Insurance Company Surveillance: Nearly Every Building in the Country Is Being Photographed, Often Without the Owner’s Knowledge
April 7th, 2024Via: Wall Street Journal:
Across the U.S., insurance companies are using aerial images of homes as a tool to ditch properties seen as higher risk.
Nearly every building in the country is being photographed, often without the owner’s knowledge. Companies are deploying drones, manned airplanes and high-altitude balloons to take images of properties. No place is shielded: The industry-funded Geospatial Insurance Consortium has an airplane imagery program it says covers 99% of the U.S. population.
I would have thought insurance companies were getting info from Google Earth all these years. The addition of drones must be better for close-ups than Street View and Aerial View, including by looking in people’s yards, behind their privacy fences and through their windows.
I’ve seen fat cigar-shaped, black things with wings I couldn’t see flying up to a window in my house and hovering there in two different states, one in about 2013 and one about 2022. Both times, as I noticed something out there, I moved from behind a plant or curtain to get a better look, and they u-turned and disappeared around the side of the house.
I assume that any info the govt or any enterprise collects on me will be for sale to any other govt or enterprise, if not automatically delivered to them. Example: The IRS now has forms* that charities helping low-income people with their taxes give to their clients to fill out. The first asks for lots of personal info. The second says the IRS can’t prevent other entities from getting this info if the client signs it and hands it in. It also says that the form is not required to get the tax help, but the charity staff say,”Fill this out and sign it, we need it,” and the clients do so without bothering to read the second form’s page of fine print.
The US Constitution/Bill of Rights are in tatters.
*Forms 13614-C and 15080, both Oct. 2023