Google Begins Blurring Faces In Street View

mytrip notes a News.com article reporting that Google has begun blurring faces in its Street View service, which has spawned privacy concerns since its introduction last year. Google has been working for a couple of years to advance the state of the art of face recognition. Quoting News.com: 'The technology uses a computer algorithm to scour Google's image database for faces, then blurs them, said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps, in an interview at the Where 2.0 conference...' Google wrote about the program in their Lat/Long blog."

Comments

Can you focus out-of-focus pictures

[thomasdz]

Sort-of off topic, but also sort-of on topic...
If you have an out of focus picture, can you manipulate the image mathematically to put it "in focus" or is there some information lost in the out-of-focusness so you can't do this.
And if so, with the appropriate app, will you be able to un-blur the people's faces in Google Street View?

Re:Kudos to Google!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious why they don't just blur the entire picture.

I only use street-view to figure out what building to look for, or what a particular intersection looks like... I don't need extreme detail for that.

Does anyone really need high-res (able to identify people and license plates) pics in streetview?

What privacy concerns?

[fahrbot-bot]

Google has begun blurring faces in its Street View service, which has spawned privacy concerns since its introduction last year.

My understanding is that people in public should have no expectations of privacy. Or is that just a U.S. thing? Furthermore, as their algorithms get better, will Google skip blurring the faces of famous people? They certainly have no expectations of privacy in public.

Re:What privacy concerns?

[thomasdz]

My understanding is that people in public should have no expectations of privacy.

That's an overly simplified view. Are you saying that in public it should be legal to be able to take pictures of anybody from any angle/viewpoint? (eg: upskirt)
Can I take my parabolic microphone and start recording people's conversations 100 meters away and then post the conversations on the Internet?
Why can't people walk around with no clothes on in public if they aren't doing anything weird or being "sexual" (whatever that means)?
If there are no expectations of privacy, then what's the problem? (sarcasm)

I would modify your "no expectations of privacy in public" to "reduced expectations of privacy in public"

Re:What privacy concerns?

[AxemRed]

You're getting away from the point though. Google isn't taking up-skirt pictures. They aren't using a telephoto lens. They aren't recording private conversations. And no one is walking around naked! Google is taking pictures from a normal vantage point.

Are we going to start going after the newspapers and TV stations too? After all, they take plenty of videos and pictures of places where people and standing around in the background and may not realize that they're being photographed or taped.

Re:What privacy concerns?

[AxemRed]

...and to bring up another point, I just took a vacation to New Orleans. I took several pictures of my friends in Jackson Square, and there were plenty of random people standing around in the background. Did I somehow violate their privacy by posting my vacation pictures on Flickr?

Re:What privacy concerns?

[joe_bruin]

The expectation for most of us is that there is no random, permanent, publicly displayed record of where we go and what we do, regardless of whether we do it in public or not. That is, in public we don't have privacy, but we generally have anonymity, and street view busts this. Yes, it's entirely possible that someone will take a picture of you and it will end up on the news or the internet. But for people doing something that is generally not newsworthy but they may want to keep private, there is an expectation that this will not happen. This is the same reasoning that makes people opposed to RFID tracking. Yes, someone can follow you around in their car and make notes of what you do, but that is different from a systematic logging of where you are which could happen at any time and any place.

What if a Google camera catches you: ...buying drugs? ...walking into your ex girlfriend's house? ...entering an abortion clinic? ...picking your nose? ...hanging out in front of a gay bar? ...attending a communist party meeting? ...golfing on Sunday? ...doing something you don't want your friends and neighbors finding out about?

Most of these things may not mean anything to you, but they may mean a lot to some people. Now, if Google announced "we will be taking pictures of this street at 4pm on Monday, don't be there if you don't want your picture taken", that would be a perfectly reasonable solution to this whole thing.

Re:What privacy concerns?

[BasharTeg]

Google is taking pictures from a normal vantage point.

Yeah, a normal vantage point if you're standing on top of a van looking into everyone's backyard.

Re:What privacy concerns?

[croddy]

It is a gross oversimplification to say that once in public, one should have no expectation of privacy.

People have to go into public to do normal things. This does not mean that any level whatsoever of data gathering on your public activities is acceptable. Certainly would you see the privacy implications if Google were to attach a GPS unit to your car and record where you drive -- sure, you're driving in public, but that does not mean it would be okay for Google to record detailed records of your trips. Likewise it would be inappropriate for Google to follow you with a video camera. Perhaps you don't, but a lot of folks feel that intermittent still images taken by Google's drive-by surveillance crews are also too invasive.

The advancement of photographic and image processing technology has introduced privacy concerns that existing laws could not foresee. The ease with which massive amounts of personally invasive information can be gathered, analyzed, and then distributed in bulk has changed the way we should think about privacy -- even privacy in public.

Re:What privacy concerns?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And the upskirt stuff, yes crosses a privacy line but thats done very stealthily, taking pictures from a giant van with cameras on top of it doesn't really resemble stealth.

So it would be OK to go around taking upskirt shots as long as you told people you were doing it, even if they didn't want you to?

Re:What privacy concerns?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Exactly. Regardless of whether one agrees with your particular hypothetical example, there are at least five qualitative differences between what is observed by a casual passer-by going about their business in a public place and the intentional, systematic collection(1) of a permanent(2), searchable(3) database of pictures that will be made available to the public(4) by a commercial entity(5).

Natural expectations have, at least until recently, been that public behaviour is subject to the first kind of scrutiny, but not the second. If the latter is also to be considered, then privacy laws may need to change to keep up with people's expectations. That may in turn mean, for example, that photographers will have to give up some of their current legal freedom to snap away in public, in order to safeguard the principle of people having a reasonable expectation of privacy in their lives. The interesting question is where the balance lies: in a world with mass storage, fast communication, ever more invasive surveillance technology, and ever more powerful image and sound processing algorithms, what reasonable expectations of privacy should the law protect?

Re:What privacy concerns?

[AxemRed]

This is a very big and important difference. Google isn't taking a handful of photos as art, or even as casual snapshots. Why should the case law that protects common, everyday photography also cover what they're doing?

Or a better question... Why shouldn't the law protect it? Are people really that afraid of being in a random photograph taken on the street?

Re:What privacy concerns?

[pclminion]

He's completely on point. The parent poster asked if we should have any expectations of privacy while in public. He shows that yes, we do have some expectations on privacy; the discussion is thus about what those expectations should be.

It doesn't need to be discussed. It's quite clear cut. You have an expectation that people won't photograph up your skirt, because there is a law saying you can't do that. You have an expectation that people won't listen in on your conversations with a mic, because there's a law against eavesdropping without knowledge. You really don't have any right to privacy in a public space aside from what the law grants you, and the law does in fact grant you certain privacies.

So we really don't need to discuss whether you can do X, Y, or Z in public. Look at the law. That's really the bottom line.

A newspaper can for instance not just take a shot of someone on the street, then use that shot for an advertisement (or sell it to an ad agency) - their relative freedom of using other persons likeness is limited to actual news.

Of course a newspaper could do that if they wanted. The reason they don't isn't because it's illegal, but because they would get their ass sued off by the person they photographed. The difference is real, and important.

People can be recognized by their clothes etc

[Anonymous Coward]

People can be recognized by their clothes and build and hands and shoes and bags and cars and other people they are with and the locations they visit usually and...

so where are Brin and Page's houses?

[EllynGeek]

And kids, and vehicles, and visitors...this is such utter crap. "Do no evil" indeed. You can't just say "do no evil", you have to actually do no evil to have any credibility.

Why not blank?

[nameer]

Why blur? Haven't we learned yet that the goal is no information, not less information? O.K., this is probably not one of those cases where someone will go to the trouble of trying to deconvolute the image. But really, just drop a white circle over the face and be done with it. Blurring gains nothing and leaves trace information.

Re:Kudos to Google!

[TubeSteak]

IMO governments have to be as transparent as possible for a good reason. It's a different story if you as a "normal" person walk by a brothel or sit in a park (half-) naked. It all depends on the time the google truck passes and I don't see a reason why we have a right to see these people the moment they were photographed... The government should be as transparent as possible because it is of and for the public.
Walking by a brothel or sitting in a park (half-)naked also happens to be in public.

Why wouldn't "we have a right to see these people the moment they were photographed..." in public?

Re:Kudos to Google!

[fmobus]

On a slightly off-topic note. This picture was taken on "Escondido Road". "Escondido" is Portuguese (and also Spanish?) for "hidden" - which they aren't anymore =)

Re:Kudos to Google!

[AxemRed]

It all depends on the time the google truck passes and I don't see a reason why we have a right to see these people the moment they were photographed...

You're looking at it backwards. There doesn't need to be a reason for us to have the right to do or see something. But there does have to be a good reason to take a right away.