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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."
Don't worry. Google won't be destroying anything...
-1 not first post
A more important question is why doesn't the US have these laws?
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Everybody knows that the US is one of those countries where you have to vote for either wing of the governing two-wing status-quo-conserving party if you want your vote to count, and where the government has a security police that can take away your rights at the flip of a hat if they decide to consider you a threat.
Why would the US suddenly have strong privacy rights? How would that facilitate the work of the government's security police?
Of course in the US these things are sugar-coated in somewhat different ways than in other countries that have similar arrangements. In the US the terminology is emotionally charged in ways that will appeal specifically to the American temperament. So the government's security police is called Department of Homeland Security, and the suspicions that take away your right will invariably mention Terrorism.
But that's just sugar-coating over the same old ugly mess.
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.
Or they could, shock horror, do the non-evil thing and blur faces and number plates for every country, as opposed to waiting to be forced to think about privacy by a particular country's laws.
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.
"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!"
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?!
It's also legal in many American cities; people just tend to assume that toplessness is illegal. Take, for instance, New York city:
The Court of Appeals of New York ruled in 1992 that exposure of a bare female breast violates this law only when it takes place in a commercial context.
Okay, so no nude hookers, I get it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.