Legal issues on public access to remote sensing data in Taiwan

Remote sensing and geographic information system has been rapidly grown last decade in Taiwan. Remote sensing is a great efficient source in data acquisition and GIS provides a useful tool in data analysis and display. Both technologies have been applied in many fields such as commerce management, environmental monitoring, healthy and safety improvements. However, the rapid technology development is followed by several debated legal issues, especially after the success launch of ROCSAT-II on 21st May, 2004 which, a land observation satellite system, is owned and operated by Taiwan government. Since most of time the government is the major financial sponsor of remote sensing data, the public pay tax and should have a right of open access to these data banks. There are different points of view about the public access to government-owned geographic databases. Increase of remote sensing data sharing and dissemination benefits the public by an easy access to relevant information. On the contrary, the high-efficient data propagation causes a crisis of the tendency to invasion of personal privacy. Therefore, the tension between data transparency and privacy invasion is raised recently. Thus, the public access policy of remote sensing data in Taiwan should be revised immediately based on the consideration of the entire social effect. This paper addresses and discusses several legal issues about the public access to remote sensing data, including copyright, open record law, and privacy law. The legal development in the United States is also reviewed to provide an experience for Taiwan´s regulation.