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

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?

[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?

[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.

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?