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Windows Live and Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "Today as we were biking around our neighborhood in a small city we saw a strange vehicle slowly driving around. It appeared to be an SUV, bristling with cameras mounted on the roof, and pointing just about every possible direction. The first time we saw it, all we could see was that it had a sign on the side, something about Windows. The second time we saw it, we stared at it so hard that the driver stopped and we had a chance to ask him what it was all about. He said he was driving around, filming streets, and that there were people doing this all over the world, and getting data from the air too. It was going to be available on the Web. I asked him if this was Microsoft's answer to Google Earth, and he indicated that it was. There seems to be very little about this on the Web, and I found no mention of Microsoft's collection of this sort of detailed street level data. The Windows site appears to be http://preview.local.live.com/, although since I use a Mac it didn't work properly. I'm not sure I want my neighborhood viewable on the Web from ground level. And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could."
I would suggest then that you don't go out in public. And maybe you should buy up all the land around your neighborhood and make it private. Or maybe you could just wait for Google to show up and do the same thing, then you'd feel ok about it and think about how empowering it will be for you to be able to browse down to "virtual peeping tom" and see what's going on in your house when you're not around.
(BTW people have this same complaint about Google groups: the posted to usenet before the advent of the pervasive web and the idea that some corporation would come along and violate the usual standards of post expiration was abhorrent. But because it's Google and they won't Do No Evil(*), that's ok. Ask any slashdotter.)
* - For some values of evil that are of a nuisance to Google executive and Google's profits.
And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could.
That kind of work is exactly what the 3rd-world "IT" shops excel at. It is a very simple task to describe, and very simple to determine if the work is done correctly. But it is very hard for a computer to do it completely automatically.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I worked for a company that photographed many buildings on the north side of chicago. We used it so that we could pull up photos of apartment buildings when condos went up for sale -- we could put ads online and in print without having to send a photographer out for a new photo.
It's been years since I looked at it, but I used to use a web site that would show you pictures of buildings in paris -- I think it was a yellow pages type site. I had a reservation in a hotel, and used the web site to find out what my hotel looked like, both so I could decide about whether or not to stay there, and also so I'd be able to recognize it when I was walking through the streets. You could look at any specific building in town, and move up and down the street to see what was around it.
I'm inclined to agree with the person who pointed out that people can see things that are outside anyway. At least this takes that public information and puts it into a usable form. If they want to put trucks in the street to take these photos, and if they want to put the fruit of that labor up on the web, more power to them.
I just hope that their web app works with firefox and linux.
Long exposures (>60 seconds) will remove most moving objects (cars, trucks, people).
Or with computers, a series of short digital exposures which only keep the content "common" between the frames (moving objects will be in different parts of subsequent frames).
In Toronto there is a google maps mashup of a similar project, where someone has driven around taking pictures from a truck.
http://toronto.virtualcity.ca/
The State of California, for one, has been filming at street level for the last decade. Shots are used for court cases, reconstruction of roads when wiped out by mudslide, etc. What...you've never taken a photo in your neighborhood and posted it on the 'net?
The comment about it happening around the world is most likely crap... MS is already in enough trouble without sticking their neck in yet another noose.
Amazon had something very similiar in A9 Maps. You could view either side of most streets in major cities. They also had a program where you would sign up and, given the name of a business and a few pictures, pick one out that best represented the storefront. You could see where they were going with this.
However, I just checked on it and it's discontinued. This is strange, considering the immense amount of effort this must have taken. I wonder if Microsoft didn't buy their data? If not, someone must have a use for it, as a Windows Live competitor if nothing else.
And of course you are dead wrong. Otherwise no one could take a picture in public without getting releases from everyone that might be in the frame.
I am wrong in that a person's consent is needed to photograph her. It's not.
What is needed is the person's expressed consent to do anything with that photograph that would in any way involve "the public". It's in your countries copyright law (assuming you're from somewhere in the US or Europe, or many other democratic countries), and generally called "the right to your own picture" or some such. Look it up. 78 in my country's code (Austria).
Now, using someone's image for profit -- that's a different kettle o' fish.
As long as you keep the photographs you made of people without asking their permission to do anything with them under your bed you're fine. Anything else, be it for someone's profit or not, would be unlawful.
Being in public does, in democratic countries, not mean you give up all your personal rights. Far from it.
And which parallel universe did you crawl out of?
It would seem that beyond the fairly primitive display and interpolation of the software currently being presented, the real gold from all these photos would be to start running them through a motion flow algorithm and 3d tracking algorithm to start generating geometry.
I think people are right in saying that this had somewhat limited applicable use, but the more raw data you have on an area, the more references you can feed into new technologies. Sure this data might not be useful now, but let's say Microsoft then proceeds to do a lidar scan of the entire city. Combined with this data, you have one more data set to use for comparison. Increase sample size, decrease margin of error.
It's much like a web crawler, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Amazon are all in an arms race to know more about the world than anyone else, because the more you know, the more accurate you can be. I like the new 3d photo technology microsoft was showcasing earlier of I think the bassilica, start combining that with lidar and you have an automatic mapping/3d modelling application. The more photos you take, less likely a person will be in front of it.
Some of the legal/cultural regulations regarding photos and video of others is also interesting. In East Africa it is expected that you pay anyone included in your shot at the time of the photo. For example, I have some great video of a very young Maasai boy leading a herd of about 150 goats across the scrubland of northern Tanzania. I guess my tripod (and the tall pale guy behind it) was pretty conspicuous because he headed straight towards me, seeing me from about 300 meters out. He approached me very curiously and politely, but he was also there to collect his payment. I twisted the viewscreen around on the videocam and we shared some moments smiling at the camera smiling back at us and gave him 5 USD and we parted ways. Even if they are not the focus of your composition you can get some pretty nasty looks from some otherwise cheery folks if you snap and run. However, it is difficult to show the diversity and richness of a Maasai market area without snapping a shot of a few hundred people and it's unwise to go around handing out money in such places.
That being said, I think it's a gimmicky piece of crap, and honestly I can't foresee it being useful for anything Google Earth can't already do better.
Really? Can Google Earth show you a picture of the neighborhood you're thinking about moving into? Can it give you a picture at each of the intersections along the route it finds from A to B?
You're right, that could solve the problem quite easily. However, consider the original photos from each angle, not only could these photo's be distributed out of the public's eye, they could be used to create 3D models of the people in the photos. Not saying they are going to but when the data exists, someone will always want to find new ways of using it.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
I live in a neighborhood where five or six major motion pictures are filmed each year (Batman Begins, The Weatherman, The Break Up, etc...). Whenever the movie crews are shooting on the street they put up big signs on the sidewalks telling people that if they walk through they may end up in the background of a film and if they don't want to be, they should walk the other way until filming is over. The signs seem pretty standardized, so it appears that this has passed muster with lawyers somewhere.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
I believe what was seen is a van for http://www.facet-tech.com/ , their url should have been on the van also. I used to drive a van for them, they have a system of cameras and gps to help with city maps and signage. They recently did get a contract to do the imagery for the live and local thing that has been linked. They do collect wifi but it's just a raw count of ap's , they don't run kismet. As far as the speculation they're checking for pirated copies of Windows I don't believe it. But since it's already been said "EVERYBODY PANIC". Or just install Debian.
I can't use your image for commercial purposes without your permission
Uh..... Won't this be used for commercial purposes? Are you saying Microsoft is some kind of charity? Or that posting images up with ads next to them isn't "commercial"?
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