GIS and Will County-what the Hell 2 million tax dollars.
GIS PDF Will County ( just in case will counties link is removed) What is GIS and why is Will county spending 2 million a year on it :
I have been asked by a reader. Will County Download port
Well I will tell you for lack of a better term mapping software and who authorized this?
Someone in Will County is costing us tax payers a lot of money, time to stop this bleeding of tax payers pockets….GIS may turn into a tool of omni-surveillance, privacy, and censorship of public information.
Definition from http://en.wikipedia.org
A geographic information system (GIS), also known as a geographical information system, is an information system for capturing, storing, analyzing, managing and presenting data which are spatially referenced.
In the strictest sense, it is any information system capable of integrating, storing, editing, analyzing, sharing, and displaying geographically referenced information. In a more generic sense, GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries (user created searches), analyze spatial information, edit data, maps, and present the results of all these operations. Geographic information science is the science underlying the geographic concepts, applications and systems, taught in degree and GIS Certificate programs at many universities.
Geographic information system technology can be used for scientific investigations, resource management, asset management, environmental impact assessment, urban planning, cartography, criminology, geographic history, marketing, and logistics to name a few. For example, GIS might allow emergency planners to easily calculate emergency response times in the event of a natural disaster, GIS might be used to find wetlands that need protection from pollution, or GIS can be used by a company to site a new business location to take advantage of a previously underserved market.
will county watcher 
It has become more and more common that government agencies are now using this kind of data, But the figures I have seen from WCW’s PDF download is alarming, GIS in many cases can and has been use for surveillance and is dangerous in the wrong hands, it is just another tool for local governmental bodies to get deeper into Will County residents homes and backyards.
Privacy won’t exist anymore and from what I can gather its been going on since 2005 and here it is 2008. Nevertheless, “privacy concerns,” often left to the discretion of the local official, all too often dictate what will go into the GIS and what to be left out.
Another item needing consistency is how GIS data requests need to be submitted and how much the counties or cities can charge for this information. Right now, costs are all over the board depending on how the cities and counties interpret that they “may charge for the cost to copy the record”. So, one county may charge a penny per information request while another charges $35 to copy the entire item needed or could charge you per page, Then that would make it informational blackmail and cost prohibitive to the general public limiting again the ability of a computer savvy person to obtain information needed of city government or to obtain it by the freedom of information act.. Cercumvent the publics right to know and open up of privicy so that nothing in our past is privet