Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

> ... are in fact administrative documents and by law must be made available to the public.

They can still utterly frustrate you in the way they do this. They could fe print them out layer by layer and only show these in a specific "viewing room". I have seen my government (Belgium) use this strategy when it comes to architectural plans. In essence, it's public (you can access them) but it's also rather useless.

Do they offer an explanation as to why it’s set up that way?

It seems too comically slow and inconvenient.

I guess they want to limit your time with them. If you could study them whenever you want with whatever tools you have, you can easily find conflicts between the plans and the building regulations. This would allow you to block the planned construction works.

Even with the current protocol people find ways to block "progress". For example, the Oosterweel Link [0], which has been postponed multiple times.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterweel_Link

'“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.” '

Are exceptions to buildings regulations not typically documented somewhere in Belgium?

This doesn't look like something I remember from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and yet somehow I know this is Arthur Dent lol

It's at the start when he's arguing with the people that want to bulldoze his house about the plans to bulldoze his house. Good intuition!