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Google StreetView Is In Your Driveway
hermit_crab writes "Janet and George McKee are the neighbors of the Borings, who we discussed yesterday as the couple suing Google over StreetView. The McKees own a house that is featured in a much more intrusive set of Google StreetView images. 'The Google car continued past the steps leading to the McKees's front door and came to a stop outside the house's three-car garage (and next to the family's trampoline and portable basketball rim). Taking photos all the time, the Google vehicle was squarely on private property, a fact that presumably should have been apparent when the gravel path became paved.' Unlike the Borings, the McKees have not announced intentions to sue Google, nor have they requested to have the images removed."
Why should that be apparent? There are gravel public lanes (and even a road or two) in my city, and it never would have occurred to me that such a thing would automatically mean private property.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
They have no right to be on private property.
Learn about Photography Basics.
...for your driveway.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Where?!?! I can't see them!!!
They entered private property without permission. The owners of the property did nothing. or so the poster presumes.
/. would never present anything s specious~
Why is this here? why would it be anywhere?
surely you're not trying to draw a line between to different cases to prove some point against someone who wishes to persu their avenues, are you?
Of course not,
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
when's the last time you went from asphalt to gravel to concrete on a public road?
Those are low-resolution photos of someone's driveway. Fume all your want, the outside of your house is not legally private. You may get upset by me standing on a public road and gawking at it for the whole day, but there is not anything you can do about that (unless I make any threatening comments about my future intent).
Did people forget how to buy curtains?
Google maps has a feature that allows people to post pictures of various 'landscapes'. Streetview is bad enough, what if users start posting 'shower views'?
It's Google we are talking about. They are expected to know everything anyway.
Dear Mr and Mrs McKee,
Your 15 minutes of fame are here. If you would like to capitalize on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I would suggest you contact our agency immediately. We have companies lined up, looking for advertising space, and if you act RIGHT NOW, we can offer you a lucrative advertising contract. We have excellent rates available for both rooftop and curtain based advertising.
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Marketing Scumbag
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
As much as I am not overly concerned about google's invasion of privacy (with street view)... I am unsure of the point of this article.
Just because one person does not care if google is all up on their grill, this does not mean that other people shouldn't care.
About a month ago driving around where I grew up.
oogly boogly!
Do they know Barbara Streisand?
I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.
Sure, I grew up on a gravel road, but my gravel public lanes never came complete with garage doors!.
They were clearly and undeniably in the couples' driveway.
are they visible in the photo sets? Can anyone provide a streetview link showing them?
ot: slashdot is getting so ridiculously ajaxy! the preview "loading" pane is pink!
That the Google Street View van is driven by advanced, private property disregarding, robots. I don't see how any human could drive those vans and know what they were doing was right...
You may get upset by me standing on a public road and gawking at it for the whole day, but there is not anything you can do about that
It wasn't a public road. In one case it was a private road, in another case it was actually their driveway.
I'm sure this isn't Google's normal operating procedure... both of these happened on the same day with the same van... but it seems clear to me that the guy driving the van made a mistake and it's in Google's best interests to correct it.
The car had to turn around. TFA says it was the only house on the street and probably the only good place to turn around.
The only issue is the Google should have done a better job of screening the photos to say "hey, this shouldn't be on the site becuase the car was turning around."
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
It looked to me like the Google van turned down a side street and realized too late that it was a private driveway. By the time they had turned around and gone out to the main road, their van had already captured the pictures. What the operators should have done is to erase the last N seconds worth of pictures from street view, but for some reason they didn't (do they even have the capability?).
I read the internet for the articles.
You have got to be kidding. The people suing over invasion of their privacy are named "The Borings"?
Do we need any more proof that there is an Intelligence behind the universe that amuses Itself by demonstrating that we are too obtuse to notice we're being mocked?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Frivolous lawsuits hurt our economy and make lawyers $$$.
Being in the drive way is understandable. Maybe they were just turning around. Maybe they were confused. But theres no reason or justification for them including these images.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
Or merely a government that genuinely cares about your privacy, they should be going after Google for the infraction of
My work here is dung.
It IS a sweet way to earn free money.
Hey, are we assigning meanings and ownership to different road surfaces now?
I hereby declare all black asphalt roads to be MY private property! If anyone goes on it I'll sue! Also because it is my private property, road rules and regulations no longer apply!
It seems to be one road surface type per person so I'll just take that one...for now >:)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I firmly believe that the line is crossed when they begin peering into your windows of your abode. At that point, it is an invasion of privacy. Unless there is a sign that is posted saying private drive, no trespass, then I don't think they really have a leg to stand on. More over; this still comes down to the basics of; "if you have nothing to hide, then what is the problem?"
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[picture of kitty with a video camera]
IN UR DRIVEWAY TAKING UR PICTSHUR
And let's not forget that judges are lawyers. They have many lawyer friends. If they stop the lawsuits, they also have to go back to being lawyers (in a profession with a sudden drop in business).
Lawsuits will never end.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
More over; this still comes down to the basics of; "if you have nothing to hide, then what is the problem?"
If you don't understand why "if you have nothing to hide, then what is the problem?" is a problem, then you really don't understand this issue.
Just yesterday. What's your point?
Uh, all the time in my home town. Many roads were nothing more than cross cuts between fields or around farms, and short sections would be dirt, gravel, or paved. Many paved sections would have long runs where there were not lines painted on it. Some of these roads led to as few as 2 or 3 houses. Some to public parks. Some to the community running track and socker field. What was a road or a driveway was not clearly obvious.
Also, perhaps the driver was simply pulling up to see if there was part of the driveway to turn around in, without having to pitch a k-turn on a single lane gravel road in a big google van...
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Perhaps Google should be reviewing the photos before putting them on their website, instead of assuming that all pictures are OK.
It's pretty obvious that they were on someone's private driveway, and that they tried to turn around on someone's private property. Whoops, mistakes happen, but that's why you verify the results afterwards.
Here's my driveway in Google StreetView. Note the license plate. Coverage of this house is very good. The highest resolution images are available in the aerials and in the street views. Plus it's a corner lot, and there's full coverage from both streets.
This is from one of Google's earliest batches of images. I'm only a few miles from Google HQ, and they started by thoroughly covering the nearby areas.
Big Google is watching You.
Shower views is still several years off. Google knows all, including the need to desensitize us somewhat slowly. Google Hallway Views will be released with government support under the guise of helping rescue workers save you in case of fire. Google Kitchen Views will get the "think of the children" chant going because it will help prevent childhood kitchen accidents or CKA as the advertisements will inform us - "with Google Kitchen Views we can stamp out CKA in the next decade." In a similar manner, Google Shower Views and Google Bedroom Views will follow.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
Let's not forget they also put a gun to peoples head and make them use their services.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
to the google van to move on or not to take pictures, several shots were fired...
Seriously, if I saw someone on my property taking pictures of my house, I'd call the cops... makes me wonder what happens when they meet someone who is unreasonable... best to stay off other people's property
Last week, Spokane has a lot of streets inside the city that aren't paved.
That and a lot of "private" drives are city/county roads that homeowners have taken some liberties with. I drive by three "allies" on a regular basis that homeowners have seeded with grass. A quick look at the city maps and it's clear they haven't actually vacated the ally. I've heard some instances of road departments designating private roads as county roads in order to do a friend a favor as well.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Maybe they were lost. After all, it isn't as though they had access to any maps or anything.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Agreed with removing the pictures... the drivers should be able to turn off the camera, or at least log when they feel the pictures should be reviewed for removal (like when he says to himself "Oops, I'm in a driveway and pulled the 30 feet all the way in so much so that I can see inside this house!").
How,
Long do you think Google would permit someone to walk onto their campus and start shooting photos before security rushes over and "escorts" them away.
And what would Google think if said person was using the new ultra-zoom whatever (think Google Earth) and began posting through the window photos of Google's whiteboard strategic planning meetings?
I think Google might send out a lawyer letter or two themselves.
It's obvious, Google hired a nitwit to drive the camera car around taking photos. That doesn't absolve them from responsibility for the actions of their nitwit.
Caution: Contents under pressure
They were clearly and undeniably in the couples' driveway. If it were a driveway, why would the city/county have given it a name?
I think there's a lot of deniability there.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
If it's such an obviously private street, why did this guy watch them drive down it and not say anything?
Next door neighbor, watching them go down the 'obviously private' street.
It's clear the driver needed to make a u-turn in the driveway. There should be an on-off button for the picture taking precisely for this. There should have been no pictures taken from the dirveway.
Compare the difference between the street view and the picture from the road at the county assessors.
Frankly I am more concerned about all the info available in other ways. When I was looking into buying a distressed home from someone trying to flip it, I found the social security numbers in mortgage papers online with the county. They just scanned them and put them online. When we bought a different house, I made sure that lots of stuff was blacked-out before it was duplicated.
OK, so the Google van went onto private property and took pictures... OOPS. However, I can see the possibilities in 50 years when postal/delivery services become more and more automated. Most people currently allow access to parts of their private property to unknown people in terms of the mailman, the UPS guy, the newspaper boy, etc. What happens in 50 years when most of these services are automated by Roomba-like vehicles that wander around neighborhoods delivering services? They may need to have a camera on board to assist with path navigation and yes, they may need access to YOUR private property. We need to figure out what to do now so that we can come up with rules to be applied in the future.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
At least it was for these guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPgV6-gnQaE
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
If I saw what I think I saw, these people had a street name for their driveway. Take a look at the photo. If their driveway is a street, then it is public and fair game. I bet they petitioned to get their own "private" street, probably to one-up their neighbors. Or worse, for some tax/service reasons. Oops city street, you have to plow my driveway...er uhm my street. And maintain the potholes and sewer and water, etc.
The difference is that if I see a stranger in my neighborhood hanging about, I'm going to remember it. If something happens shortly after that in the neighborhood, I'm going to give the cops a description of the stranger and (if I saw it) a description of his automobile (and if he's acting really strange and I see the car, I'll note the license number). I don't go out of my way to watch, but I do pay attention coming in and out of the neighborhood, when I go out to check my mail or water my plants etc...
But about someone 'casing the joint' via Street View, I can do nothing. And that bothers me. (But unlike the stereotypical Slashdotter living in his parent's basement, I actually own a house and care about my neighbors.)
I think Google should draw the line between public/business addresses and residential (apartment buildings would be ok).
When you have such detailed images of a lonely residential street, it opens up the opportunity for crime. Imagine a motivated burglar who can case a neighborhood from the safety and anonymity of his own home. He can make a detailed plan of where the best place to access a home is. He can assess their wealth and potential goodies. Sure, the burglar could drive up the street in his car, but this would be much more risky because people could see him and be suspicious. Street view from Google makes burglary much easier.
I say, Google should photograph all public and commercial buildings: because that's what they want anyway - visibility. But, Google should shut off the camera when they go down residential streets. Apartment buildings would be ok since they are typically secure and are typically mixed in with the business parts of the city.
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I also grew up way out in the sticks. There are plenty of paved and gravel county maintained roads, a lot of them even single lane roads. It's still fairly easy and obvious to know when you are on someone's private driveway versus a public road.
The idiots driving the google camera car should have known better. Perhaps they are getting paid by the number of miles they log.
well, at least these guys know better than to sue over something stupid like this. Really nowadays it would be similar to suing someone for putting you on a paper map. I really doubt that they could honestly say they're privacy was invaded-so long as they themselves were out of the picture.
Legally, in photography, you don't have to ask as long as their face/major identifying marks, is not discernible, but i don't know how that reflects on property
In fact if you pull up the GIS data (or googles maps which are based on city/county maps), the county road extends all the way to where the Google photographed. Just because they got a permit to pave a county road doesn't mean it isn't a county road anymore.
That they chose to put a trampoline and their house right up against it is irrelevant.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
They named their driveway 'Goldenbrook Lane', so of course Google is going to assume it's public property.
I don't know what the deal is with people who do that (mail delivery?), but it seems if you disguise your driveway as a public street things will get confused.
"I only speak the truth"
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Well, I guess we all aren't in well enough to do neighborhoods were a road leads right to my front door / garage.
Not far from where I live there are large private developments. As you turn onto the road to go into them they have signs with the name, but nothing that directly states "private". They all have multiple private roads with distinct names but signs that obviously aren't put up by the town. But these houses have their mailing address as the private road name. Apparently these roads are private property, but you wouldn't know it unless you're from the area or are paying very close attention to details.
I wonder if Google would be in some legally gray area for areas like this, where it's technically private but appears to be public. (Driving up to the garage like in the article is another story. I'm just speculating about other related cases.)
Developers: We can use your help.
IANAL, but according to the The Photographers Right http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf they car was trespassing, but the pictures are legitimate.
Ya, I'll buy that. They "obviously" couldn't have turned around any earlier, and HAD to go ALL the way up to the driveway doors. Ya, ok.
those assholes should jsut STFU, they didnt photograph inside their house or alarm keycode, damn, it's a house and a trampoline, people are dumber everyday in this country
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Honestly, why is this here?
Let me make an analogy
Herbert does something to Jane that Jane says is illegal. Herbert also did this to Fred, Jane's neighbor. Fred didn't say anything.
What do the two have to do with each other? Absolutely nothing of import.
Yes, google has done it before, and will probably do it again. Again, how is this different enough from than the original article about the Borings to merit being on slashdot?
Why do these abuses continue to multiply like slime molds? Because of passive do-nothings like the Borings. Opt-out is a bankrupt, corrupt policy. It puts the impossible burden of discovery and correction on the person being abused, and if photographing your home and plastering it on the Internet isn't abuse, then we might as well all dance naked in the streets and forfeit all pretense at privacy. 'Do no evil' is a joke- one good thing about Google is it makes Microsoft look less bad.
we will end no whine before its time
Oakridge Land is a road and not a private drive. As far as their fears of stalking. A) Why turn to asking for money rather than asking for it to be removed? B)Their home has always been online through hundreds of mapping sites. Yes Street view is in finer detail but it won't actually help you gain any further info of any real use. Goldenbrook Lane is likely also a public road and they could have stopped earlier but big deal. You can find out a lot more information that's of use about someone's house than those pics. The fact they've made a fuss about it has made it more likely they they'll be a target of something.
Because mutliple properties have a portion of the driveway that is shared, and a name was given for 911 purposes. That doesn't make it a public road though. Its still just a shared driveway.
and again, what is the problem? if I drive in this place i'll see their way too rich people house, what is the issue with seeing their way too rich/lack of taste home on google
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I've yet to understand why Google wants to do this. When I go visit my hometown, I hardly recognize it, and this after just a few years of not living there. Unless Google is going to keep refreshing their data on a yearly basis, their street pictures are going to get outdated really quickly.
I just don't understand who they are hoping to attract with this kind of service. I travel a lot for business, but GPS is far superior to what Google Maps does, and even then I haven't come across a scenario in which having a real street view would have been a significant improvement over what a GPS device and/or a basic map gives you. In fact, I can see where it might even be more confusing if you are trying to use it for navigation.
So, you end up with a nice, but outdated voyaristic collection of pictures. And then what?
Obvious to you maybe after just read an article about it, but how obvious would it be to someone who just spent the past 7 hours staring at a slide show of strangers houses.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Every single morning driving a Detroit Free Press paper route in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
~Donald / Just RTFM
Just wait until Google ColonView debuts later this year...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If I knew when, I could sell some sign advertising space. I'd have crap on my house for a mere day, but Google would show that crap forever. That's gotta be worth something.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I, for one, welcome our Boring Overlords.
It's probably cheaper to wait until someone complains and then remove it. Paying someone to review thousands of miles of Sunday driving gets expensive pretty quick.
This morning. Many of the local roads are asphalt. Many others are concrete. Some are gravel, particularly alleys but including some "real" roads.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
what about everyday when going to work, you know some people live in the country, where it happens regularely not to pave plane sections of road and pave the slopes and hard curves only
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So far any time somebody has complained, people have been quick to point out that either it wasn't marked as private clearly enough (apparently you need signs?), or that the city records didn't show it was private (o-kay), or that the people can just tell Google to remove them*, etc.
So why aren't 'we' going about this the other way - finding private properties and seeing if they are on Google's Street View.
Then tell the owners that they're on there.
Then see what their reactions are.
Sounds like something for a bored local TV station to me. Bored local TV stations, are you listening?
unmetalled public roads? Where the hell do you live?!
On my drive to pickup my buddy from his workplace on Saturday.
Regular road, Turn left about 50ft of asphalt. about 100 yards of gravel. Then another 100 yards of blacktop. Then another road with a turn left or right.
Right in front of his workplace is the gravel. It's all a public road and they are NOT allowed to fill in pot holes or pave the road and the city wont do it.. and this is in the 2nd biggest city in oregon.
It didn't look like there was a good place to turn around to me. I was willing to give the driver the benefit of the doubt that he was looking for a way to turn around instead of having to back all the way down the driveway. It doesn't excuse the lack of a "delete the last x seconds" button though, since you have to expect this sort of thing to happen fairly frequently in more rural areas where street signs are rare and side roads are difficult to distinguish from driveways (google maps gets this wrong a lot too!).
I read the internet for the articles.
...washin' ur car.
Or, the alternative,
I'm in ur driveway pwning your privacy rights!
"Know but never fear the consequences of your actions."
Q. Why are the Borings suing Google and not the van drivers who committed the trespass?
A. The van drivers are paid $7/hour and Google is worth $25 Billion.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Why? It's called E-9-1-1. Every place is required to have a (unique to the 9-1-1 district) street address. I currently have property at the end of a private road. The road has a name and property a street number. My two neighbors and I own the road, it's in the deed. The county is not permitted to maintain the road. The garbage truck will not come up the road, nor will the U.S. Postal Service vehicle or the school bus. Everything has to go to the public road.
Just like my home, you just don't barge in and then say, "well, if you don't want us in here, just ask us to leave." This is my property dammit, if you want to come on it, ASK FIRST!
I am not interested whether privacy is invaded or not. Do people use StreetView productively? Can someone detail why a good working implementation of normal maps/directions does not suffice? I have never understood the utility of satellite view either. To me, it simply seems like a nerdcool thing for Google to try and pull off to add to its nerdcool image - ooh, we attached 50 cameras to a truck and rode around and used some elementary (yet horribly incorrect) plane geometry.
I just ran out to my driveway and shot the UPS man.
Now I have to dig another shallow grave in the backyard. I just finished re-sodding too.
Gawking in my window from the public street is legal. Gawking in my window from my driveway/lawn/whatever is not. The difference? I own my driveway. The problem here is that Google employed an idiot driver who blindly followed the GPS, which apparently indicated that the street terminated around the garage. They *should have* recognized a clear property line at the concrete drive.
While it's true that you can control whether people can take photographs while on your property, or enter your property for any reason, unless the property is clearly posted "NO TRESPASSING," someone on a readily accessible part of the property isn't considered to be trespassing. Exactly how this works varies depending upon state law. Pennsylvania state law will not consider entering and turning around in a driveway trespassing unless the driveway is marked as private or is gated or otherwise enclosed in a manner that is designed to secure it from intruders. See http://members.aol.com/StatutesPA/18.Cp.35.html. So there was no criminal or civil offense committed.
As to the status of the photographs, they clearly do not violate the privacy of the homeowners, because the area photographed was publicly visible anyway. It would be difficult to imagine a situation in which a court would provide any remedy other than ordering that the photographs be taken down.
Just to make this clear - the fact that photographs are taken on private property does not in any way automatically constitute a violation of privacy or automatically assign ownership of the photos to anyone other than the photographer. You can take photographs of whatever you want from private property as long as you are not instructed not to do so. The issue is what happens afterward - what use do you make of them. Invasion of privacy, copyrighted works visible in photographs, espionage, commercial exploitation, trespass, and so on, are separate issues.
Every time I visit my parents. They just got the paving extended to just short of their driveway a few months ago, very exciting stuff in their neighborhood. There's nothing past their house for at least fifty or more miles, so it's dirt from there on. They don't bother washing their cars much.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
As a former Google Street View driver, I can tell you that many, many public roads go from paved to gravel and gravel to paved. Sometimes there are signs. Sometimes you follow the GPS-based map data until you are in someone's backyard, looking at a pool. The camera is automatic, so the surprised driver can't really do anything about it but turn around and go. Other times you can follow the road right through what seems to be private property. Public maps generally aren't very good, and people's assumptions about how a stranger percieves the clues of what is and isn't public are often wildly wrong. I had a lot of interesting conversations with mildly surprised (usually happily surprised) people. One couple was originally a little taken aback when I pulled into their driveway and showed them that the map said it was a public road that went through (probably before their mobile home was parked there), but after seeing it for themselves they offered a glass of wine (turned down, thanks, 'cause I was driving) and generally laughed for as long as they were in my rear-view mirror. Street View will be full of those Easter eggs.
I work from my garage. I keep my garage closed when not moving something in or out. I opened my garage on a Saturday to move something out and looked up to see a camera car without labeling and California plates.
So I now expect to see the entire contents of my garage/workshop for anyone to inventory and plan to steal from the comfort of their own privacy, anywhere in the world, at any time. Personally, I feel my family is now in danger from opportunistic criminals who will see desirable tooling and equipment and take advantage of the opportunity to steal whatever they may want. Thanks Google.
I sent an email to Google through the only way I could find, their removal request page form Street View, and of course, they've failed to respond after a month. Apparently, I'll have to wait until the street view for my street is posted online and then spend the money to use the courts to force them to remove the photos after their posted. Painfully, ironically, this was exactly the thought I had when I first ran across Street View way back when.
I think you misread. It was on a gravel public path that became paved. The small paved path was a driveway.
As far as I know (from years of trespassing as a youth) if it isn't posted, you haven't been warned. Once you get warned, you must leave. And if you come back, the police can be called to remove you.
Where I live there are a lot of wooded areas, and every 15-25 feet or so there's a big red "NO TRESPASSING" sign nailed to a tree.
These people didn't even put up a cutsey little frog holding a "Private Lane" sign at the end of their driveway, and it looks exactly like a street. I've gotta side with Google on this.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
So post a sign if you care. What's the difference between a public road serving 5 houses and a shared driveway?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It looked to me like there were spots, especially near where the private road forks into individual driveways. Also, I believe all cars have a "reverse" setting, enabling the use to drive the vehicle in the opposite direction it normally would.
Also, I didn't see anywhere in the PA statutes that say it's ok to trespass if you're just turning your car around...
Really.. Are there legions of people living in semirural areas off "private" communal gravel roads (linked to public roads) who are suddenly offended now that they have been "found"?
I just don't get it. Our house has front and back coverage (due to public streets front and back of our property) and I find it more of an amusing curiosity to see them on Google maps than some big brother conspiracy.
Dad lives in Arizona in a community made up of 10+ acre lots abutting BLM land. The BLM land is popular for 4-wheeling but somebody decided that the best access wash was private property (there's some question whether the property lines extend completely down into the wash or not) and fenced it off with 8x8 posts set in concrete, steel bars and wire mesh. If you want to declare private property, that's how you do it.
I also think that there's probably some law involving roadways that declares them open to public thoroughfare if no attempt is made to fence them or otherwise restrict access and if they are connected to an existing public roadways.
Come on...baby needs a new car...
Damn, I crapped out. I hoped Google had accidentally snapped our house--I could really use 25K!
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Just because the road's on a county map doesn't make it a county road. The road outside my house shows up on Google, but it's owned and maintained by the neighborhood HOA. The driveway in front of the Boring's house was marked as a private road and maintained by them, but it also shows up on Google.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
It's Pennsylvania. We name everything. We just don't mark things clearly like the other 49 states.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is a history of Google vans taking pictures of private parking lots, or restaurants while they are apparently turning around or stopping for food. Over in Oakbrook IL, if you continue south down one road you used to enter a office building parkinglot (which is not actually south) and see the car stop and park in a parking space.
Just because a road is on the maps, does not make it a public road.
Around 1996 or so, maps of our county were updated using areal photography, among other means. Our driveway, which is clearly posted, gated, about 600 feet long, and looks like a public road from the air, showed up on the next edition of the county map. We contacted the correct parties, who apologized, explained that it was an error, and took our driveway off of subsequent versions of the map.
Another state in which we own property requires that shared driveways be named for 911 purposes. We own the road, our neighbors have an easement, and the road name is on file with the county, but that doesn't give anybody the right to drive down it without permission (by the way, it's clearly posted). We don't get any government funding to maintain it, although we do get a sign with the road name where it meets the county road. Such street signs are yellow (not green), and have the letters "PVT" in addition to the road name. It's understood that such roads are legally no different than driveways, in that if the road is posted, you can be charged with criminal trespass for driving on it.
Q: Why are the van drivers there in the first place?
A: Because Google paid them to be.
You and everyone else who has posted similar things below you are arguing semantics and missing the point.
How many public roads lead directly *into* a person's garage? At some point, the road changes from public to private property. Would you think the safer assumption would be that the private property begins at the threshold of the garage or somewhere earlier? It's quite rare to buy a house without buying the lot around it. If you assume that the property line does begin somewhere before the garage, where would you naturally assume that to be? Well, luckily you have an obvious line between gravel and pavement to tell you.
I can understand these guys mistakenly driving down this family's driveway and then having nowhere to turn around until they got to the garage area. But then you've gotta delete the photos. You can't tell me these guys didn't know they were on private property at *some* point, and the obvious line is where the road changes from gravel to paved.
Because somebody stuck it on a map (who shouldn't have) and a functionary or bureaucrat gave it a name because streets must have names. Or, the street was platted and named sometime in the misty past but never actually built (as a public street). Or the street was originally a track between fields or forest blocks, and given a name for convenience - but when the area was converted to housing the streets platted then didn't actually follow those old roads, which were quietly forgotten except for this tiny stub. Or nearby is the rest of the road, but for whatever reason a segment of it was skipped when they actually built out the roads. Or the area was replatted and someone forgot to erase this little segment of a road that was never actually built because its route disappeared in the replatting. Etc... Etc...
All of these things do happen.
Take a look at this map for example. "Bunting Lane" has been on these maps since they started appearing online in the mid 90's. "Bunting Lane" doesn't exist, at least as of two years ago when I last got a chance to actually look. (I lived on one of those roads in high school, and was out visiting a friend in the area and checking out our old neighborhoods.)
Looks like in one of the pictures the google people actually drove up the "private road" to the house and took a picture. The plaintifs could claim that the google staff took an extra effort to single out their home. It wasn't just a driveby in this case. If that "private road" is infact on their land, then google staff trespassed on private land. If it is not, then unfortunately the plaintifs will not win. I am unsure how I feel about having someone photograph my property and display it for the world to see. If that picture and publication results in the theft of property can the homeowner sue? The photograph facilitates thieves to use google to check homes (at least the outside of homes) for "interesting" items.
It's interesting to see the Slashdot community grappel with this story. On the one hand, Slashdot is typically a staunch defender of privacy. Yet, when the privacy infringer is infringing in such a way that appeals to nerd sensibilities, some of us seem to ease up on our privacy demands, at least as long as it's not our privacy they're talking about. The thing I think is important to keep in mind in these cases is to ask yourself, "What if I were in that person's situation? Would I like it if Google had taken pictures of my private property? How would I feel about it?" I know I wouldn't like it. With that said, I think the lawsuit is unwarranted, as the Borings could just have asked Google to take the images down, who (presumably) would've done just that.
Before I moved? Every few days...
Im in ur driveway taking ur pictures.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Gravel is not an indication of a road being "private".
Either mark the road as "Private - Do Not Enter" or don't complain when people drive there and take pictures.
In fact, if you don't mark the road that way, the public may acquire a right to drive there over time, private property or not.
This road (Goldenbrooke Ln) is in the public TIGER 2000 database created by the US Census Bureau (record id {B6B155C4-58F1-4E61-9657-08FE8DC0DDBA} if you want to look it up online). This is a GIS database used by many vendors to make maps and the like meaning that not only does Google believe this to be a public road but many others do as well and probably include it in Pittsburgh city maps.
I checked another road that I know is a private driveway and did not find it in any public GIS database. You can see this road here. I know this road has been there for over 10 years so if they were going to add it they would have by now so I'm presuming they usually, if not always, don't include private roads in their GIS database. Even if private roads are occasionally included I don't expect Google to do a public records lookup every time they decide to drive down a little street that's in the public census database (TIGER). Also, there doesn't seem to be any meta data for Goldenbrooke Ln stating whether it is private or not so I really don't see how Google would have known (assuming the property owner is even correct about the road being private which he quite possibly isn't). If you look a bit east of the road I mentioned with Street Views turned on you'll see that Google only drove down labeled streets (ie, streets that are in the TIGER GIS database). I confirmed that the other long driveways were also not included in the TIGER database or Google maps.
It's called "a chain".
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
They have the ability. Google has already pulled the pictures of the Borings home.
Find this criminal's spider-hole
User-agent: GoogleBot Disallow: /
The images are probably included entirely automatically. You don't think they have people going over each and every single image, do you? The thing has GPS and every image is tagged and then put into a big database. No human eyes touch the things until they're online, I'm sure.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I also live on a private street. However in NC the street sign has a distinctive yellow tag that states "Private Street." So the street view of my area, the goggle van apparently stopped when it arrived at the edge of my community's property line.
OK, lemme get this straight...the van went past the steps leading to the front door and stopped in front of the three-car garage. Does this mean:
- The garage is inside the house?
- The StreetView van is a Smart Fortwo with rock crawler suspension?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Google should then add a simple mechanism to the vans that allows the drivers to set a "last couple images are bad" marker. They turn into a driveway by accident or stop to refuel and as soon as they notice/are done, they press a button and the system sets a marker that tells the post-processing team that all images since the last turn are probably bad. The post-processing team can then just scan for those markers and closely examine the images preceding them; if the drivers pay a bit of attention that could cut down on images that shouldn't be in the database.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Clearly Google's vehicle was guilty of trespassing on the McKee's property. Once they realized what they had done, they should have erased the photos.
But since they didn't, I'd use the photos in a court case to sue the company for violating another person's private property.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Even if it's private property, so what? If a privately owned road doesn't tell you to keep out, you can enter. Furthermore, unless it's clearly and explicitly forbidden, you can take pictures on private property; you don't need to ask permission. And there are many forms of privately owned property where they owner can't forbid you to take pictures even if the want to. Finally, if a property runs up to you and tells you not to take pictures, all he can do is ask you to leave; he can't demand that you erase the pictures you have already taken.
Photography is an important part of a modern democracy and it needs to be protected; don't mislead people about where they supposedly can't take pictures.
Google paid them to go on private property?
It is your business not to intrude on the privacy of those living on the properties you are being paid to map - and only to map.
It doesn't matter whether it's private property, if it doesn't clearly and explicitly prohibit photography, you can take photographs; you don't need to ask for permission.
Furthermore, property owners may not even be legally allowed to impose such restrictions; although these roads are privately owned, they are intended for unrestricted public access, which means that they may count as "public places" for the purpose of photography.
Chances are, one of you reading this is being filmed by a Google Van ... right... this... minute!!!
So let me get this straight:
You are using Google, in order to defend Google's trespass on private property. Hmmm. It occurs to me that Google's data might be falsified so they could cover their ass, and therefore it's not a reliable source for whether or not said road is public or private.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
So? If you allow me to enter your driveway and you haven't put up a sign prohibiting photography, I can legally take pictures; I don't need to ask you for permission.
Travel in the upper lower peninsula in Michigan, or in the entire upper peninsula. Not only do they go from asphalt to gravel to concrete, but it's pretty common for roads to do so.
I got nothin'
Google paid them to go to a specific lat/long. That location happens to be pricate property. So, yes, yes they did.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I'm guessing a mailbox, maybe a street sign? Those would be clues to me as to the nature of the path. Even in some remote parts of Ohio people still put mailboxes at the end of their lane and most county/township maintained roads have street signs.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
>>>"The camera is automatic, so the surprised driver can't really do anything about it but turn around and go."
In that case, I guess no one is too blame. The driver can't erase photos, and the programmer is probably just dumping them to the central website without noticing he's taken pictures of private property.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
But once asked to stop you must stop. Don't forget that part.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
No fence, no visual barriers, understandable mistake, and I think no trespass under law. Once he hit the garage though the driver should have had a way to clear out some of those photos, or mark them for review. In that Google is lacking.
why didn't the mckees sue when the borings did?
it simply means the mckees aren't boring enough
but at least the average slashdotter learns something from this story. beforehand, we all assumed you had to be a bore to sue google. now we all know you could also be a boring
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No. If they are under the employ of Google then they are Google's responsibility.
This is very simple bog standard legal stuff.
It probably goes back 500 years.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
First, it amuses me to no end to see how people on this board are bending over backwards to justify/rationalize Google's actions. Face it, if Microsoft did the same thing you would be screaming for Ballmer to go to jail.
... but for some reason Google didn't.
Second, it seems to me that Google has the GPS coordinates of every picture taken. It *should* be possible (especially for someone as all-knowing and all powerful as Google) to verify if any given GPS coordinate is on private property or a public way. Then, in an automated fashion, pictures taken by mistake could be deleted without ever uploading them. Hmmm, that sounds to me like something a company with scruples and ethics would do
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
You can plainly see there is no sign with:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
So basically you've carefully disguised your private road and a public one. It appears in maps and has no indication that it is private. For what, so you can loose your mind when someone didn't look up your deed? So you can confuse the discussion with entering a house versus driving down a road?
Please. I think we've fully established deniability here. Maybe some shenanigans to boot.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
But it should give legal protection to people who go by the official government documents until they have been corrected.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
That's what Amazon's Mechanical Turk is for. There used to be quite literally thousands of hits asking for people to classify a picture or to paint in the yellow lines of a road, or to identify traffic lights, junctions and so on. But they only paid around $0.05 per hit.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Oh please.
Did you bother to look at the pictures? It's clear that this an invasion of privacy. Here's a clue. Read the articles again and look at the pictures again, but replace "Google" with "Microsoft", then see if you have the same opinion on the matter.
Damn, some people will defend Google no matter what they do. Just because someone claims that they're not evil, doesn't make it so. In fact, those that feel the need to constantly say "We're not evil" are *more* likely to be so. (It's like whenever you meet someone that says over and over, "I'm not a racist", nine times out of ten, they are a racist.)
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
tell them to rake the leaves and mow the lawn!
Texas has a lot of public roads that run through ranches. You can tell when you enter and leave the ranches because there are cattle guards in the road.
Without the 2nd Amendment, the others are just suggestions.
I can't believe I'm actually on the "privacy" tag's side for once...but this is pretty ridiculous. Come on Google, have a clue.
For all those who have feel there is no reasonable expectation of privacy here:
s/Google/Bush Administration/g
How does that affect this conversation?
How about, if there's any question about it, then you assume the worst and not release the pictures?
:)
Or, one of Google's one thousand vaunted PhDs can create an AI program to analyze the pics. Peter Norvig (Google's AI master) can lead the effort.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Hah. Eugene road maintenance plan: "let it rot."
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Perhaps they got to the end of that gravel road and used the driveway to turn around. If the camera is operating all the time, as the summary suggests, it would have been snapping away for the five or ten seconds it would have taken to do this.
I don't care why you're posting AC
In that case, I guess no one is too blame. The driver can't erase photos, and the programmer is probably just dumping them to the central website without noticing he's taken pictures of private property. As simple as it sounds, I have to agree.
Sometimes the simplest explanation works best.
You can sue the driver for no noticing your hints.
You can sue the map-maker for not clearly marking your road as private property.
You can even sue the map-making company for not checking all the (weeks of) footage, before sending it to Google.
You can even sue Google for not removing the footage, after you asked them to remove it.
But, NOT ASKING and then spamming for ATTENTION is a waste of everyone's time.
I'm not here to defend Google, but if someone is doing something you don't like, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Don't just whine about it to other people.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
Utterly irrelevant. This is standard practice. Even if the drivers were violating their employment agreement, that's between them and Google. Don't make this out to be a grab for cash just cause it's Google. If any other situation where an employee of a company infringes on your rights, you'd be suing the company. You could also sue the employee personally, sure, but if you won you'd generally be waiting while they in turn sued their employer. I fail to see the problem here (as in, "suing Google, not van drivers").
The difference is that the public road is open to the public, a shared driveway is still private land. It may be that the deeds of the varing properties agree to share the driveway. But that doesn't make it public, it means there's more than one owning party.
Also, I highly doubt the county maintains the shared driveway; again, that would fall to the owners.
"What are we doing tonight, honey?"
"Having dinner with the Borings"
"Sounds like fun!"
Mind you, I used to know someone whose family name was Crapper, and another whose family name was Hoare.
There is a paved road, originally built in 1825 to service my property, that is (literally) ten feet from my house. The building was there before the road by about 50 years.
The county paves and maintains the road, in return for which previous owners of my house granted an easement for through travel.
I own the road. It is my property, and it is so marked on all county maps available on-line or off-line.
I have never granted permission for Google or anyone else to use my road for anything other than through travel. If they wish to pay me for some other use, or ask courteously for permission to use my road for their profit-making enterprise, that might be different. But using my road for anything but through travel is trespassing on my rights as a property owner.
I screamed about this to Google and they ignored me. So I pointed out that their camera pointed directly into the window of a minor child and that my state has very strong peeping tom laws. They have now blacked out the street view for my property. Yay the New America! Cowardice and the taint of pederasty trumps politesse, good citizenship and the rule of law!
One last thing; the fact that such driveways are marked PRIVATE means its posted. Otherwise, there's no point in marking any road as private, is there?
And yet, there's no procedure for drivers to flag, using that same GPS map data, data that needs to be deleted for any number of reasons (anything from unintentional trespass to look, grisly accident scene)?!?
So, when did they ask the driver to stop?
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
And how is anyone to know? It isn't posted anywhere.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Yeah, good call, there's been several of these posts... "They had to go all the way up and turn around!" "Why, do Google vans not have a Reverse gear, or rear view mirrors, or side mirrors?"
Maybe you should move to a state that matters.
No, you can't. Photography on private premises is permitted, unless explicitly prohibited, OR implicitly prohibited in violation of a person's reasonable expectation of privacy. If someone puts a 12 foot solid hedge around their property but for the entrance gate, whilst you could take photos at that point, it could be assumed that if you were to enter and take photos from a vantage point not visible from public property (leaving aside the issue of trespass for the moment), that you are violating a reasonable expectation of privacy in your photography on private property.
The submission seems to make a point that "the McKees have not announced intentions to sue Google, nor have they requested to have the images removed" despite the photos being "much more intrusive" than the Borings'.
Regardless of whether the McKees are offended or choose to take action doesn't make the Borings any less justified in doing so.
Really? You've driven in that road? You're sure the sign wasn't missed in one of the photos? You think their lawyer is dumb enough to include a trespass charge when he the reading of said law is very clear, even to a layman like me?
That's not my problem - that's yours to deal with as the person potentially committing the infringement. Is that going to be your defense, "Well, hell, Your Honor, after a while, it all looks the same, you can't expect me to notice this kind of stuff, really, can you?"
I was unaware that there were 'private roads' out there that you would be trespassing on if you drove on them. From looking at the existing pictures, you couldn't tell when driving down the road that it lead to a single house because there was too much flora in the way. Can the drivers turn off the camera sometimes? The private road didn't look big enough to turn around in, I don't see why they should have had to back out instead of turning around in the driveway.
sure, why not? These guys sued before demanding the photos be removed, and trespass is far from clear. Until someone can show the sign that was ignored, I'll assume that a driveway marned as xyz lane is a public road.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Google is to blame for not establishing some type of protocol to guard against this (pretty much inevitable) privacy invasion.
At the moment, there is that issue that "anyone in the whole world can look up my address and see what my home looks from the street", which is fairly minor.
Then there is the "Google is wandering everywhere including into peoples gardens and taking pictures without asking" issue. They could have informed residents that their cameras were going to be driving around (my neighborhood were notified when aerial photographs were being taken).
And there is a third issue. On some occasions, the resolution of the photographs has been high enough to identify individual car number plates. What if the Google cameras had been of a high enough resolution to identify the majority of car number plates parked in driveways? This would make it easy for any third party to build up a database of car number plates and addresses. Only recently, using such a database caused a police officer to lose his job.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
First, how do you know they sued before demanding that the photos were removed? You know all of their conversations? Second, your assumption is pretty silly. PA has a lot of shared driveways like that, for whatever reason it is far from uncommon. Given that the private road likely doesn't lead anywhere except to a few houses, and given that it's NOT paved, even though the main road is, I think the safer assumption is that it's a private shared driveway.
This looks like a simple mistake to me. The gravel "road" appears to be named, and it goes all the way up to the family's garage door. I'm not sure whose fault that is... Google's map could be wrong, the city could have surveyed incorrectly, or the house could have just been built REALLY close to a minor, but named, road. Anyway, it doesn't look like there's a clear view of the house from the main road, so the driver probably didn't know that there was only a single house down the road in the first place. If his job was to go down all roads, it makes sense that he would have driven down there. Once he got down the road he decided to turn around in the driveway since there doesn't appear to be anywhere else to turn around. The camera takes pictures automatically, so pictures were taken while he was turning around. I don't know if Google takes any steps to verify their pictures before they post them, but the map seems to make it look like the driveway is even part of the road. Even if they verify that the GPS coordinate of a picture is actually on a road, it looks like these pictures would have showed up as being on a "road." Unless Google has actual humans verify all of their pictures, it makes perfect sense how this could have accidentally been posted.
And they would have seen me sneaking out the back door before George came home....thank goodness I went back for seconds!!
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
It doesn't. In the intentional torts, the actions of the trespasser would be described as "mistake" - that is, they were mistaken as to title to the road. Mistake is not a defence for trespass, and it doesn't matter what the source of the mistake is (almost - if the mistake was induced by the plaintiff there might be an estoppel).
Bububu... Google never CLAIMS to not be evil, "Don't Be Evil" is just their motto.
If they have to be evil before they can achieve that goal, then that's ok!
Fuck google.
Alley.
Alley.
Stating that this is standard legal stuff and then assuming that it has been around for 500 years kinda shows how little you know about what you speak up about.
An employee is only under the protection by the company if they do not voilate the company rules. Like if they go and break the law when the company says that they will obey the law in their handbook, which is why they say things like that in there. Google didn't tell them to go to a specific lat/lon, they were tasked to follow the public roads and cover as much ground as they could while doing so.
If this goes to court all google has to say is "we asked the drivers to do X Y and Z" and they did w instead. Without instructions do tresspass the drivers are left with their own decisions and subsequent consequences. If google is a regular company and had the drivers sign a form that states they read the employee handbook, and they put in the employee handbook some clause to the effect of "don't break the law." then they are legally in the clear. PR and emotional juries notwithstanding of course.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
I think that it'd be cool to have the google van visit my house. I'd invite them in for lunch and a movie! It'd be awesome!
This isn't a joke, I'd really do this.
Why should that be apparent? There are gravel public lanes (and even a road or two) in my city, and it never would have occurred to me that such a thing would automatically mean private property.
Do the gravel lanes in your city have a mailbox next to them as well? Did you even look at the pictures? Dead giveaway that it was a driveway and not a road. Either way, they should have asked for it to be taken down, not sue Google about it.-Skeeterbug
They did establish a protocol. Ask for the pictures to be removed and they will remove them. Screw the Borings and their lawsuit - all they had to do was ask that the images be removed, just like the McKees can.
When the Borings' case is thrown out of court they will be the only ones to blame since they didn't have the decency of simply asking for the photos to be removed.
Google should then add a simple mechanism to the vans that allows the drivers to set a "last couple images are bad" marker.
Boy do I wish they had that feature. I temped at Google to process the video for Street View and I had to fast-forward through hours of footage from the van sitting in front of a porno theater.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Some, yes. OK, let me put this another way: because of the way streets are where I live, if I were driving the Google van, I very likely would have made the same mistake they did. There were no universally understandable indicators that this was a private drive and not a public road, particularly since the local government had said that it was a public road.
I'd personally be pretty peeved if this happened to me, but at the same time I can see how a reasonably intelligent person could do what Google did.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
About four days ago.
Ok, technically, it was asphalt->gravel->asphalt, but the point remains the same. Part of the road is maintained by the Municipality of Anchorage, part of the road is maintained by the Bureau of Land Management, and therefore, the road surface changed at various locations. But none of the road was private property.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Naming private driveways that have multiple dwellings or are beyond a certain length was part of the "911" address changes.
Yeah, that is why I added my last bit. Ask them to take it down, not sue them!
-Skeeterbug
its not a van. the streetview vehicle is a car with a ball on top of it, 12 cameras total on the top
"Some men just want to watch the world burn..."
Drive around northern Minnesota for a while - you'll find plenty of places where a paved road turns to gravel, and vice-versa.
Yes. Translation:
Normal Person: For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's Google's doing is trespassing.
./ know-it-all: But Google's got what nerds crave. It's got street view.
./ user #2: So wait a minute. What you're saying is, you don't think that Google should trespass?
./ user #2: Not even on a 'private road'?
./ know-it-all: But Google's got what nerds crave.
./ user #2: Yeah, it's got street view.
./ user #2: Well, people take pictures of my house, and I don't mind.
./ know-it-all: Hey, that's good! Are you a lawyer or something?!
./ user #2: But Google's GOT what nerds crave.
./ user #3: Yeah. It's got street view.
./ know-it-all: It's what they do at Google.
./ user #2: Cuz Google's got street view.
Normal Person: Yes.
Normal Person: Well, I mean... A private road is a grey area maybe, but definitely not a driveway. But yeah, that's the idea.
Normal Person: Okay, look. The people that live in at least one of these houses are complaining. Google seems to be trespassing. Other people seem to think so, too. So I'm pretty sure that this Google stuff's not working, at least not the way they are currently doing it. Now I'm no technologist, but I do know that if you put yourself on private property, it's called trespassing.
Normal Person: Okay, look. You want to solve this problem, right? So why don't we just try to talk about it, okay, and not worry about what nerds crave?
Normal Person: What ARE the legal implications of driving a van around people's yards to make something called "street view"? Do any of you even know?
Normal Person: Yeah, but WHY do they do this at Google?!
Interesting name, 'Pfafftown'. Seems like a name Daffy Duck would make up.
It looks like Bunting Lane is in both the Pennsylvania road database and the census bureau database (TIGER). You can see this using the tool at http://nmviewogc.cr.usgs.gov/viewer.htm -- note, it is rather slow even under normal conditions.
I saw in another post above this, along with a bit of Googling, that shared driveways or driveways that also provide legal access to public facilities need to named in some states. And shared driveways should be named for emergency services.
Was the property marked "No Trespassing"? I did't see any signs stating that it was.
I note they have a photo of the house on the tax assessor site. More than likely it's tied to a GIS database. How come they're not filing suit against the town.
They're just looking at deep pockets here. It's a predatory suit.
In my town (which is also in Western PA), we have some "paper streets." These are pieces of ground owned by the borough for the purpose of building a road that was never built. These are often grass paths that are completely indistinguishable from the lawns surrounding them, but they show up on official maps as public streets. This can be frustrating for tourists and newcomers trying to navigate through the town.
Where does he park the Google van at night? Since it is automatic does it keep recording? Maybe he takes care not to park it in view of his bathroom window.
The driver should at least be able to put a mark on the recordings to say "have a good look at this before you decide to use it".
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Quite irrelevant.
If they don't have procedures to care for the fact that their employess have been spending 7 hours staring at a slide show of strangers' houses, they damned well have no business taking those pictures.
If you can not deal with the necessary fallout of your business practises, change business.
As simple as that.
May we live long and die out
Just why do we need Google's streetview, anyway? The maps are great, the satellite views are kinda interesting...but why do I need to go on a virtual road-trip? I'm serious...can anyone tell me how Streetview is useful (as opposed to a novelty)?
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I don't think the operators have the knowhow, nor the means to make changes to such a complex image recording system. At the very least they could keep a log book and enter GPS coordinates of things that are this obvious. Then whoever extracts, converts, publishes should be responsible to check the logs and publish accordingly.
I'm just left stunned. What's the concern here?
My concern is the fact that anybody considers "if you have nothing to hide, then what is the problem?" as some kind of serious response to anything.
I mean, you're just asking for me to invoke Godwin's Law. You know that
But to get down to specifics:
* In the case of the Borings, the Google van went down a private road (not a public street) to photograph the Boring's backyard.
* In the case of the McKees, the Google van went onto their property (not a public street).
The fact that mistakes like these are inevitable doesn't mean that they should be dismissed. Whatever the cause of these mistakes, Google needs to deal with them and have a better policy than individual "opt out" for these cases. Not only that but there's a public interest in actually having Google pay the Borings, making sure that other companies that don't have "don't be evil" as their slogan know that if they screw up they'll have to pay for screwing up.
* The issues of having to opt-out of a relationship with every company that might want to have a relationship with you (however tentative) when the magnifying power of the Internet is involved should be obvious to everyone who has an email address.
* The effects of making previously obscure information publicly available and electronically searchable are also well known.
If we're in the Transparent Society already, well, it may be unavoidable and it may be better than the alternatives but we need to have a public dialog about how to deal with it. This article is part of that public dialog.
If someone puts a 12 foot solid hedge around their property but for the entrance gate, whilst you could take photos at that point, it could be assumed that if you were to enter and take photos from a vantage point not visible from public property (leaving aside the issue of trespass for the moment), that you are violating a reasonable expectation of privacy in your photography on private property.
You can't leave aside the issue of trespass because that's what everything revolves around legally. If I'm not trespassing, then you don't have an expectation that what you do is hidden from me and I can take pictures. If you want me to stop taking pictures, basically all you can do is to tell me that I'm trespassing and need to leave immediately.
Legally, what you are saying doesn't exist: there is no situation in which you have an expectation of privacy on your property yet you allow me to be present there. In practice, of course you can use the threat of telling me to leave your land to get me not to take photographs; but you have no other means of getting me to stop taking pictures.
I kid you not! Mrs. Boring was my high school chemistry teacher. She started my senior year (I graduated in 2001). She made Advanced Chem. fun!
Oh, and her husband offered to help me find a job... No go, but he did try when I got out of college.
lol, they forgot to take off the lens cap in my neighborhood :(
:(
With all the media hype of us (spokane) appearing in street view i wanted to check it out but there is a big chunk missing right in the middle of town, so no pic of work or home. The reporter asked why they included some surrounding areas but no mention of the missing areas.
Hmm, tried to find the gravel road i was thinking of in the middle of town...but it is in the missing chunk
Not only that, but Google chose to use the pictures - not the drivers. There are two issues here - the driver is tresspassing, but as pointed out, may not have been able to turn around, so this is arguable in any case (ie. no intent) - but its the publishing of the photos on the net that is the main issue - and THAT is wholely the responsibility of of Google's quality control. Google may have issues with whoever they contracted to do the driving, but thats between Google and the contractors - and has nothing to do with the owners of the property.
plus, I typo on the /. like 11 times!
And just in case the Plat Book is in error, I always carry a theodolite and two surveyors in the trunk.
Support SETI@home
If you look at the satellite view, there are what appear to be two enormous trees laid down on the ground. That, plus the difference between the assessor's photograph and the street-view images (which are now legally and irretrievably published in their own complaint - check out http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0407081google1.html ) suggest to me that they're pissed off that Google has exposed their tree-killing and redevelopment of the "class D" property.
It's named after the Pfaff (pronounced "faff" with a long 'a') family who settled in the area in the late 1700's, it's a German name.
If you zoom out, you'll note the street I used as an example is in NC, not PA. (The area that is now Winston-Salem/Forsyth County was settled by Germans who migrated from Pennsylvania though.)
You're right of course. I'm not sure why the USGS Viewer program looked for roads in the Pennsylvania database. I zoomed in close enough that only areas in North Carolina were visible. Hmmm...
I just realized how much data Gurgle has.
Everything you search for via google search
Just about every page you visit has Google ads
Log in once to google mail and they associate your IP to your ID
Search for directions, or click "map this" from any web page and it's about 50/50 google data
Tell them where to map directions from and they have your address
Watch a google video
Geocoding - they can convert addresses to coordinates, or the opposite way
Pictures of where you live via street maps
And that's not including their acquisitions. Google already knows everything about you - their talent is data mining.
Funny that Google can take pictures of people's driveways in some places, but can't even bother to get more than one road within a mile of my house.
/Long Island, NY, 20 miles from NYC
A private lane is required to have a name for 911.
In Pennsylvania if the lane didn't have a No Trespassing sign the Google driver did nothing wrong. It's open to the public unless posted.
You are defending an opt-out for $deity's sake. This is many, many times more intrusive than facebook telling your contacts you suck at scrabble or a telemarketer asking if you would like a new credit card. Why are you doing it? Because its Google? Do you pretend for every American to google they address daily until they are photographed so they can request to be removed?
Publishing photos of your home in the internet must be an opt-in feature.
Suing is doing something, but I rather initiate a class action suit against Google for abusing fair use. This isn't an art student capturing typical American architecture. This isn't a parent taking photos during vacation, this is a queryable database of every single body's home, social status, cultural background, family size, brand awareness and all other information that can be gathered from looking at your house.
Private detectives for comparison, have to get a license in order to stalk people around. Google is making getting into other people's life increasingly easier. And don't think for a second that advertising, banking and insurance companies are going to let this data mining venue intact out of respect for our privacy.
The level of Google fanaticism on this discussion makes me coin a word I though I'd never use... googletards.
But... the future refused to change.
"What are we doing tonight, honey?"
"Having dinner with the Borings"
"Sounds like fun!"
As long as they don't break out the boring slides of the Boring family vacation.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Why do so many people keep saying that this is obvious, when it isn't? I am on a paved public road. I turn onto a gravel public road. Then I continue onto another paved road, which it turns out happens to be a private driveway. How is it at all obvious which, if any, of these transitions is the private/public line?
For the record, I know plenty of people whose homes have no driveway, with garages that open directly onto the street, or across a sidewalk onto the street, and front doors that open directly onto a sidewalk adjacent to the street with no private sidewalk approach.
To clarify, but not contradict your non-obvious-ness argument, the gravel WAS public. It only became private AFTER the gravel turned back into paved.
I'm not sure about PA specifically, but in many areas it's illegal to back onto the main road. You must turn around and return onto the road driving forward. There was obviously nowhere on that driveway to turn around.
You don't supposed that maybe someone happened to drive down there THINKING it was a road, got to the end, and had to turn around, all the while, the automatic camera on the roof of the car happened to be taking pictures, like the THOUSANDS of pictures that were taken on that same trip..
And that MAYBE they didn't do it out of spite?
Google is notoriously huge, and doesn't have people just WAITING to respond.
Personally, I think this is a case of people being pissed, and a company that doesn't respond to every single contact ever made to them.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
They're not suing for a significant amount of money. I thought it was about $25,000.
I think the easy solution is to remove the images, and then try and talk the lawsuit value down.
The family is in the right to sue in this case, and I honestly think Google is going get more of these suits going forward. The pictures are very high resolution, and make the standard Google Earth resolution seem extremely tame in comparison.
Don't get me wrong - it's a really cool idea, and there's a certain charm in being able to 'walk down streets' in a virtual setting, but it's definitely going to rub some people the wrong way.
We still haven't even gotten to the OTHER kind of lawsuit that may stem from these high-resolution shots. (That would be the "I'm a guy walking out of a strip club and Google caught me on camera, and now my wife knows what a dirty pervert I am" lawsuit.)
"Im in ur driv fotografin ur houz."
The strangest one I ever saw was this: Help Me on Mt Lemmon in Arizona. I reported it as an error, but it's still there today. Seems like somebody was joking around in the map-making office one day.
However, the company is still on the hook for damages in many cases. Otherwise, companies would just make absolutely anything that might be a liability "against policy".
In this case, Google is probably on the hook because the drivers were performing their job (however badly)
If instead, they had stopped off to rob a convieniance store, Google wouldn't be on the hook since that clearly had nothing to do with their job.
I saw the original article: google said that they hadn't received any request for removal at the time they were served. I believe google to be reasonably responsive and they haven't had a history of lying when they think they can get away with it, so I believe google.
Who cares how many shared driveways they have? If it isn't marked as private, there's no way to know.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The system is fully automated, so it will only record what it is supposed to record.
this si explained in another post
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
Whilst you make a valid point about privacy, what $deity is doing is perfectly legal.
The situation is perfectly explained in other posts
You can hardly blame the driver for an automated system that is based om a legal, accepted map.
The system will only take pictures on registered (mapped) public roads:
If you leave the road onto a driveway, the system stops taking pictures.
If it maps your driveway, it means the map is wrong, not the driver)
If you don't like it, either blame the map-maker or petition for a major revision in US privacy legislature.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
Every time I visit my parents. The county goes through cycles of getting Fed money and paving the roads then letting them return to the wild so they can get more Fed money.
It keeps the rednecks 'off welfare' and in beer...
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Yes, we prefer Google here to Microsoft, we will cut them some more slack. Google hasn't burned us yet, worked actively against what we believe in and actually supports us through some of its projects. Google made webmail workable again, use Linux, create projects for Linux, etc...
And Google do not constantly say anything about being not evil. Maybe it is just the voices in your head.
The van drivers are agents of Google.
Actually, there is a great reason. I live on a private drive (labeled with sign) that has a street name. I don't want you to know where I live, so I can't prove it, but the reason it has a name is there are two houses on it. I guess you could say that is public if you don't account for the fact that no one but me and the other person should be on that road. It was labeled purely so they wouldn't have to put 55555A and 55555B 55th ST. I don't know the technicality of it all, but in growing up have seen lots of "multi" family driveways labeled private property. Obviously, the families on the drive don't want Joe Smoe driving in there gawking. When a street becomes public in my understanding is when the city or state deals with the state of that road. In other words, if you as a community say, hey city, we will deal with the upkeep, you don't have to spend any money on us, and I bet you can call it a private road. For small (up to 4) family drives, I'm sure this can be the case. I know that the city does nothing for my "road", but if it were public aren't they required to keep it in a good fashion? (as good as any road is that is).
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
Where's the evidence?
I wan't a link to prove these photo's exist and I coulden't find one in TFA
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
I agree it would have been in the photos and if there are no photos then theres no problem.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Google? Responsive? You've never had to deal with them, have you? Do you really think they'd admit that they got a request and ignore it? Especially now that they are being sued? That would kill them instantly in court.
As far as the number of shared driveways go; I lived in PA most of my life, I have yet to find a shared driveway NOT marked as private. As I said, they were marked for 911 reasons, you really think they just "forgot" to put the marking on some of the roads? Please.
Well, if the driver had a button he could hit that flagged the current spot in the picture taking as something that needs more attention, it would be pretty trivial to review those and delete inappropriate pictures (accident scenes, private property, etc). Or if the driver had the ability to review and delete that would be even better. But as it stands, it's pretty clear that Google feels like they are big enough that they don't have to care... they take their pictures and if you don't like it, too bad.
You can CLEARLY see that you're driving up to someone's garage, not driving past a house on a road, whether public or private.
It's a YARD! There's LANDSCAPING! You're about to hit a TRAMPOLINE!
POP! (Blood dribbling from nose.) This ruptured aneurysm brought to you by common sense from someone who RTFA, which probably disqualifies this as a legitimate/. post.
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
No problem. I'm laminating a copy of my Robots.txt file as we speak. I will post it at the entrance to my neighborhood.
Problem solved.
Just because a road is on the map, doesn't mean it's even a road, public or otherwise. maps.google.com shows a road running past my house that's actually been a drainage ditch for the 14 years I've lived there...
My grandfathers's HOA owns and maintains his roads as well, but they show up on a county map because his HOA gave the local police permission to patrol the property, and with that, it's considered a public way even though it lies on private property. The city even orderted them to take down a "no thru traffic" sign they installed by the enterance. Even though it's private property, you can still get a speeding ticket in there...
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I did look at the pics (all of them, before they were taken down). There was no way anyone would have noticed that road was marked private, and no way to turn around except in their driveway when they realized it wasn't a formal road.
...and images of their house are avalable for public viewing already via the assessor's office, the real estate firm that sold them the house 2 years ago, and the tax office.
-GPS is not infallable.
-Google does not make the GPS (just the online maps)
-Google offered to remove the offending images
At best, they have a case to sue Garmin, or maybe the city for providing the maps to Garmin (or whatever GPS unit google was using).
google admited fault, provided a free and reasonable resolution. this suit is bullshit.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Of course, if the guys in the van mentioned the mistake when they came in that day, but the guys downloading the data didn't bother to correct it, who's fault is it then?
In the end, sueing Google is proably the only way to get the stuff researched in order to find out who did (or didn't) do what.
>>>"...it should be an opt-in service."
Bzzzz.
Google (or any other photographer) does not need permission to capture the sunlight bouncing off your house, if they perform that act while standing on public property (the street runs 20 feet away; it's easy to photo my house). I may not like having my house on google.com, but I'm sure someday a Google van will drive past my place and snap a photo. Oh well! They have not violated my rights; they have not done anything wrong.
They don't need my permission.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
I looked at the freaking pictures. The point some of you keep missing is that in many places those road surface transitions are completely meaningless. Gravel -> concrete only means that someone petitioned the local gov't to pave that part of the public road. It has no correlation whatsoever with the legal status of that road.
OK, maybe that's different wherever you're from. Great. That doesn't change the fact that many of us live in places where we wouldn't have thought twice about such things because they're all over the place.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In this specific instance, if you look at the picture, at the point in spacetime that the vehicle being driven by this particular driver reached the particular gravel/concrete transition in the specific driveway we're discussing, this particular driver would have had to have been somewhat less intelligent than the tree to the left of the driveway to not realize he had left a roadway.
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
These people are suing Google for putting their driveway and house in Google StreetView, and now with all the Internet coverage they're getting 100x more publicity and scrutiny than their few images in the Google database would have gotten them.
How about asking Google nicely to take the images down first?
Exactly!! There's probably a street sign too. Hopefully some kids will come along and steal their bullshit street sign.
And. what. should. he. have. done. about. it? It looks as though he turned around at the first possible chance, which turns out to have been their driveway.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
*sigh* The old, boring trick of appealing to current legislation. Laws are changed when they don't protect the rights of the public don't you know? Its like SPAM, there wasn't a law saying that I can't send hundreds of unsolicited email to your inbox. The law got changed because that's annoying, more exactly, because it's detrimental to the public good.
I have already stated that there are a lot of good reasons to allow the public to "capture the sunlight bouncing off your house" from journalism to mere accidental capture. This, is different.
I guess it's useless arguing with you, when the Google telescreens enable GoogleStreetViewOnLive I know you will be there cheering for them and defending them.
The world is getting uglier and uglier for the non-exhibitionist.
But... the future refused to change.
Your response is similar to the post below but much, much more sane.
The there is a little blame for the driver for working at Google but I realize he must get a living somehow. The there is a little blame for the map maker but I understand anyone can commit mistakes. There is a lot to blame Google for starting a project so obviously prone to abuse with little added value (because if I wanted my home address indexed along photos of my house I could use my blog) but I can see lotsa people wanting Google to exhibit they home.
I blame the asshole who decided to make it an opt-out. Like the Safari "upgrade" to iTunes, or every other stupid opt-out, this is yet another instance of "let's sell them something they don't want, for our own monetary gain, hopping they are too shy, ignorant, lazy or distracted to do something about it".
But... the future refused to change.
FTFA, since you obviously didn't read it, or you would have seen the URLs. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0407081google2.html It's VERY CLEARLY on private property, and very clearly right the fuck in front of the garage. Feet from the house.
What is humor if not pain tempered by time?
They're still in beta.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"