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Google Street View Could Be Unlawful In Europe
arallsopp writes "European data protection laws restrict the commercial use of photographs where individuals are identifiable. The law sets extra requirements for so-called sensitive personal data: it demands explicit consent, not just notification: 'If Google's multi-lens camera cars come to Europe and inadvertently find themselves taking pictures of persons leaving a church or sexual health clinic, they may just need to pull over and start picking up signatures.'"
with blur. It's that simple. They don't need an advanced algorithm to identify individual people, only one to identify that there is a person there and then apply a blur on that region of the photo. I think Google can handle it.
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
They're walking down the street. Everyone can see them.
They're already on 15 cameras a day according to recent numbers, and everyone has a cell camera.
This is like the HIPAA laws in this country.
Besides my reflux, I now have writer's cramp from filling out the HIPAA forms acknowleding that they told me they won't tell anyone what I have.
As my doctor said, what is he going to do, run out into the parking lot and start yelling "You won't believe what JP has!"
Plus, when you sit in the waiting room and anyone over 55 starts a conversation, it's all about what's wrong with them, and turns into a mass symptom and storytelling party.
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If they do, then you are allowed to request copies of the photographs and any other information they have on you. They are allowed to charge a maximum of £10 per request for access to this information.
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I've seen the plentiful comments about simply blurring the faces, but a quick look at the San Fran streets shows me they're not bluring the license plates. I've got a crystal clear pic of one up right now. I can even clearly see that the vehicle was purchased at 'SERRAMONTE FORD', whatever that is. It also has some kind of a work-rig on top. I wonder if those are commercial plates? A quick DMV lookup should tell me, one sec... I can't quite make out the letters on the tags, but I bet Cali uses a color-code system. They're - well you get the point.
If they won't/can't do that, why then would they do faces?
As far as I know, its legal in Denmark too. If you're on a public area, and you get photographed, say tourists posing in a photo and you happen to be in the background, and this photo is published on the Web, you cant demand it to be taken down.
Next thing you know, they'd have to blur all the audiences at sports events, because *gasp* they might be televised ?
However, that is not to say i approve of what Google is doing, i think the basic idea is good, I think some effort to at least blur out car registration plates and faces should be done. When they do it on such a large scale, and especially the whole thing about unmarked vans doing it makes it feel kinda creepy. If it said GOOGLE STREET VIEW PICTURE CAM-VAN and wasn't secretive about doing it, it would upset me that much.
In France, it is illegal. Every person has a right to his or her own image. It is legal to take pictures of people in public places. It is illegal to publish them without written consent. I am not sure how well this law is applied, especially in the press, but this is the theory. And I also think that it is illegal to take pictures of people in a private place, without consent. That would include, say, people in their home that can be seen from the street through a window.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
In Europe is it, and is covered by the data protection laws. Just ask the gutter press how many times they've been bitch-slapped in court for snapping royals, celeb's and politicians in less than desirable situations.
So if I'm in Paris and take a picture of Notre Dame that just happens to catch some well-known atheist leaving, and (unknowingly) post it to a blog, I'm is serious legal trouble? How absurd. I always thought Europe had way too many laws. This only confirms that impression.
What Google is doing has a lot of people (particularly women) understandably upset, but from what I've hear it's no more illegal here than all the satellite photos they've been posting for several years. If our laws made what Google's doing illegal, they'd also be making most outdoor photography illegal. (How do you take a picture outside without including some stranger in it?) Europeans, particularly those in Belgium and Northern Germany, may like a "What is not mandatory is illegal" mindset--the infamous attitude of the Prussians--but I'm not sure most people in the US will.
exactly. since in France it is forbidden to publish without consent one's photograph, I was somehow surprised at this google project; and we all have seen many examples of people that, if they had a choice, would probably have declined being exposed over the whole internet in such positions. Publishing pictures is fine, but you have to respect the individual and the fact that many people do not want their faces anywhere on the internet. What one chooses to do with one's image is actually a prized individual freedom in France.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
I'm surprised google hasn't endeavored to capture multiple shots of locations at different times and aggregated that data to create unobstructed views along each street.
Why allow people, cars and trucks to obstruct signage? If they don't help identify the location or give you a feel for the "street view", remove them.
There's that tourist remover project that seems relevant.
Privacy shouldn't even be an issue because the people simply don't need to be in the photos.
Exactly. I'm not saying it would be right to sue Google, but consider the reasons these laws were put in place. There have been cases of neo-nazi groups collecting photographs, home and work addresses, and so on for "race traitors" and their families and publishing online.
The French Yellowpages have had pictures of addresses with recognizable people on their website for years. Search for an address in Paris then click on "Photo" link. While the pictures are small, and usually taken early enough in the day that few people are around, if you navigate around you can find pictures of buildings with recognizable people in them.
If these privacy kooks want to condemn google, they should have condemned FT first.
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Back in the 1980's there was a Saturday Night Live skit about a new kind of camera film called "Bothachrome" (named after South African apartheid prime minister P.W. Botha) that automatically erased all black people from the photos, leaving the white people there. They even copped the Paul Simon tune "Kodachrome" with altered lyrics as the theme for the parody-skit-commercial. I tried to find a link, but there don't to be any on the web. The skit was un-politically-correct as hell, which really drove the point home about the worldwide disgust against Botha's apartheid regime in that era.
Doesn't google know how to do a time lapse digital photography?
If you set your shutter speed to 30 minutes its pretty rare to get any people in the image - or cars for that matter unless they are parked.
How else do you think you get pictures of busy public buildings but without any people on them (well before the days of photoshop)
Ok so time lapse is very old school and would probably take too long to get all the photos they want - but wouldn't some hybrid of time lapse and digital processing work quite well? (eg 10 stills over 60 seconds and an algorithm to create a composite using only the static parts?)
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That was my first thought. The point of Street View isn't to take pictures of people anyway, they just happen to be in the way.
That's an interesting idea. If they're just in the way, then all Google has to do is run enough passes up and down the street. A computer could then compare the images and only use parts of the image that remain static from pass to pass. If they can't seem to find a static image for a given location (like a water fountain, animatronic sign, etc.) then you flag that for identification by a human, or you just blur that part out. You'd obviously be able to tell where the image had been spliced together (due to different lighting, etc.) but it could work. Goodness knows google has the computing power to do it.
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