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Google May Blur Canadian Faces and License Plates
KingK writes "Reuters reports that Google is considering a Canadian launch of its Street View map feature, which offers street-level close-ups of city centers. But the company said it would probably blur people's faces and vehicle license plates to respect tougher Canadian privacy laws."
Well, now I have to go find some other way to draw attnetion to myself. *Logs into Facebook*
Now I'm even more glad that I'm moving to Canada -- after seeing this story I looked up a bunch of stuff and apparently Canada has some of the best privacy laws in the world.
~The roAm
You are the kind of people Joseph McCarthy hates most. You fucking grow up in America and then betray us and go to live in commie-socialist Canada! NEVER COME BACK!
VOTE GEORGE W. BUSH in 2008!
Write in the man!
If they have the technology, why wouldn't they do the same across the board? It's not as though there's added value in seeing someone's face or license plate. The article doesn't mention anything about this.
Paranoia is not an acceptable answer. Google is capturing pieces of history that will last far longer than either your irrational embarrassment or your life.
This is no different from censoring YouTube videos for the King of Thailand. Superstitious peccadilloes and emotional censorship should only be respected where it's the law of the land. Period.
The Japanese blur their porn, and so someone has invented a device that removes it and restores the original image. This is possible because it performs a transformation from a limited set every time and so all you need is one clean sample.
If Google does the same you would need to find a photo that is probably of someone you have an image of once (or at worst a few times - hardly a problem when you consider the collaborative effort available) and the set up a un-blurring filter that would work with all their images.
These problems have all been solved - using a cryptographic RNG as a noise source for example - but they require more computing power and so it would be very tempting to save money by taking a short cut.
Beep beep.
Maybe Google should adapt their filter software so it blurs the face of anyone with a Canadian flag patched attached to themselves ;-)
Given the way that Google caved in to the Chinese demands, will they supply the CIA with a means of undoing this blurring? You would hope they would make it a one-way process, but that probably requires cryptography, hence computing power, hence money.
At least, as it concerns Ontario, where there seems to be no right to privacy from being photographed in a public place for commercial purposes. See here.
Black bars wouldn't require cryptography or computing power.
Google should find people who are willing for their faces to be used this way. Using the same face would be kind of disturbing, so a selection of faces would be needed, perhaps to roughly match the face that is being replaced (hair colour, race, sex, ...).
Think of the fun that we could have: a kind of Google powered Where's Wally .
There could even be a market for this: budding politicians, wannabe starlets who might pay to have their face become recognised or become familiar.
Not only that, decent privacy laws, but in the province of Ontario women are allowed to go topless in public. Pitty it is soo cold that no one really does.....
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
America is dead. Nothing to see here. Vote for either party, buy a big mac cause all is well. You need not worry, the US government is taking care of everything for you.
License plates shouldn't be a problem, but how does the algorithm know Canadians from non-Canadians?
Log in or piss off.
A better method than blurring, and irreversible, is to substitute someone else's face, scaled to the same size. They could use CmdrTaco's mug shot.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Yep, when it's your own intellectual property under threat I guess you tend not to be so cavalier about the whole duplication rights issue.
So my vacation pictures from our visit to Canada that I posted on my web site are somehow illegal? Public photos of public spaces. Everyone could see those faces and license plates when the pictures were taken - how is this a privacy issue? When you can't make sense of laws anymore, everyone is a criminal.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Hospital I can understand, but Britain has laws protecting the privacy of people visiting brothels?!
I just *love* comical hyperbole!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"54%? Sure, tax me to hell and back, but I'll be damned if the volvo I once owned and its former license plate are online randomly in a picture somewhere 4 years from now!"
You're partially right: it doesn't matter whether it's you, a religious group, or a governmental representative. If you're in Canada, you're not allowed under normal circumstances (as a privacy matter) to record information on faces and license plates. Society has accepted a long, long time ago that some information is better kept under the hat. Call it "cencorship" or anything else you want, it's a damn good law.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
So if I manage to get a picture of you with a penis in your mouth, you'll fight for my right to publish it online in Canada? Good man!
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Give me your SSN and your credit card number, NOW!
What, you wont?
Why dare you to CENCOR that information!
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I saw a Canadian once. I can, er, understand why they don't like to be photographed...
Just watch out for Manitoba. The day/month of birth is on the license plates of the vehicle owners. Actually, + 4 months - 1 day. That is the expiry of driver licenses, and Manitoba Public Insurance and the provincial government had a great idea of syncronizing vehicle issurance renewals with the driver licenses (it saves time!). But, they forgot that
birth_date on license plate
which I think they know is wrong, is about that the same as
birth_date + 4 months - 1 day on license plates
first, I was told that "computers would get confused by randomized dates" and that "randomized dates are not even distributions" to later "it is the law to renew then".
source: http://mpi.mb.ca/english/insurance/i_faq.html
search for "anniversary day"
This is not surprising. On July 14, 2007 at 10:00, I saw this van on the Tadoussac ferry (right here): 1 2 3 4.
I can see the headlines now... "Canadians No Longer Go Outside for Fear of Being Seen" And who really cares if your license plate shows up online. It's not like you can't walk outside and see hundreds at any given time.
Google, to my knowledge, does not have any facilities in backwards socialist-collectivist Canada.
So why are they worried about the laws there?
"Do no evil", my ass.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
In accordance with Bill 101, Google will also be changing all of the signs to read in French first, with English in smaller type beneath.
Why do they call them "License Plates" when they contain only the car's registration number and confer no actual privileges?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
What is not pointed out very often is that there were two companies that provided the initial data for street view. One did San Francisco (where all the funny shots of identifiable people are seen). The other company has done all the other cities so far.
That second company has dropped the resolution down so far that you can't recognise the people unless they are standing on the roof of the camera-car AND has taken their data set and scrubbed it of images that easily identify other people and vehicles where they have been close enough to recognise.
This second company is the one that is providing the data to Google in Canada and 99% of the US. Check out any city BUT San Francisco on Street View.
This is a NON-Story
black box
The CIA already has access to spy satellites that give them far more detail of your fat face, license plates, your naked shower time, and that time you forgot to pull the shade when you masturbated that one time. Dumbass.
The Japanese produce two versions of their pron, 'domestic' and 'export'. 'Export' is the original un-censored version, 'domestic' is (surprise, surprise) censored. The uncensored stuff on torrents, or wherever is sourced from the un-censored export copies.
I dare say someone has attempted some sort of filter, but the image will be crap. As a photoshop user, even with the vast array of tools the program provides I cannot restore massively pixelated areas using the filters available. The data just isn't there to be restored! Sharpen tools really just adjust the contrast of pixels, not recreate.
For video, you would also have to define the area you want the 'magical' filter program to work, otherwise it will mess up the whole frame. That would mean an awful lot of key framing. Put simply, compression algorithms destroy data. As an artist I can restore blurry photos, but I have to manually paint in detail based on my best judgement and knowledge... If there was such a tool as you describe, it would have revolutionised crime fighting. Blurry/pixelated CCTV images would be reproduced in crystal clear quality for the world to see...
Who cares about blurring license plates when most of the world is still blurred by poor or no coverage other than the basic landsat boilerplate. People in these places would benefit the most by the basic GIS tool that Google Earth/Map is at its best, whereas big cities in the west being covered at these high resolutions is a luxury we dont really need. One would think obtaining basic sat pics of third world countries and remote regions would be a lot cheaper then covering license plates of metropolitan areas. I myself am frustrated with the poor coverage of the islands in the Western Pasific region where we have projects - there exists very few maps, no aerial photos - and Google isnt helping...
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
How will Google fulfill this requirement if the Canadian government wants its citizens identities protected, even if they cross the border into the United States or travel abroad for a visit. As the parent poster pointed out, license plates can be OCR'd so blurring them isn't a problem if they have access to a database of everyone's license plate numbers. However, hiding their faces would be a problem if they ever leave their car.
They already have this in Canada, and people's faces aren't blurred. There hasn't been a lot of publicity about this site yet though: http://www.virtualcity.ca/
Mooning the camera creates a clear image, however.
Canadian chicks are soo cute,
I could drink a case of them and still be on my feet,
still be on my feet...
If Google os going to recognize everyones face, people should be able to pick their Avatar/GFace.....
Canada does indeed have pretty good privacy laws (when they are followed) but this isn't one of them.
... even if an individual gives consent, businesses must limit the collection, use and disclosure of personal data for uses that a reasonable person would consider appropriate under the circumstances ..."
Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart is just plain wrong on this. Laughably wrong. Obviously wrong. 100%, "no-doubt-about-it" wrong.
As a Canadian, I am *embarrassed* that a company like Google is going to be forced to blur over everyones face or possibly even not extend coverage to Canada because of the wrong opinion of one middle-aged woman.
The operative part is this:
"Canada's privacy law prohibits the commercial use of personal data without permission from the individual
All perfectly reasonable right? Of course, but only when it comes to "personal information." The act envisions protecting things such as your bank accounts, your school and work records, and all those other things that any normal person refers to as "personal information." That's the intention of the law as written.
and here is Jennifer's mistake:
Stoddart says her office "... considers images of individuals that are sufficiently clear to allow an individual to be identified to be personal information within the meaning of [the act]."
This is exactly the same, as the whining we heard from nervous "sensitive" people in the US when street view was introduced there. Many intelligent people pointed out that there was no reason to obscure faces, license plates etc., because they weren't "your" information or "personal information." They were merely the result of what any public person standing on that spot could see at any given time and in fact, just the same as any holiday snap taken by any citizen.
Jennifer Stoddart is one of those "nervous" types of people with a strange idea of what "personal information" is. The intent of the privacy law in Canada was never that a shot of someone standing on a street corner is their "personal information" that's just Jennifer's interpretation, and that is the flaw in the argument. She is just wrong on her opinion that this is personal information.
For instance, if such images *were* personal information, then all street surveillance cameras would be illegal or unconstitutional by the same act (they are not in fact they are all over up here). One could argue that cameras in banks are illegal by the same measure. Certainly the cameras mounted in police cars, and the (very common up here) use of hand held cameras by police to monitor crowds also illegal.
There is nothing wrong with our privacy laws, it's just one person's mistaken interpretation of what constitutes "personal information" that is at fault here. Unfortunately, a lot of people will have to go through a lot of grief because of one STUPID person's "interpretation" of the law.
How are the faces and license plates on Google any different whatsoever than walking outside and looking at people's faces and license plates. Both were observed in public so obviously had nothing to hide. This seems really stupid and pointless.
Maybe you should walk down the street with a mosaic on a sheet of cardboard to hold in front of your head if you don't want anyone to look at you. Freaking crybabies...
Of course this doesn't apply to the pictures that Google may have taken of people in their homes through windows and such.
Oh, I love this quote from TFA. "Some of the pictures feature people who can clearly be identified." Okay, so now you know what someone looks like and where they live, but don't know their name, their ID number, their address, or their anything. Google simply does not provide anyone with enough information to violate privacy in any manner I can understand.
Now I am all for privacy and such when it comes to significant issues like phone taps and such. However, this is just childish nitpicking that accomplishes nothing but flush money down the drain to hire people to blur our faces and license plates.
The Canadian government doesn't have any control over its citizens when they're in other countries. People are subject only to the laws of the country they're in.
Deformity.... I was born that way. I have to open my mouth to empty my bladder.
That's the solution that would make everyone happy.
...Google should have been doing from the beginning.
Yes, because electing a nutty right winger is always a good idea! And please don't try to tell me the guy isn't a nutty right winger. He may claim to be a "libertarian", but if you actually take the time to read his policies, he is an extremist authoritarian right winger who is looking forward to shifting power from the federal government to state governments solely so that his own pet causes can be pushed through with little resistance at the state level. I know libertarians are naive and simple minded, but I am amazed at how thoroughly you have all been hoodwinked by this guy.
For some people, this would be a great advantage. Face it, the blur would look better than their actual faces!!!!
I'm going to print a picture of my face and iron it onto a t-shirt, they'll blur my face but not my t-shirt with my face on it. You see US TV and media blur t-shirts and logos but that's not done here, maybe my face can be "unblurred" albeit a bit lower than usual.
What they ought to do instead of blurring faces, is change them to the split head people in south park.
When I learned that google was doing a street view of Canada, I rushed out and bought a red and white striped shirt, a hat, blue pants, a cane, and glasses. I was going to dress up and hide in a crowd. But now that i know google will just blur my face, whats the point? no one wants to ask "Where's blury Waldo in Canada". thanks for ruining my fun, google.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Saw a googlecar going around last week... I wasn't driving else I would of tried to fallow it but ya it's coming soon!
Remember my friend, we gave you Pamela, and about 100 other top female celebs with good looks...
Do your homework man before you speak!
Human memory can be dumped on to tangible media via pencils, vocal cords, you name it. And in 50 years this conversation will just seem absurd.
Very poor examples for many reasons, but even so -- so what? Are you saying the only other possible option left now is to cripple inventions?
IP cartels also concluded that the only thing to do when their precious information left their control was to go after the technology. Didn't work too well.
Information wants to be free, Mr. Sisyphus. When networked cameras are microscopic, cheap and therefore ubiquitous, people sharing your backwards-looking viewpoint are going to have quite a hill to climb.
i cant wait for the day that i see google maps being used as proof on an episode of "cheaters: caught on tape"
Just send everyone in Canada a free copy of that video from "The Ring" and then their faces will blur themselves!
We all wear ski masks and the snow is so deep you can't see our licence plates (and dog sleds don't need to be licenced anyways).
If your going to BC then there isn't much to worry about for farming.
If you have less than a handful of plants the police won't even take them away.
Because it's obviously for personal use and not worth their time.
If it was, then all of Saltspring island would be rounded up.
I guess I shouldn't mention that you can sometimes find it growing wild in places...?