Google Earth is great to use—until it bites you on the bum and alerts the authorities to the existence of your swimming pool. After Greece found out backyard swimmers last year, a US town is cracking down now.
Bad luck if you’re a resident of Riverhead in Long Island with a swimming pool. The council has been using Google Earth to voyeur over the town, looking for unpermitted pools. Those unpermitted pools, whose owners were too lazy to fill in the paperwork, have earned the council a relatively tidy $75,000 in fines. Hey, it could be worse—drunk teens could be pissing in them instead.
https://gizmodo.com/pool-crashing-in-the-uk-becomes-latest-google-earth-pra-5017479
Greece cracked down similarly last year in the midst of their economic meltdown, fining the heck out of people who failed to declare their chlorine habitats to dodge higher taxes.
I’m waiting for the day when social services seeks out battered siblings, like this pair. [TechCrunch]
https://gizmodo.com/on-street-view-google-knows-of-your-daily-torment-5521066
Image Credit: Nikpawlak
