Slashdot Mirror
Google Street View Raises Privacy Concerns
Pcol writes "The New York Times is running a story about a woman who says her cat is clearly visible through the living room window of her second-floor apartment using Street View and that she has contacted Google asking that the photo be removed. 'The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people's lives,' Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview. 'The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.' Wired has started a contest on the most interesting photos found using the new Google Tool that now includes sunbathing coeds, alleged drug deals, and the google van itself. 'I think that this product illustrates a tension between our First Amendment right to document public spaces around us, and the privacy interests people have as they go about their day,' says Kevin Bankston, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
By protesting that much about a photo, she now has her name and address (not just her cat) blasted all over the web. If she had said nothing, possibly it would have all blown over.
fte all, she`s not objecting to people taking her picture, she'`s objecting to people taking her picture inside her house, without her consent, which is the definition of an invasion of privacy.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Many other companies have been doing this for realestate industry for years...
Also, copyright law states (IANAL) that you can take pictures of people in their homes from the street. Only no zooming, and with (I think) a 55mm lens at best. Look up the case law. The only think I think that may be challenged in court is if high res photos at 55mm constitutes some kind of new zoom...
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/05/request_f or_urb.html
Your tongues can't repel flavor of that magnitude!
I am wrestling with this. If you can see me, from the street, from a car, for God's sake, then how much expectation of privacy do I really have?
I'm not sure I understand the objections. If I go to a strip club, and I am seen leaving it, well, then, I was a douchebag for not being sneakier about it, if I don't want anybody to know.
Is the problem that the photos are being published on a widely-used web page?
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
It were perfectly reasonable if Google were on her property when the photos were taken (they weren't).
It'd be perfectly reasonable if her blinds were closed (which would lend credence to them 'invading' her privacy)
But it isn't even remotely reasonable because she keeps her blinds open! If you don't want someone to take pictures of you, or see you doing the nasty, or anything else inside your house, close your blinds, otherwise you have no expectation of privacy, either from the government, or from your fellow citizens.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
the pictures show what anyone driving down the street would see. there aren't any privacy concerns because the pictures don't contain anything private- i know this may come as a shock to the mental midget in TFA, but glass is transparent.
this is only news-worthy because it has a couple buzzwords like "google" and "privacy concerns". meanwhile, the people who are actually tapping your phone/internet traffic/watching you continue to perpetrate *horrendous* privacy violations, and nobody cares because of watered-down crap like this. if we're going to be morally outraged by something, let's pick something actually scandalous, m'kay?
I'm rather amazed at how well this actually works....a friend of mine is from Miami. He looked up one of the more destitute areas in the city and sure enough there it was.
We were dying laughing for nearly 10 minutes thinking about a big google van driving through the slums and taking panoramic photos.
Christ we are geeks.
Living With a Nerd
If it's visible from the street, it's public domain. If she has a problem with this, she can invest in some curtains.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
If you have nothing to hide, who cares?
That's almost precisely the same line the Bush administration used to justify residential wiretapping. You're playing with fire there. People should have the right to privacy in their own homes. I say it's okay for Google to photograph a house's exterior, but not the interior.
The UK is just as bad. We refuse to extradite a Russian oligarch to Russia to stand trial on numerous serious charges ranging from fraud to terrorism, then complain when the Russians won't extradite a Russian to us to stand trial for murder. But of course we are the good guys.
Pining for the fjords
Overly dramatic much? There is more than a small difference between having a static street level view of an area and having constantly monitored live camera's following your every move.
Offtopic, I know, but "sunbathing coeds"? As in "sunbathing students of both genders" or as in "sunbathing women"? Why do we refer to women like they're anomalies at academic institutions?
At my school, we have something like 60% women... should we call men "co-eds"?
Go ahead, mod me down as offtopic, but this kind of thing irks me.
And that will be the end of google views.
Best Slashdot Co
Well she doesn't want a pretty low res picture of her cat in Street View but has a high-res picture of her, her cat and the room on the nytimes.com ...
A true statement and a valid point, but there's a piece missing from the "walking down the street" analogy that seems to be eluding most of us. When a person walks down the street and looks into a home through a street-facing window, it's extremely unlikely that the window is actually a one-way mirror that only allows viewing in. So yes, they can see what's inside, but anyone inside can also see them. Stop and think about that for a moment, because it's a natural check-and-balance mechanism that, in my opinion, should not be left out of these sorts of privacy discussions: While you can't deny other people the right to look at you in public without your permission, it's only fair that you get to look at them at the same time. If nothing else, it's reasonable to at least have the opportunity to know who is looking.
But with Google Street View, or the Zaio Corp. database, or any similar endeavor, you don't get that courtesy. Even if you were lucky enough to spot the camera in the ten to fifteen seconds it was visible, you still don't know how many millions of people just looked into your life at that moment. And don't forget this is Google we're talking about: among other things, the new background checker for lazy hiring managers, who naturally have your home address at the top of your résumé. Suddenly anyone who lives in a Street View-covered area had better:
For the record, I like Street View. I've been hoping Google would add something like that for some time. But don't gloss over the privacy concerns by equating walking down the street and looking through a window with driving a van down hundreds of streets taking millions of photographs and associating them with street addresses on the world's largest search engine. Only one of these makes your private life public, and it's not the first one.
You know that brings up an interesting thought. What if someone hangs a 2A0 goatse picture on their wall, or is sitting in the living room jacking off to girls gone wild (thinking about the co-ed discussion further back). Google comes along and shoots it in the street view. So now we can zoom in and see this. Where does this fall?
1) Invasion of privacy
2) Distribution of pr0n by google
3) Public obscenity by the person who's house it is?
(/. caveat:- If you don't like the examples please insert your own, my point is about the various ways of looking at the implications of the situation)
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.