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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."
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.
This is actually an incredibly complicate issue.
It is certainly not the case that somebody's driveway is sacrosanct territory, especially if it is the only approach to the house. What do you do if you're a vacuum salesman? You walk up the driveway and ring the bell. And, by the way, this means you can see into their windows. It doesn't mean you can stand in the bushes and peer into their windows; in that case you are considered to have intruded into the home's "curtilage", which is a vaguely defined region around parts of the house which is treated as almost equivalent to the interior.
But the driveway is not curtilage, nor is the front walk. You certainly are entitled to the stray photons that enter your eye as you traverse the areas of the property that are not off limits.
The legal doctrines covering privacy are, in the US at least, utter rubbish. What's more, patching the obvious problems with those doctrines only make them more confusing and imponderable. There's too much emphasis on disclosure as the significant even in any privacy situation. What you are entitled to see or hear, you are entitled to share, unless you have some kind of special legal duty to the parties you see or overhear. You are also, with certain restrictions and stipulations, entitled to record things your are entitled to perceive, and then to publish them.
And that' what we've got here. Obviously, this is the kind of thing that shouldn't be allowed, although I don't think there should be huge damages paid out. But I wouldn't be surprised if Google doesn't win if this comes to court. The state of privacy law is such that it common sense has very predictive value for how a borderline situation like this is adjudicated. Of course common sense notions of privacy are utter rubbish too.
The problem is that we're too concerned with the mechanics of disclosure and secret keeping. We're not concerned enough with personal autonomy.
Suppose you are a collector of erotic art. Very tacky erotic art. You don't much care if the vacuum salesman heading up the walk catches a glimpse of the very prominent sculpture you have in your living room. Nor are you much concerned that he probably tells other salesmen about the crazy people who had a gold plated lingam eight feet high in their living room.
But you might care if a potential employer could find that out by doing a Google search on your address. It's an issue of autonomy; you don't want people in a position to exercise power over you making decisions based on information that is irrelevant or which they don't understand.
That's really the essential personal interest you have in your privacy, but it's not weighed at all in privacy law, except possibly as part of evaluating damages.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.