For example, legal precedent usually lags behind technological development, so that it is often not enough to merely research the current state of the law. There is a strong tradition in the United States of freedom of information with regard to public data. However, GIS has stimulated interest on the part of government in recovering GIS development costs through sale of GIS data. At the same time, the legal principles of freedom of information have been muddied by the replacement of paper documents with digital databases. The combination of these two trends has been considerable confusion with respect to access and fees for access to GIS data in governmental databases.
Privacy is one of the great dilemmas of our computer age.
GIS can be seen as a particularly intrusive computer technology in that it can serve as a convenient window for detailed information on individuals, and because these databases are being developed universally by government. Current privacy laws are directed primarily at controlling the use of data among governmental agencies, and yet freedom of access by the public to governmental databases means that such data quickly moves into the private sector in an uncontrolled fashion. Certainly, the GIS industry has a major responsibility in addressing the impact of GIS data on individual privacy. The proliferation and the importance of GIS data, combined with the movement of governmental entities in actively distributing and even selling the data, increases the probability that there will be liability associated with faulty data. There are a number of legal doctrines that tend to reduce the liability that might otherwise result from the negligent distribution of information.