For some reason, my local council sent me a building notice saying the deck and the spa in the backyard are illegal. None of them are built by me. The spa was installed by the previous property owner in 2009, and the deck was built by unknown owner at least 10 years ago!!! It took me much time to figure out what are wrong with the deck and the spa, together the responsibility. I was shocked, stupid policy and unfair.
At first, I suspect the regulation for barrier around spa is new and shouldn't apply to the old work. However, the council told me it was there all the time. But from when? Regarding the deck, they said it is illegal because it is attached to the building and without a build permit. They council said they cannot find any record of the deck since the house was built. In the first place, I suspect they lost the document, since it is their legal responsibility to keep record of all build permits. We argued for a long time, then I decided to remove the spa, but to certify the deck. I am still try to find some one to certify for me.
This event reminds of blockchain technology. If there is a blockchain, people can save all the records of the house into it, including building permit approved by surveyor, the owner's information. So that we can track back the responsibility who was the owner building the work without permit. Since these information is confidential, so there should be a private key associated with the property. The private key is handed from one owner to another with the ownership of the property changes, which is prescribed by law.
Steemit is almost the highest technology in blockchain world with an nonequivalent crypto price. It is a pity the underlying technology is only used as social blog to people to post blog and vote. If steem can allow people to encrypt their confidential document with public key, and these information can only be decrypted by people who own the private key. So that current owner can get access to the full record of the history of a their own property. Since there will be photos of the property, so if there suddenly appears a deck, we can deduce who's the owner building that deck. So that he should take responsibility of the work.
If steemit can corporate with government to promote this functionality, it could greatly reduce those redundant people in government and benefit people to have access to records of their properties without fees.
Home owners can have access to full record of the property they possess, including the transaction history, the contact of previous owners. In my case, I can contact previous owner if he/she had the build permit.