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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?
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.
1: it is assumed that a driveway can be reasonably used at will to turn a vehicle around.
2: tresspassing is not automatic. In most states even when properly posted, you can still go onto private land and go up to the front door. Even salesman can ring bells at homes posted no soliciting in SC. The onyl poewr you have is to ask them to leave. It only becomes tresspassing if they refuse to or if they return later. Neither of these conditions happened.
3: the proerty itself was not marked, posted, fenced with a gate, not in any other way abvious that is was private. I can't see in any of the pictures the van took where their so called private road sign exists, let alone complies with their state's laws concerning use of proper singage (including regionally accepted or universal images to assist those who can't read).
4: all they had to do was ask for the images to be removed.
5: the engineer in the vehicle has no control over the images being taken, not can he catalog or document them. This is ON PURPOSE to prevent tampering with the image feeds, and to keep the image recorder in sync with GPS information.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
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."