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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.
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.
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.
From the fine article:
... the Streetview driver drove down a named road marked on his map, which wasn't posted as private, wasn't obviously private, and ended up having to find a place to turn around at the end ... which just happened to be in the driveway of these homeowners. So what? As a homeowner myself, I hardly find this outrageous ... people turn around in my driveway all the time. And although Streetview has missed my house by a block, I'm not going to be outraged when they finally come back.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0407081google2.html
I se no evidence of "private road" signs, nor do I see "no trespassing" signs. The house is certainly not visible from the main street, and it's not really visible where the "gravel" portion of the driveway becomes "concrete", which was supposed to be some big tipoff.
I fail to be impressed
Well, from the way the images depict it, the "road" he was on was a single lane gravel road, that according to his GPS, the map for which is from local city assessors offices, that was in fact a road. When he realized it ended in a driveway, he likely though to turn around in the nice concrete pad where it was convenient instead of trying to mull an 95 point K-turn with a big van on gravel roads with no shoulders...
You likely would have done the same.
The driver has no control of the cameras in the vehicle. He could not turn them off to do this maneuver.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
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.
"They *should have* recognized a clear property line at the concrete drive."
Bullshit. Roads go from paved to unpaved to paved all of the time. If they were really that concerned, they would have had a "Public Road Ends" sign put up. The driver was following a public map of a public road and went a few yards too far - $5 will get you $20 it happens to these folks all of the time, with people making wrong turns.
These people haven't even asked Google to take it down - why are everyone ELSE's panties in a twist?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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
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.
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)
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."