags.
The ability to draw on the massive stores of data that are now publicly available means that even seemingly trivial information, when cross-referenced with more of the same, can allow governments and others to create surprisingly detailed profiles of people that may have far from trivial consequences.
In Britain, tax officials have revealed they are using Web crawling software to trawl auction websites for undeclared sales.
Authorities in Greece have been using satellite imagery to locate undeclared swimming pools in wealthy neighborhoods.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: estonia, google maps, lithuania, tax cheats
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
My point
That's what I have been saying. This info is either already publicly available or can be purchased. Government has access to the same data lots of other people and companies do. Privacy is not a government issue. If the info is collected and made available in some form, then demonizing government over privacy strikes me as a dodge by these companies.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: My point
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: My point
Would you be in favor of having laws which limit what companies can collect about us, save, and sell or provide to partners? If the data isn't available, then it can't be handed over to the government.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The US does this, too
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anyone besides me note GOOGLE is the enabling factor?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Anyone besides me note GOOGLE is the enabling factor?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Anyone besides me note GOOGLE is the enabling factor?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If its public data Its public data.
However if the Data is not public then the goverment has not right to it with a warrent(at least in the US and I would hope everywhere). The problem is when the government is snooping into data thats not private.
It seems like its a very simple line to draw. A photo of the front of my house is public. My public Facebook posts are public. My emails and Facebook posts to only friends are not.
If some company collects data about me that can not be collected by a public method then its private data and not to be used by the government.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: If its public data Its public data.
If the data is for sale, then the government or one of its contractors can purchase it the way companies do when they want access to personal data that has been collected on people. At some point the government is going to figure out it isn't worth the political hassle to pass laws to obtain this data. It will just use private contractors for everything.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: If its public data Its public data.
A VC: Evidence On Our Smartphones: "The rise of computers that we all carry with us everywhere, and their ability to capture what is going on around them, time stamp it, and geotag it, creates a ton of interesting opportunities. Including law enforcement opportunities. And I think that is a good thing."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I think it's sort of okay since these taxes are supposed to be paid but it leaves a bitter taste when you think so much of these taxes vanish to corruption and inefficient expending.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I completely agree that we pay too much in taxes and too much gets taxed that the government has no business taxing and that much of that money gets spent on corruption anyways. But we should address that separately. We should put pressure on our government to stop taxing every little thing we do and to lower our existing taxes. As far as the corruption is concerned, that's hard to fix but stricter controls and public transparency requirements and broader more sever (criminal) charges and punishments and personal liability that are harder for politicians to dodge are a start. But the real issue is getting the government to press charges against politicians when they knowingly act corrupt.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Snooping via satellite not invented in Lithuania And Estonia
The building department wound up with egg on their face when the current property owner checked the document package, the previous owner gave them at closing. The current property owner found the building permit and inspection certificate for the sun room in the package. The management of the building department did not keep accurate records of the building permits and inspections. In this case the homeowner was assumed guilty until they proved themselves innocent.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Snooping via satellite not invented in Lithuania And Estonia
This has been going on for several years now here at least where I live in California. and I know this from people it happened to.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
1984
"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]