An American Lion

I can see why the state of California is getting involved—this is a pretty dangerous website:

Suppose you could look at the pool in back of James Cameron’s Malibu estate. Or admire the ornate garden at Haim Saban’s Beverly Hills mansion. Or check out the tennis court at Tiger Woods’ Florida home.

Should you?

The website celebrityaddressaerial.commakes possible exactly that sort of high-tech snooping, listing addresses and aerial photos of the homes of hundreds of celebrities, corporate titans, politicians and others — including Paris Hilton, Steven Spielberg, Warren Buffet, Matt Drudge, Steve Jobs and Kobe Bryant.

The site boasts that users “will be able to see behind the tall hedges, big gates and security systems” and “get unprecedented access to the sort of lifestyle your favorite celebrity can afford.”

To a lot of stars and their lawyers, that’s a big problem.

For nearly two years, the site operated with little notice. But Friday, a search warrant unsealed in Las Vegas revealed that one of the members of an alleged burglary ring had used the site, along with TMZ.com and Google Maps, “to gain intelligence on” the homes of young Hollywood celebrities, including Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Orlando Bloom. Members of the ring would then visit the location to search for a “mode of entry,” LAPD investigators said.

Really, though—you have to make it simple for the kids to understand. They could do this to anyone. You could use any aerial photo to break into someone’s house, especially if it happens to be a big house that is worth breaking into. It’s the marriage of celebrity plus actual location that probably has the LAPD freaked out, and the LAPD has, traditionally, been about protecting celebrities from the hoi polloi.

Do you have a constitutional right to look at someone’s backyard from the air? You probably do, but someone, somewhere, is probably thinking that you don’t.