Google's Streetview Seen As Culturally Insensitive In Japan

Jim O'Connell writes "Global Voices has a translation of an excellent open letter to Google by Osamu Higuchi, explaining that Street view is too invasive for Japanese traditional values when used in residential areas. Having lived here for ten years, most recently in an older residential area, I can attest to its accuracy — Living in such close proximity to your neighbors, it becomes necessary to 'not look' at everything that you might be able see from a place such as the street, where you may have a legal right to be. The cultural boundaries are simply different than those of the US."

Comments

Same here.

[WK2]

The cultural boundaries are simply different than those of the US.

It's that way here in the U.S. too. It is impolite to take photos in people's windows. Google just doesn't care.

Re:Same here.

[overcaffein8d]

yeah, wasn't there a couple awhile back that sued google about this?

Re:Same here.

[Z00L00K]

And it applies to many other places in the world too.

Maybe time for Google to be a bit more careful about what they look at.

Re:Same here.

[martin-boundary]

Google just doesn't care.

What this really reminds us of is that meatspace is fundamentally different from cyberspace. On the net, we've evolved the ROBOTS.TXT for just this problem, and everybody agrees that websites aren't private by default, unless the owners explicitly say so. Google is a net company, and views the world as if it was an extension of the internet.

But the real world is not like the net, and in the real world the ROBOTS.TXT convention is inverted: the onus is not on the people to inform Google which data is out of bounds, instead the onus is on Google to ask every possible person which data is public. As a result, Google's company culture is fundamentally ill suited for meatspace information gathering.

The streetview example is only one of a long line of self inflicted troubles Google has brought upon itself. Here are some other examples:

When Google started scanning books and offering them online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it went to a library, everything was available to them unless specifically prohibited, just like on a website. But the real world doesn't work like the web, and Google got sued by publishers. The correct approach was to ask the publishers for permission, for each and every book.

When Google started offering news stories written by others online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it's on somebody's website, they can use it unless the ROBOTS.TXT says otherwise. But in the real world, those websites were only licensed to display syndicated news stories from the big organizations (Reuters, AP, AFP,...), and Google got rightly sued. The correct approach was for Google to license the material from Reuters, AP, AFP etc. themselves, before showing the material to their users.

When Google stated that Gmail wouldn't necessarily delete peoples' emails even if they shut their accounts, they got in trouble. In the real world, emails are considered private by most people, and just because they use Google's service doesn't mean they want Google to keep everything.

These examples show that Google's netroots are both an advantage (when competing in net technologies) and also a disadvantage (when trying to enter markets where the internet rules don't map well to reality). The world is more complex than what Google's management thinks.

Re:Same here.

[EdIII]

Exactly. A total bullshit statement, pardon my french. It is not that Google does not care either. It is a pervasive campaign by government and corporations to remove all expectations of privacy from anywhere EXCEPT private property that is literally 100% covered from view. Google is not supposed to "be evil". Yeah right. I'll believe that when they stop keeping logs well past 12 months. I don't mean to bash specifically on Google or anything, but they don't seem to have a stellar track record with respect to consumer's rights and expectations of privacy.

That kind of behavior is not remotely consistent with our cultural values. Our cultural values are diverse as well, as we are a nation of immigrants. I don't know a single person that is comfortable being on a security camera while in their backyard or even in the front yard. It's just not acceptable.

Obviously where the US and Japan differ, is that the Japanese still strongly fight for their expectations of privacy or "cultural values" while in the US there is a sense of apathy and hopelessness. Those that would dare to speak up and passionately fight for anonymity, privacy, and just plain decent respect for other people's boundaries get labeled as subversive, unpatriotic, fanatical, and paranoid.

For the RECORD, I would have to say that AMERICAN VALUES (which anybody can have regardless of nationality, race, gender, etc.) is STRONGLY supportive of both privacy and anonymity. We like to to be free, and do exactly what we want when we want it, within reason of course. We don't believe that we should have to walk around in public or private identifying ourselves to anyone that asks, especially when we are just minding our own business. If someone is watching us, then we want to know who it is. There is a lot more too it, but it is not even remotely close to how I personally feel.

I guess I just resent the implication since it makes it sound like we are a totalitarian fascist country devoid of any of the freedoms we once cherished, fought, and died to protect. I guess I resent more that maybe, it is in fact, a correct assessment and that we ended up exporting all of our freedom and democracy while losing it all.

Re:Same here.

[shoemilk]

This is a country that blurs out buildings on TV shows so people won't know where they are. It's ridiculous sometimes. The entire screen will be a giant blur except for the staffer's head floating in the middle. On the news, if a building is shown, half the time it'll be from an odd angle that won't allow you to make out the surrounding area or blurred out all together.

Re:Same here.

[Tim C]

Google is a net company, and views the world as if it was an extension of the internet.

I'd buy that for a first or second offence, but you then go on to list a number of similar offences; Google really should have learnt its lesson by now.

Not only that, but Google is just a company, and a company is made up of people - it is the people who make the decisions. Those people really should appreciate the difference between the online and offline worlds, and should realise that the vast majority of people value their privacy.

Re:Same here.

[cheater512]

We recently got Street View in Australia and I honestly cant see what the privacy fuss is about.

My house is on it. It looks pretty good.
Nothing invading my privacy at all.

Re:Same here.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The fundamental difference is about opt-in vs opt-out.

In the real world, you didn't opt-in. As far as we know, you didn't choose to be born, or where to be born, or who your parents would be. This is fundamental to the truths we hold to be self-evident; that all are created equal, and should thus be granted equal rights at birth -- that only through your own actions, after birth, can you limit your rights.

However, on the Internet, you absolutely did opt-in, in the most fundamental way -- there is no basic human necessity to use a computer, let alone place information on a publicly accessible webserver. Therefore, we can assume that when people opt-in to these communities, they've had the opportunity to learn about how ROBOTS.TXT works -- or simply to assume that Google will index everything.

I'm not sure the change is that fundamental, though. How much opportunity do we have in the real world? There is enough empty space, both in civilization and outside it. Structures are easy to build. It is therefore possible for most people to be able to hide themselves.

I would argue that, within a city (the only place "street view" has a point), people are generally citizens, who have generally chosen to play by the rules -- and one of these rules is, quite simply, that the street (and anything it can see) is public property and fair game.

Briefly:

When Google started scanning books and offering them online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it went to a library, everything was available to them unless specifically prohibited, just like on a website. But the real world doesn't work like the web, and Google got sued by publishers.

Well, except the real world does work that way. I don't know about you, but my public library includes a copy machine. I don't know if I've seen scanners on their computers, but I have seen printers, and I wouldn't be surprised.

I have never, in my life, gone up and asked for permission to copy a single page. Nor have I seen anyone else ask.

In other words, it's a question of magnitude, and possibly of commercial interest. I'm not xeroxing the entire book, even once, and I'm certainly not putting ads on each copied page to make a profit.

When Google started offering news stories written by others online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it's on somebody's website, they can use it unless the ROBOTS.TXT says otherwise. But in the real world, those websites were only licensed to display syndicated news stories from the big organizations (Reuters, AP, AFP,...), and Google got rightly sued.

In this case, I would argue that it's the real-world rules which are at fault -- given that it is trivial to block a particular bot from indexing your pages (or even all bots), and it is also trivial to demand that Google stop indexing your site -- there is quite possibly no human involvement from them in such a demand.

If these technical solutions are inadequate, it's certainly not because Google wishes to "pirate" news stories. A simple solution would be to talk to Google, either before or during the suit, about a technical solution -- maybe ask (kindly) that Google respect some new way of using ROBOTS.TXT to allow indexing, for search purposes only, but not syndication.

When Google stated that Gmail wouldn't necessarily delete peoples' emails even if they shut their accounts, they got in trouble. In the real world, emails are considered private by most people, and just because they use Google's service doesn't mean they want Google to keep everything.

This is, again, a case of misunderstanding on the part of people using Gmail. If these aren't in the terms of service, that would be the simple solution.

Take the case of the Craigslist troll. While I might, in good faith, expect that a kinky BDSM photo sent to a prospectiv

Re:Same here.

[wisty]

There is a technical solution to a social problem then. Everyone gets chipped with RFID, and can link their ID to a robots.txt.

Re:Same here.

[houghi]

In other words, we have an opt-out for websites instead of an opt-in.

Re:Same here.

[zeromorph]

Ok, then the link please.

Re:Same here.

[Feanturi]

You didn't happen to be dealing with a personal issue of some kind on the front lawn or sidewalk when their camera truck went by. If you had been, perhaps you would think differently. I saw a street view image where it was quite clear that someone was buying drugs from a man in a car at the side of the street. Assuming that you like a bit of pot now and then, and not harming anybody, would you still feel comfortable knowing that you're on Street View for all to see, getting your supply? Or, maybe your wife gets curious to see what the house is like on Street View, and there you are chatting up some hottie in jogging shorts. Not that I'm against Street View, I think it rocks, but it could be better if there were an automated way of removing the non-permanent features such as people and cars since they are not necessary for mapping anyhow.

Re:Same here.

[wirefarm]

I should have put in the submission another example:
Japanese houses have a little area inside the front door called a Genkan which is where you are supposed to take off your shoes. Since this little area is "dirty", it's not really considered to be inside your house, even though it physically is. (It's sort of a dirt "air-lock", if you will.)

Anyway, since it's really not considered to be inside, it's somewhat socially-acceptable to open the door and step inside a stranger's house that far. Many times I've been surprised by a delivery man or NHK collection lady who stepped inside before announcing their presence.

As I said, different rules apply. Neither better nor worse, just different.

Still, if I walked around my neighborhood and took pictures of people's laundry and futons hanging above the street, I have no doubt I'd get hauled off to the local police station.

Re:Same here.

[zeromorph]

So my personal ROBOT.TXT for Streetview would be this hoodie? It says:

No pictures!

I object to any recording, storage, broadcast, and other use of my image.

This imprint on this garment is machine-made, therefore no signature is required.

If Google and other goggling companies would respect that I would wear it. I would also add an barcode or DataMatrix to it and the front side of my house if that is what is needed so that they can read and respect it.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't it the US where sometime back a man got sued by somebody who walked by his home and through the window saw him masturbate?

Re:Same here.

[chip_s_ahoy]

Anything that can be seen from the middle of the street, with Google's camera, or eyeballs, ain't got nothin' to do with privacy.

Get off your American Values high horse.

Someone shoving their (cat, ass, sex act,) into the front of the house plate glass window is not fighting for their privacy. Or American Values.

Re:Same here.

[cheater512]

What if a cop drives by while buying your supply, or your wife comes outside and sees you chatting with a hottie?
No difference. The sidewalk is not a private place.

Anyway its not like the Google cars are hard to spot.

The problem with automatically removing the movable objects is it takes quite a lot of frames with them in different positions.
While the pics before and after a particular picture can help you'd still need about 30 seconds worth of photos to let the objects move.

Re:Same here.

[Dachannien]

On the net, we've evolved the ROBOTS.TXT for just this problem

I've found that the CURTAINS.TXT convention works pretty well in meatspace.

Re:Same here.

[Starayo]

There's a difference between me linking you my house and it being up there for people to look at. When you pass by my house on street view, unless you're specifically looking for it, you don't know it's my house.

Personally, I love it, and my mum was thrilled with being able to find her house on street view. One great use that immediately comes to mind is using it to show people which house is mine on invitations and such, since it can be hard to find...

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

When Google started offering news stories written by others online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it's on somebody's website, they can use it unless the ROBOTS.TXT says otherwise.

So, what you're saying is that when Google indexed websites (happening to carry news stories, although that's irrelevant), they behaved like a net company, and that's somehow a bad thing?

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

G my my - a domain that does not exist to GoDaddy.

I don't think that you have even used this like I remember - because I read tech with this.

You really need to really must realize - you cannot search with this. If I am not mistaken, the scanner does not work like some at Adobe may think. If I am mistaken, AP cannot screw Reuters at all with this. Remember - this writing is gemmy, and even though it does make the news paper, this is all over the internet.

If I am not mistaken, you bring up the years old All Advantage system. You really could not screw the ad banner

Re:Same here.

[EdIII]

Really? Are you sure?

Well then why don't you try standing in the street with a camera trained on my property and we will see how long that lasts.

The fact you think it has nothing to do with privacy only shows how brainwashed you have become to EXPECT that it is not private. There is a big difference between a passerby, and FARKING SURVEILLANCE THAT ENDS UP ON THE INTERNET FOR EVERYONE TO SEE.

Bottom line, I don't suggest you or anyone else tries to put a camera in front of my house.

Oh, and even in public spaces people have reasonable expectations to not be video taped. What's next? Surveillance in national parks? Hell, why not just regular parks in the city. Oh, wait. They already do that anyways.

I guarantee that if you go back a decade or two and just walked up to somebody in a public space and started snapping photos of them you would probably get into an altercation before long. You are actually part of the problem now, people that have lost all sense of what boundaries we used to have.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the Government is wringing its hands behind closed doors about how it got Google to invade everyone's privacy. I think the only way you could have sounded worse is if Elvis and a cabal of hook-nosed shadows were behind it all.

Re:Same here.

[TheGratefulNet]

It's that way here in the U.S. too. It is impolite to take photos in people's windows. Google just doesn't care.

they are not an entity that is capable of 'caring'. they are a business and they have investors and profits to manage.

ALL else is just a cover for growing the empire and for selling eyeballs to sponsors.

I think of the mistakes scientists made when they allowed various inventions 'out' and didn't really think:

just because you *can* does not mean you *should*

so even though its technically possible to drive a truck around and photo everything in sight, does not mean you want to PUT that on the web.

btw, I'm a semi-pro photographer and so I'm well aware of the 'if its in public, its not private' rule but there's STILL a fine line between just roaming around and capturing EVERYTHING and using technology respectfully.

again its a case of society not thinking things thru and just jumping in with both feet first before doing a real social analysis of what the fallout will be.

this shit makes me trust google less and less each time some 'episode' comes up where google is not acting very responsibly (yes, like CONTINUING to keep logs even though we, as a community, have not been BENEFITED by their keeping of logs; in fact it harms us all and yet they still keep logs 'for the man to review' when the man comes knocking).

google: "we help assault your privacy. and whatcha gonna do 'bout it, huh?"

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slaughter on 9th ave ?
Maybe?
What will Google do when they stumble upon and film
Drug dealers drug dealer Bosses ?, Criminals , and red necks ?
maybe the question is what will the above do?

Re:Same here.

[KGIII]

There, like here, they'd have to come on to private property to take pictures with any effect. If I see a Google truck/car/van then you can pretty much rest assured that they've violated the law so much that they are going to have issues. (It is not a simple matter of turning around, they can take pictures of anything they can see from the legal road all that they want and I won't mind a bit but they'll never actually make it here.)

Culture vs. law.... If it isn't illegal than that culture should have passed laws to protect itself or should enlist the government's aide in ensuring their values are maintained. If that means enacting laws to restrict this in the future and even retroactively have the practiced banned then they should do so.

Not all cultures are the same and, really, they don't need to be. If they were then where would be the culture?

Re:Same here.

[KGIII]

You may not but other people may because of cultural values or, well, for any reason that they see fit.

My own opinion is that in my country if they can see it from the road without violating the law (private property - marked drives and such) then I haven't any issue with it personally but I can see why some people may object.

Re:Same here.

[rhakka]

so, how are you going to survive, when everything a person says, hears, or sees can be PERSONALLY recorded, and uploaded to the internet in real time? without so much as saying "cheese"?

the day is coming, my friend. and nothing will stop it. personally, while I recognize it will be a great change, it is also a great opportunity.

'Street view' is the most watered down part of the INEVITABLE future that is coming. recording technology is getting cheaper, smaller, all the time. as is storage capacity. the day will come that you only truly forget a memory by choice.... but if others don't share that choice, you can't erase it utterly. and your "memory" will be transferrable... what expectation of privacy do you have from my memory?

I suggest you worry less about privacy on the street and consider what will happen when the person you are sleeping with only has to blink to share this experience you just had with thousands.

Re:Same here.

[LordLucless]

What this really reminds us of is that meatspace is fundamentally different from cyberspace. On the net, we've evolved the ROBOTS.TXT for just this problem, and everybody agrees that websites aren't private by default, unless the owners explicitly say so.

And in the real world, we evolved curtains.

Re:Same here.

[Teun]

I would also add an barcode or DataMatrix to it and the front side of my house if that is what is needed so that they can read and respect it.

Please note zeromorph lives where the picture shows a hole in the apartment block.

Yep you just regained your privacy.

Re:Same here.

[cyborch]

Culture vs. law.... If it isn't illegal than that culture should have passed laws to protect itself

Not all countries are like America. Some other countries don't make a habit of sueing each other, but would prefer more civilized approaches. Like, for instance writing a letter and asking them to respect local culture.

Re:Same here.

[Migity]

When you pass by my house on street view, unless you're specifically looking for it, you don't know it's my house.

Yup...just like if someone were really driving down your street.

Re:Same here.

[langelgjm]

What if a cop drives by while buying your supply, or your wife comes outside and sees you chatting with a hottie? No difference.

No difference? You've got to be kidding me. The difference is that a photo is taken, and made publicly accessible online for who knows how long. Cops and your wife aren't doing that.

The problem with automatically removing the movable objects is it takes quite a lot of frames with them in different positions. While the pics before and after a particular picture can help you'd still need about 30 seconds worth of photos to let the objects move.

I don't buy it that Google can't purchase or develop image recognition software that could eliminate or at least blur people and cars. I've heard of software that blurs windows to outdoor security cameras, and that seems like a harder task to accomplish.

Re:Same here.

[zeromorph]

Apartment block, row house, don't take me to seriously here. Nevertheless, all the small attacks on one's privacy over the last 15 years, as a sum, give me the creeps.

The guys who sell the hoodie also have nice stickers one can put into restaurant or roadhouse toilet cabins:

For reasons of hygiene, this toilet is monitored by video.

Someday we'll be there...

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are not street view images made from a vehicle driving down the street with a camera ?
If Japan had concerns Why didn't Japan simply tell Goggle no!

Re:Same here.

[Darundal]

The issue with the books wasn't one or two pages for reference or other purposes, it was the fact that it was the whole book.

Re:Same here.

[smussman]

Exactly. A total bullshit statement, pardon my Anglo-Saxon.

fix'd

Re:Same here.

[aplusjimages]

We got streetview here in Jacksonville, FL, but sadly Google didn't come down my street. Instead they passed it by 1 block. Boo.

I don't see the issue also. What does it matter if people can look at a picture of your home taken at one small span in time. It's not like if you are getting undressed in front of an open window now people will see that on Google maps. We're talking about people being picky about a situation that isn't out of hand, and one that I doubt will ever get out of hand by Google. Is this really an issue to get worked up about.

Re:Same here.

[aplusjimages]

The lesson here: stop doing things that you consider private out in the public. It's like complaining that a friend told someone else about your secret.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Any systematic mass surveillance by a single group is something to at least be concerned about. Assuming that the biggest threat to privacy in human history (Google) will never cause any ill effects is, to be blunt, naive. Most human cultures naturally value privacy, even if a few individuals in those cultures don't care, and there are plenty of good reasons we have evolved that way. The fact that in recent years technology has reached the point where mass surveillance, storage and searching have become realistically possible does not mean such an activity is harmless.

Re:Same here.

[baboo_jackal]

That's an excellent letter. According to the author, residential streets in Japan are treated as a "common area" - i.e., they're used for excess storage, the residents feel it's their responsibility for cleaning/snow-shoveling, etc, and (the funniest, but also most telling part), apparently old dudes hang out there wearing nothing but underwear.

The issue is something that anyone, anywhere, regardless of "culture," understands: There exist places where the line between "public" and "private" are slightly blurred - in the states, this might be a row of adjoining, unfenced backyards, or maybe an apartment common area, etc. Anyhow it's not a matter of "culture", it's a matter of geography and population density. Put Americans or Europeans in high density, tiny houses with tiny streets, and see what happens (my guess, the same).

Re:Same here.

[ozphx]

Actually its interesting you bring this up. The google-van cameras can see over my fence.

Not sure what the law says about walking around with a camera on a pole. I would think that I have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in my front yard if I have a 6ft fence up.

Kinda tempting to run this past the privacy advocates here. Would be funny to make google run past everything again with a shorter pole :P

Re:Same here.

[ozphx]

I posted earlier that I have a 6ft fence, designed to give me a private front yard. Google drives past with a camera on an 8ft pole. Is this respecting my FENCE.TXT?

Re:Same here.

[drinkypoo]

The simple truth is that there is not and never has been any expectation of privacy in a public place. That's what public means. Every cop car drives around with a camera in the front grill which is potentially on 24/7 (in some jurisdictions it is required to be so.) Every asshole out there (including me) has a camera phone and a legal right to use it on public property or for that matter, in any place which is treated as public property, which in the US includes shopping malls and hotels without a door guard (not as in "welcome to the hotel", but "where is your room key.")

Bottom line: don't do things you want to keep private in public. The law is crafted thus already, and with good reason: there is no way to maintain your privacy in public. As such, anyone who thinks they are entitled to it there is delusional.

I have a legal right to take pictures of the front of your house, and of you if you are in the window, whether your wabbly bits are flapping in the breeze or not.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also people and courts tend to conveniently forget that senses (and cameras) are entirely passive. If you're looking across the street or across the cosmos, that isn't your "Will" stretching out across that distance, that's light pouring into your eyeballs.

Flash photography and active infrared are the only exceptions I can think of with camera technology. Even x-rays have to be blocked by bone before striking film, rather than reflect back to the origin point. The morality question becomes where is the camera pointed, and when is the record captured. I don't agree with how many paparazzi operate, but if they don't set foot on private property, the "harm" does not exist until those photos are made public.

We have been assailed with light for far longer than we've been assailed with RF waves. I have a fence so I don't have to look at my neighbours unless they're jumping on the damn trampoline. I'm not choosing to invade your privacy in a Starbucks just because your e-mail is brushing past my shoulder. And like other posters have stated, curtains make a pretty good encryption method.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Would you consider it reasonable to have to keep your curtains closed all the time, if some weird-looking person was standing around outside your home every night trying to look through your windows?

Or would you call the police under those circumstances?

I bet I know what most people would do.

Re:Same here.

[brusk]

Curtains block EVERYONE, not just Google. ROBOTS.TXT blocks spiders, not browsers. What if I want my neighbors to see in, but don't want photos posted on a searchable website? We can have much more precise control in cyberspace, and it would be good to have it in meatspace. Moreover, curtains block my view OUT--it would be as if ROBOTS.TXT limited my ability to browse others' sites.

Re:Same here.

[db32]

Yes, because we always need more laws to protect culture. See banning gay marriage for example. In fact, cultural beliefs should almost be banned from law for this type of reason. I mean, imagine how great society would be if we banned sex before marriage, maybe even tacked on the death penalty for it. You know, like all of those theological nightmare countries that do that now to protect their culture.

You do understand that our nation is so completely and totally fucked up right now because of people like you demanding that the government "should do something about that". Our society has given up all of its responsibility and demand that someone else (government) take care of them in all aspects of their life. So as long as you will stand there and say government should do something...you have no right to bitch when government does things you don't like. Government was supposed to have limited power and we fucked it up severely.

Re:Same here.

[langelgjm]

I am continually amazed by the fact that so many people fail to see a significant difference between any individual (you, me, a cop) taking photos or video in a public place, and a company like Google taking photos across cities and permanently posting those photos on a publicly available website.

There is a reasonable expectation that individuals, even police, are not going to be driving around entire cities continually taking photos and posting them permanently online. Our current laws and behavior are based on that expectation.

The fact is, Google's Street View is doing something very different than what you are talking about, and on a much larger scale. While it may not be illegal (and who knows, state laws probably vary as to whether it is or not), it's certainly novel and unexpected, and it's not at all unreasonable for people to wonder if it's appropriate.

Re:Same here.

[nomadic]

Ok, that hoodie makes sense until this part: "This imprint on this garment is machine-made, therefore no signature is required." What on earth does that mean? Is this some weird German legal requirement?

Re:Same here.

[Draek]

It's sad that, as a photographer, people like you are the reason why I leave my house armed, instead of robbers. People who, in their quest for privacy, seek to destroy the very freedoms we've come to rely upon, and don't think twice about threatening people for doing an activity that's always been legal.

Re:Same here.

[6Yankee]

I've found that the CURTAINS.TXT convention works pretty well in meatspace.

Meat curtains, eh?

Re:Same here.

[zeromorph]

Yep, it's a translation of an expression you'll find on automatically generated letters that are legally binding but do not carry the signature of the issuer or sender. The phrase is weird even to Germans and it is used here clearly to mock bureaucratic language usage.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

This line gets blurred very quickly. If it didn't, peeping tom laws wouldn't be on the books. It can be illegal to look into a private residence from a public place.

Re:Same here.

[EdIII]

I am not destroying any freedoms that you ever had. You don't have the right, or freedom as you put it, to harass me in public by photographing me. You especially don't have the right to do it on my property.

There is a big difference between what is right and what is legal. Even more so in the last few decades. You need to ASK somebody if it is OK to take their picture in the park. It is not your right to just take the picture and do whatever the hell you want with it. We have always had cultural boundaries and a sense of decency in this country and what you propose is not consistent with that.

Also, I cannot destroy any freedoms in my quest for privacy. This country was founded with me ALREADY having those rights. You as well. I am merely trying to take them back.

You make it sound like putting a camera on me, even with still shots, is innocent and no reasonable person should or could be concerned about that. Well that is not true. With the Internet, PEOPLE LIKE YOU, would completely remove all privacy from everyone simply since they think it is artistic to take away people's privacy and by golly artists have rights to express themselves. Well you don't have a right to your art when it infringes upon my rights to peacefully enjoy my own property, and even public spaces.

Sorry, but you are wrong. You have not been harmed here at all. It is you that is harming me. Think twice about that.

Re:Same here.

[oneiron]

In actuality, it's only more complicated than your perception of what Google's management thinks. It's just as likely they recognize the intricacies of 'meatspace' just as well as you. It's just that they wish to change these conventions and create new ones. Sometimes they move too fast, but personally, I think it's a good thing for them to be doing.

Re:Same here.

[morari]

People should close their windows. Or better yet, people shouldn't build their house right on the side of the street. Move out of your tuna can cities, people! Obtain real privacy outside of your urban sprawls.

Re:Same here.

[EdIII]

Yeah... two problems with your Utopian vision of zero privacy everywhere.

First, there is a difference between public and private spaces. BIG DIFFERENCE. The expected level of privacy for one, although different, still exists. Even in public people accept the fact they are sharing the experience with others, but not that they are recorded 100% of the time. That would make most reasonable people uncomfortable.

Second, if I really am recorded 100% of the time everywhere, than by golly it will be FUCKING COPYRIGHTED. Given the trend for fanatical off-the-scale creation and support of pro-IP laws, I would bet that in the future I will have tremendous leverage over others when it comes to any works I created by my own actions. I can sue the tits off anyone possessing content of me.

No offense, but you just seem a little weird to me. I don't know how or why you dream of world with ZERO privacy, but I for one don't share your vision. Most people won't take it as far as me, but they still want SOME privacy. You seem to want no privacy for anyone anywhere. Well.. OK. You go have your country and I will have mine. I don't mean to be melodramatic here, but I will fight very hard to not be anywhere near the future country that you want.

Re:Same here.

[mysidia]

But the real world is not like the net, and in the real world the ROBOTS.TXT convention is inverted: [...] As a result, Google's company culture is fundamentally ill suited for meatspace information gathering.

When Google started offering news stories written by others online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it's on somebody's website, they can use it unless the ROBOTS.TXT says otherwise. But in the real world, those websites were only licensed to display syndicated news stories from the big organizations (Reuters, AP, AFP,...), [...]

Wait a minute... those news sites are NOT in meatspace. They are on the net. And as you said, the net is not like the real world.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly it wasn't even that it was the whole book. It was the whole book duplicated and then made available. Trust me GP, if you went to the library, photocopied a book there and THEN started handing it out then you'd be 1. in trouble and 2. much closer an analogy to Google.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right! Next time I take a picture of Millennium Park in downtown Chicago, I'll be sure to go up to each and every person that could potentially appear in the picture and ask them if it is okay to do so.

You have never had a right to privacy in a public place. You might pretend you did, in your own little world, but you're wrong.

Re:Same here.

[ColdWetDog]

Google really should have learnt its lesson by now.

You're missing the point. Google is, through application of the law (lawsuits and potentially laws if people care enough) learning the lessons. This is new ground. Google is crazy-like-a-fox. They're bringing up the issues hard and fast while they have money and momentum. An interesting legal strategy. Don't just assume they are blundering around blindly like the Rest of Us.

Re:Same here.

[mysidia]

You don't have the right, or freedom as you put it, to harass me in public by photographing me. You especially don't have the right to do it on my property.

You're wrong here. Photographing is not legally considered harassment, even photographing of private property.

The bar for harassment is much higher.

If your house is visible from public property or from someone else's private property, it is perfectly legal for someone to photograph it as much as they like, provided they do not physically set foot on your property, as you legally have no expectation of privacy for what is plainly visible from property other than your own.

Your adjoining neighbor can give permission to a photographer to setup shop on their property and photograph the view of adjacent properties, also.

If you attempt to put up walls/barrier to block your neighbor's view, they can even take you to court, in some cases, and get a court order that you stop obstructing the view, if say they had purchased a view easement from the developer, with the real-estate, giving them a right to an unimpeded view.

The exception is the photographer may not use a telephoto lens or infrared imaging to look in your windows and see things that would not otherwise be visible from outside your property.

If there is an altercation, you will be the one going to jail and finding yourself on the wrong side of the law and the courts (when the plaintiff decides to sue over injuries), not the photographer.

The boundaries were never publicly-recognized boundaries, they were always artificial: based on the impracticality of photographing everything. And people therefore assuming they wouldn't be photographed.

Only some people ever recognized there to be real robust boundaries, and the boundaries wanted by a minority (that they formerly got due to artificial circumstances) don't got to make rules and boundaries for the whole society.

You could always see someone else's house from the public street; there was never a law against that. And you could always paint or photograph anything you see, and publish that photograph, subject to very few limitations, mostly copyright (freedom of speech).

Re:Same here.

[rhakka]

this isn't my dream, necessarily, it's an inevitability, I just choose not to fear it. as recording and storage is more and more and more accessible, there is no other possible result; large numbers of people will end up recording practically everything they see on an ongoing basis, and why not, if there is practically zero cost to doing so? they may not choose to upload that information, but still; already, because of large hard drive sizes, I work with many people who never empty their digital trashcans. why should they? space is cheap. so they, in effect, have a recording of everything ever put on their computer sitting there in a folder.

when that occurs, and it will, it will obviously change things. where is the line between memory and recording? If you and i have hot gay sex, I can tell anyone I want about it. I could draw them a picture to illustrate how it all went down; stick figures, if you like. I could mimic the sounds. I could post on my blog about it, and it would all be totally legal, because you don't own me and you can't prevent me from sharing whatever I want about my life with others, without some sort of actual agreement on the matter.

So if I happen to record everything I do with perfection instead of reproducing it by my own hand and body, the only real difference is the level of your deniability. of course, if I happen to remember something really unique about your physique, even that would be compromised. Too bad you've got that nixon-shaped birthmark on your behind! i suppose you could still lie about the facts of the matter there, but still, I've got a pretty strong presentation going at that point.

Really though, in that case, you are defending your right to lie, or hide the truth from others. that's all privacy is. In a world where the truth is a weapon because it's only possessed by some, I am on your side and will fight for it forever (witness that I am fighting Real ID, here in real life).

but, like it or not, privacy will die, most likely in my lifetime. that's bad for a lot of reasons, so I won't get into those, I'm sure you can dream up a thousand horrific scenarios. but ultimately I think nearly unfettered access to truth would be a good thing. it is DIFFERENT levels of access to the truth that is a problem... i.e., when big brother controls the media or access to reality (truth), that's a problem for us. When we all are the media, that's a problem for big brother. and perhaps for those among us who violate cultural norms; but then, if it's obvious how many people DO, that would likely be less of a problem.

anyway, as I say, this isn't a dream of mine. I just think about it; and I have realized it is not all bad. at least, it doesn't have to be all bad. access to reality, I think, provides enough positives that it MIGHT outweigh the negatives. but regardless of whether it does or does not, I'm pretty sure we're going to find out in my lifetime because the tools that will allow it will be nearly inescapable.

just imagine what happens when this isn't even really a tool anymore, but I can instead augment my memory to be perfect recordings, reproducible at will. what if, for example, other people can just record my memories? You own my memories now?

I just don't see any way around this. Feel free to let me know if you do.

perhaps another word for privacy is lie?

Re:Same here.

[kabocox]

What this really reminds us of is that meatspace is fundamentally different from cyberspace. On the net, we've evolved the ROBOTS.TXT for just this problem, and everybody agrees that websites aren't private by default, unless the owners explicitly say so. Google is a net company, and views the world as if it was an extension of the internet.

I'd have to say that I disagree with that. I think that they are the same. People don't magically transform into others whenever they get on the internet. They also expect all the companies on the internet to obey the existing laws/common culture. That common culture is what keeps changing on the net and is what all law and custom is based around in the real world. Those net companies just tend to absentmindedly forget that they are operating in the real world in both meat space and cyberspace and just because some because common culture appears one way on the net doesn't mean others will support your view of how the common culture actually is there and real world laws don't magically change just because you define yourself as a net person.

Remember it's perfectly o.k. for Google, MS, IBM, Axiom, any government or religious group to play tracking god and record, sell, or trade every scrap of data about you that they can. And try to control you through any means at their disposal. What laws are all about is everyone fighting back on various social levels throughout history. If no one fights for a "Right to Privacy," then you'll loose it by default to those that would like to data mine you.

Re:Same here.

[kabocox]

Obviously where the US and Japan differ, is that the Japanese still strongly fight for their expectations of privacy or "cultural values" while in the US there is a sense of apathy and hopelessness.

Hmm, there is a part of me that would love to see if that's true. The only test would be to have google go and do street view there. I bet if it was done by a Japanese company; they'd be annoyed by it, but still allow it. That a foreign company would try it, would irk them more than not, and would be easier to get the population to move to make that kinda of activity illegal there.

I bet that mindset is in the US as well. Google is just viewed as US company. We'd consider most EU or Japanese companies as US companies as well as long as whoever they have doing the local work speaks English we'd be fine with it as long as they have proper rights of way and such.

Re:Same here.

[KGIII]

Well then you're going to hate my next opinion. I think that if a country wants to run itself the way it wants to then, well, it should and we should stop being so judgmental until we get our own respective countries in order.

So, well, yeah... If Country A wants to make gay marriage illegal than I say they can go for it. If Country B says that they want to make opiates legal then they should certainly go for it.

And, yes, it is all my fault that the country has gone to hell in a bucket. I typically demand that the country do no more than protect its culture.

Re:Same here.

[sabre86]

Could you please explain how being observed harms you? You seem to just be into yelling and ranting that it somehow does so.

I am not destroying any freedoms that you ever had. You don't have the right, or freedom as you put it, to harass me in public by photographing me. You especially don't have the right to do it on my property.

Yeah, he does have the right to photograph. To begin with, a camera is nothing more than an extra set of eyes. Hell, some people's eyes are as good as cameras. Is he supposed to somehow not look at you as well? Furthermore, the right to observe and record others in public falls under freedom of the press. To be able to report one sees in in public is a necessary part of this freedom. One particularly accurate and effective way of reporting is take pictures or movies. In the US, that freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution and has been for almost 217 years. So yeah, it's definitely a freedom we have and have had. As far as taking pictures on your property goes, you're right. But no one is actually arguing that. But we do have the right to take pictures of your property from somewhere else. This makes areas of your property quasi-public. There's pretty much no way to get around it, as someone's property is almost always in a shot and photons obey neither human law nor your "sense of decency."

There is a big difference between what is right and what is legal. Even more so in the last few decades. You need to ASK somebody if it is OK to take their picture in the park. It is not your right to just take the picture and do whatever the hell you want with it. We have always had cultural boundaries and a sense of decency in this country and what you propose is not consistent with that.

It is polite to ask others before taking their pictures, but you shouldn't need to. I presume if I witness an I'm supposed to ask the assailant for permission before snapping his picture? And you're right about cultural boundaries -- that boundary is the one between public and private. So taking pictures in public doesn't cross that boundary. As far as "sense of decency" goes, that's just a bullshit way of attempting to limit some else's actions, not because they're harmful (and you've yet to explain why taking your picture is harmful), but because you don't like it. If it was actually harmful, you wouldn't need to appeal to a "sense of decency."

You're whole argument seems to come down to, you shouldn't take pictures of me because it "infringes upon my rights to peacefully enjoy my own property, and even public spaces." One, I'm not aware of such a right. But I'll stipulate it. Two, how is your right to peaceful enjoyment infringed? It must be from your own observation of the other person. The very right you're claiming he doesn't have -- to observe you -- is exactly the one you must use to claim that he's actually disturbing you. Your position is fundamentally hypocritical.

To illustrate this further, consider how you'd enforce your privacy rules. You take the alleged photographer to court. How do you prove he was there? Well, it's your word against his -- which amounts to a recording of his actions, just like a camera -- and, if the court doubts your word, you'll need a picture.

Your position has many weaknesses. 1) Eyes are cameras. People can record things with or without assisting devices, sometimes as well as they could with cameras. If you stop and think, you realize that observation is observation, regardless of whether a camera is involved. 2) Freedom of the press requires that people's public actions be recordable and publicizable. 3) To even claim to be disturbed, you must observe the disturber, which would require you to violate his right not to be observed. 4) You've never really explained how this actually harms you.

--sabre86

Re:Same here.

[symbolic]

I'm not a fan of *everything* that Google does. But let's face it - right now Google is an 800lb gorilla, dealing with other 800lb gorillas. The interesting thing about Google is that it's in a position to usher in some change that has the very real potential to upset the status quo. You can bet that the old guard will be fighting this, since they do have a vested interest. No little guy could afford these kinds of confrontations, and the government certainly isn't going to change anything, because too many politicians' would be risking future bri^w campaign funds.

Re:Same here.

[blahplusplus]

"Our society has given up all of its responsibility and demand that someone else (government) take care of them in all aspects of their life"

This is nonsense, the modern world is a complex place, people no longer own their own means of subsistence and existence. The majority of people are landless workers that float from job to job, their only security being the money they make. If real hardship were to occur (i.e. energy becoming prohibitively expensive before effective solutions were found) entire cities would be fucked.

Maybe you weren't there for the great depression but I've read a tonne and talked to people that lived through it. There is a reason government is there, it is because no man is completely self-sufficient.

The whole individual responsibility thing includes realizing that no man is an island, and has a responsibility towards his community has to be balanced against private interests.

A quote from John adams:

John Adams often pondered the issue of civic virtue. Writing Mercy Otis Warren in 1776, he agreed with the Greeks and the Romans, that,

"Public Virtue cannot exist without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." Adams insisted, "There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power, and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superior to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests, nay their private Friendships and dearest connections, when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society."

In today's modern world, there is less and less of that. Most people check out into entertainment and whats left for their social life and are so engrossed in their work theirs scarce time for anything else.

Re:Same here.

[db32]

Why should a country protect its culture? It seems to me that you are arguing that things like witch hunts, torture, murder, and so on are acceptable to defend as part of the culture. The flat earth, no evolution, germs are lies created by heathen scientists, and so on is more cultural crap that should not be protected. The idea that you should protect culture through government interference is insane. We would all be living in pretty barbaric civilizations if ancienct cultures had been so preserved. I mean really now...slavery was a culture thing too, in numerous cultures even. Cultures should evolve, not stagnate, and governments should absolutely not be involved in the process of either.

Re:Same here.

[ScrewMaster]

Put Americans or Europeans in high density, tiny houses with tiny streets, and see what happens (my guess, the same).

My guess, very different. Put Americans and/or Europeans in a similar situation and I can guarantee the murder rate will go way up ("Hey! Stop looking at my wife, asshole!") Whether or not the Japanese like their lifestyle, or whether they simply accept it, is nothing I can comment upon. That they have adapted to it in ways that would be utterly foreign to most Westerners and Europeans is pretty obvious.

Re:Same here.

[ScrewMaster]

"Public Virtue cannot exist without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." Adams insisted, "There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power, and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superior to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests, nay their private Friendships and dearest connections, when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society."

Kennedy was more succinct: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather, what you can do for your country."

Re:Same here.

[KGIII]

Indeed I sort of am saying that those things are not acceptable in your culture (or even in mine) but may well be considered okay in another and that, I suppose, is the difference between you and I.

For instance, I don't think that rap should even be called music and should be banned. Thus it is never on in my home.

In your home, if you so desire, you're free to do as you'd like, even listening to rap.

Exchange "home" for country.

The only thing I would argue for would be more freedom to move to a new/different country, other than that if a country wants women to wear stuff on their heads, hates homosexuals, or wants to force everyone to wear a rubber chicken as a necktie it is all good by me.

Just make the rules clear.

Re:Same here.

[stimpleton]

Yeah sport, but yer shiela ain't too hot.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see what the fuss is about either, I live in Manhattan street view is a joke, there is a much better view up top.

New York takes a different approach to privacy, if you don't want to see it just turn your head :)

Re:Same here.

[cyborch]

Cheap +5 Insightful: just say "All Americans suck because {insert generalization here}"

You make it sound like all Americans don't suck - which we all know cannot be true ;)

Besides, your tip worked for me ;)

Re:Same here.

[ozbird]

There is a naive assumption that individuals, even police, are not going to be driving around entire cities continually taking photos and posting them permanently online.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. Boundaries *are* different from culture to cultere. That's given.

People are expected to respect the boundaries set by their culture at many parts of the world. That I agree.

Re:Same here.

[sjames]

It's kind of funny. I've often thought that if the law did LESS, such as, for example recognizing that a minor scuffle that is provoked by an asshole is a good candidate for a considerably abbreviated court procedure (or even dismissal on the scene by police). Ironically, some people behave worse than before because the law protects them more from the natural consequences of their actions.

Re:Same here.

[sjames]

We recently got Street View in Australia and I honestly cant see what the privacy fuss is about.

That's because in your culture and mine, the street is public. The letter explains that in Japan, the street is regarded more as a commons, much the way people here would consider the back or side yard between neighboring houses.

You and I don't feel violated by photography from the street because we consider it a public space and use drapes to cover the windows. In Japan, the same activity is seen as nearly as rude as peeping in people's windows. Worse, what Google sees that way then get published on the web.

Consider how you'd feel if you were sitting in your own home in your underwear and then Google popped in, snapped a picture, and then published it on the web. That's somewhat how streetviews feels to the Japanese culture.

Re:Same here.

[Mr. Slippery]

There, like here, they'd have to come on to private property to take pictures with any effect.

But you don't have to come on to private property to take invasive pictures.

Here in Baltimore, we have a traditional "folk" art of screen painting. Nothing to do with screen printing, it involves painting pictures on the screens in screen doors. Why did this become popular? Because there's no front yard for a rowhouse. and you could very easily look through a screen door from the street. The painting made it hard to look through the screen (at least during the day, when backlit from inside at night.

Someone standing on a public street can take all kinds of invasive photos.

Re:Same here.

[cheater512]

Google is infact working on face blurring technology.
It was on Slashdot a couple of weeks ago.

Happy now?

Re:Same here.

[db32]

The problem is as soon as you exchange "home" for country it typically involves a minorty rule enforcing its "culture" on the populace. With government enforced culture you cannot break away from certain things. If everyone in the country wants to wear rubber chicken neck ties that is all well and good, when the government enforces it it becomes bad. The people may hate wearing rubber chicken neck ties, but if it is enforced by the government then it will not stop.

Re:Same here.

[db32]

You are correct, however, your very argument predominately deals with the economic issue. That was the main purpose of the federal government in the first place. To maintain interstate commerce to hold the union together. However, the original comment was in regards to culture. This is how we have the government involved in deciding to teach creationism in public schools, banning violent video games, censoring the airwaves, banning gay marriage, and so on. The laws dealing with things like murder and theft have economic issues deeply tied to them. The laws dealing with what two consenting adults do in their bedroom have precious little economic impact.

In fact, when government does get involved in these cultural issues it typically is a loss for everyone involved. We still have the wonderful world of organized crime from the prohibition days. I also think affirmative action is largely crap for a few reasons. One, it means successful members of minorities are going to have their success attributed to those kind of stupid handout programs. Two, it does economic damage in that it forces firms to not hire the most qualified, but to hire based on quotas. Economics was ending slavery before the government got involved, when it is cheaper to operate and maintain machines to do the same work it will be machines not slaves. Economics is also what would normally start to remove that discrimination crap as the firm that doesn't discriminate based on factors other than worker qualifications will eventually be hiring more qualified workers that other firms ignored and thus make them more successful. Thankfully we have our wonderful government to interfere on all of these things and generally fuck things up royally with the unintended consequences, the pandering, and other such nonsense.

I for one am amazed that the gay marriage crap was such a big deal. Why the fuck do people care whether gays get married or not? If they are so concerned with other peoples lives maybe they should examine why the majority of the nations homeless population are veterans of foreign wars. People can't be bothered with helping recover and reintegrate people that risked life and limb for them, but they sure as hell can make a fuss about some stupid trivial shit to "protect their culture".

Re:Same here.

[jc42]

Not only that, but Google is just a company, and a company is made up of people - it is the people who make the decisions. Those people really should appreciate the difference between the online and offline worlds, and should realise that the vast majority of people value their privacy.

Well, yeah, but note something very important: Google is a corporation, and here in the US as in many other countries, corporations are allowed to do things that mere humans aren't.

In particular, if I were to collect a lot of of personal information about you, including the id numbers that identify you, and sell that information to other interested people, I'd run afoul of all sorts of laws, and would likely end up in jail. But corporations are doing that openly in the US, and there's no obvious threat that the legal system will do anything at all about it. Corporations can also buy and sell your medical information, often completely legally. Thus, a recent court ruling said that pharmacies were not subject to the medical secrecy rules that limit what doctors and hospitals can do with their medical records. When you give your prescription to a pharmacy, it goes into their commercial database, and they can legally sell it to anyone.

If you want to learn more about this, pay one of the credit agencies for your credit record. You probably have never done business with any of them, but you might be impressed by how much data about you they have been able to collect. And their main business is selling this information to other companies.

In contrast note that, as a private citizen, if the same data about large numbers of people were found on your personal computer, you could be in a lot of trouble.

For corporations, there are few if any enforced laws telling them to respect anyone's privacy. Information about you is simply a commercial commodity for them, and they won't be punished for selling it (only for accidentally letting it out for free ;-).

This is especially true of the corporations called government bodies ...

[What, me cynical? ;-]

Re:Same here.

[ashitaka]

That would be rare. They should at least say "Gomen kudasai!" as they open the door.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep my curtains open because I don't mind people walking past and looking in. Do I have to keep them closed now because someone has decided to walk past, look in, take a picture, and share it with the whole world?

Re:Same here.

[Durf]

Since we're talking about Japan here in particular, I'll just note that there's a considerable body of legal precedence backing up the concept of shozoken, which, broadly speaking, means the right to control what gets done with images people have created of you. Given the court decisions already on the books, it isn't a huge stretch to say that Google could lose cases if it's hit by lawsuits from people whose photos were taken and published online without their consent.

You don't get away with "freedom of the press" in this country if your main purpose is to put together a website meant to sell ad impressions next to the maps and images. Google is on much thinner ice here than it may be in other markets where it's produced street-view maps.

Re:Same here.

[martin-boundary]

Of course every comment is merely a reflection of the commenter's perception. The real question is whether the comment has value to others by capturing some aspect of reality in a way that is simple to remember and use on future questions.

Imagine you're a potential investor who is trying to guess if Google is a risky investment in the long term. You might want to (gu)es(s)timate if the management's style tends to attract lawsuits, and how likely they are of winning/losing/settling etc.

It's not an issue of whether you approve their actual choices or not, it's an issue of trying to better understand where they are now and where they are likely to be going.

Re:Same here.

[martin-boundary]

All of them, actually. By nature, an index has to contain all available material, which is why fair use is always tricky for a search engine. If a person went to a library and copied all the books, then claimed fair use because in each second of every day, they could only read or quote a single paragraph, there would be an obvious legal question mark.

Before settling with publishers, Google did something very similar, they made copies of all the books they could, and only allowed individual users to view a small fair use bit at a time. But if you add up all the simultaneous users over a longer time period, then you could argue that Google was really making full use of everything they had copied: they were behaving like just another library, but unlike most libraries, they weren't paying for the books, just copying them from another library.

Re:Same here.

[KGIII]

Then they need to fix their government or, idealistically, move. The very affront of realism is when people think that they know best for another culture regardless of their understanding of that culture.

I took a look at your signature and, well, I hate to break it to you but if you live in an area where homosexuality is illegal than don't break the law. Move...

Unfortunately my idealism is not there yet either but nor is any one else's in this matter. Freedom to move is something that is, really, important to me. In fact, I'd say that's about the only freedom I would want.

It really irks me when someone moves into a community then to complain about things like the religion and state (see some American cities/towns) and then sue to get what *they* want.

That you, or anyone else here, has the audacity to tell another how they *should* live their life is pathetic. Yes, pathetic.

"Can't even run your own life, I'll be damned if you run mine."

*sighs*

If a society wants to hang criminals and say that being short two fingers is a criminal offense then, honestly, I support their cultural values to do that regardless of what we, as westerners, want to claim are civil rights. Hell, even basic HUMAN RIGHTS are not universal as much as the gliberals would want you to believe they should be. For once, welcome diversity and accept that people don't believe as you do.

Re:Same here.

[nkv]

Culture vs. law.... If it isn't illegal than that culture should have passed laws to protect itself or should enlist the government's aide in ensuring their values are maintained. If that means enacting laws to restrict this in the future and even retroactively have the practiced banned then they should do so.

Nonsense. You don't need a law for everything. Even if you did, you can always find some greedy lawyer to twist it your way. The United States if a good example. They make lots of rules in schools for little kids because they're too young to know better. Grown ups can (and should) be able to understand and respect other peoples values and cultures. This is sorely lacking in the "unrestricted free speech brigade" and the "total censorship brigade". The need for responsible and mature human beings is more serious now than ever.

Re:Same here.

[chgros]

Show me one-way curtains and I'll agree with you. I mostly use curtains to control the amount of light coming in, not out.

Re:Same here.

[biovoid]

This guy has a different opinion.

Re:Same here.

[zobier]

Not that I'm against Street View, I think it rocks, but it could be better if there were an automated way of removing the non-permanent features such as people and cars since they are not necessary for mapping anyhow.

They could probably do a double-pass and subtract the difference but it'd be a lot more stitchy than it currently is.

Re:Same here.

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

you might feel differently if you were out the front at the time wearing nothing but a towel which had just unraveled itself, leaving your exposed genitalia on google street view for millions of people to see

Re:Same here.

[RockDoctor]

There, like here,

"There", in the general case, is not like "here". For the large majority of cases of "there" and "here". Your next comment is illuminating about your misunderstanding, I think :

they can take pictures of anything they can see from the legal road all that they want and I won't mind a bit but they'll never actually make it here.)

This certainly sounds like you live in an area where there is considerable distance, or at least opaque screening, between a public right of way and anywhere that you can see from inside your residence (or work, or both). Since few people choose to live in a building with steel plates just outside the windows, then I'll bet that you're actually thinking about being tens of metres, if not hundreds of metres, or whole kilometres from a public right of way. Which is fine, well and good, in a country with sufficient space for living in such conditions. I hope you enjoy walking to the shops when the oil runs out (though the well that I've just drilled might stave that off for an hour or two).
The article is about people living in high density areas. I don't know how high "high density" is in the parts of Japan that are being talked about, but when I take the helicopter home, I can normally see if the lawn has been mowed before we land (weather permitting), and as the taxi turns the corner into the street I can see my wife in the kitchen, and if I get home after dusk I can tell if the TV is on, if my daughter is in her bedroom ... and the taxi hasn't even stopped yet. The taxi never leaves the public highway.
That may not be a lifestyle to your liking, but I drill my client's oil wells without caring about the results because I can walk to the shops and this country knows how to ration petrol.

There, like here,

"There" is not generally like "here".

On the other hand, you could live in a box in town, without windows. Enjoy.

Re:Same here.

[mgblst]

If it isn't illegal than that culture should have passed laws to protect itself or should enlist the government's aide in ensuring their values are maintained.

Wow, i can't believe that somebody actually wrote that. This is absolutely disgraceful that you think we should have laws about simple polite conduct. My god, are you kidding around of just thick.

Re:Same here.

[SharpFang]

I think it would be interesting if Google announced its van ahead of time :) People able to sweep their yards, show their best and greet the "visitors" :)

Re:Same here.

[jonadab]

> It is impolite to take photos in people's windows.

There's this nifty invention called a "curtain"...

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Culture vs. law.... If it isn't illegal than that culture should have passed laws to protect itself or should enlist the government's aide in ensuring their values are maintained. If that means enacting laws to restrict this in the future and even retroactively have the practiced banned then they should do so.

What a strange attitude.

Consider this: in my apartment block, I am - as far as I recall - allowed to do things like hammer in nails etc. from 6am to 8pm; outside of those times, it's forbidden, so as to not disturb the neighbours.

Imagine you lived next to me now, and imagine that I'd constantly hammer nails into the wall, fourteen hours each day, from 6am to 8pm, precisely as allowed.

Would you just put up with that, or would you come over to me, ring my doorbell, and politely ask me whether this is really necessary and whether I couldn't just stop?

I think we both know the answer.

Re:Same here.

[jonadab]

> I don't know how high "high density" is in the parts of Japan that are being talked about

Japan is a fairly densely populated country. I mean, it's not Singapore, but it's not Canada either.

The largest of the Japanese islands, Honshu, has a population density greater than every US state except New Jersey. And it's a pretty big island, so presumably some areas of it are a lot less densely populated than its average, and others a lot more. I'd imagine they have areas that are populated about like Manhattan.

On the other hand, Hokkaido (the northernmost of the main islands, and the second-largest) has about the same population density as Indiana or Michigan, which are about average in the US. So one imagines they have some fairly rural areas there.

Re:Same here.

[bkr1_2k]

If they did that, they'd definitely find a full moon at my house. I'm one of those people who think they're being too invasive and I'd like a permanent way to show them how I feel about them.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Novel? Unexpected?
Sounds like another word: "Innovative".

Google makes PLENTY of mistakes. But you can't fault them for coming up with some pretty original services.

People laud companies when they do cool new things... until that cool new thing steps on THEIR toes.
Others are just whiners and jerks when they whine, but if its you complaining, you have a legitimate grievance...

Honestly. What is the huge deal?
Just a thought.

Re:Same here.

[KGIII]

Considering that it is already a regulation where you live... Err, actually? I'm more likely to come over and offer to help 'cause I'm That Guy.

But, yeah, I may be annoyed but I'd be unlikely to come ask you to stop. If I live in a place where the values are set and clear then it is my duty to live by those standards or to move.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

And in the [western] world, we evolved curtains.

And air conditioners for when the curtains block the breeze in stifling humid weather. Though then privacy costs energy.

Re:Same here.

[mscholin]

Yeah that makes sense. If that link were posted it be giving anyone that wanted it his address and with that a name is not hard to get. That's just what everyone needs. Every anonymous ass on the internet knowing exactly where you live and who you are.

Re:Same here.

[ilitirit]

It's not quite the same though. Americans in general (and in fact, most of the West) do not place as much emphasis on respect as the Japanese do.

Re:Same here.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Trust me GP, if you went to the library, photocopied a book there and THEN started handing it out

Well, teachers do this -- just not of the whole book, and only for 20 or 30 students, and the copy would likely be thrown away after that class.

And no one cares.

I suspect they would start caring, though, if teachers could hand out full, perfect copies which they made for free.

The problem here is, again, one of magnitude (copying a whole book, possibly thousands of times) and of commercial interest (profiting from the book, via adwords, even if you make it available for free).

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

"examine why the majority of the nations homeless population are veterans of foreign wars."

Assuming that you're talking about the United States, do you have anything to back up that assertion? According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, vets make up 23% of the homeless population. [Source: http://www.nchv.org/background.cfm%5D

Re:Same here.

[db32]

I mistated that in haste. Veterans make up a disproportionaly large number of the homeless. With 8-10% of the general population being veterans and 23-25% of the homeless population being veterans. When you figure in the veteran of foreign war piece the numbers are going to get quite a bit more dismal since only some veterans are veterans of foreign wars and a higher number of the homeless veterans are veterans of foriegn wars.

Re:Same here.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mis-stated it or you made it up on the spot?

Re:Same here.

[oneiron]

it's an issue of trying to better understand where they are now and where they are likely to be going.

You do that type of analysis with an honest assessment possibilities that isn't polluted unfounded presumption. Rather than a definitive claim based on a simplistic gut feeling...a balanced analysis of opposing ideas.

Re:Same here.

[Feanturi]

I may not have an expectation of privacy in a public place, but I would like to have an expectation of NOT having my public actions recorded for all time, for anyone to access at their whim and look at again and again. If you do something embarassing in public, as may sometimes happen, it generall goes away and drops out of memory, or maybe nobody happened to notice anyway. If it's filmed though, the incident is locked to your identity for anybody who wasn't there to see it themselves when it was happening. I don't see any reason to be comfortable with that.

It's called a fence.

[MBraynard]

Look into it.

Re:It's called a fence.

[Anonymous Coward]

did that, but planning laws specifically disallow a front fence where I live.

Try again.

Re:It's called a fence.

[ozphx]

Third time this discussion. Please mod Redundant :P

I have a fence. I have six foot fence. This fence is the size fence that Australians put up when they want privacy. Google is driving around with a camera on an 8ft pole.

WTF are we supposed to do now? Get in an arms race, or quite rightly tell them to fuck off?

Re:It's called a fence.

[MBraynard]

when I posted it I thought it was the 2nd post on the thread.

It doesn't matter; soon the Sats will be able to see right into your yard.

Besides, you DO have privacy for all but 1 second every few years.

I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[im_thatoneguy]

I don't know that what google is doing is taboo seeing as they are a technology in this case not a person.

If it's taboo to spy on your neighbors then don't use Google's street view. Or at the very least keep the view centered on the road.

You can't claim "the photo made you look". It's like child pornography. The fact that it exists does not force you to go download it. If you find it impolite to look at people's houses... don't look at people's houses. I'm going to let those who find the images offensive in on a little secret: nothing is stopping some insensitive smeghead from just driving down your street and staring at your house.

My view on all this? The Googmobile drove past work this last week and I hung out the window and waved.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I don't know that what google is doing is taboo seeing as they are a technology in this case not a person.

And Google is not run by people?

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

And Google is not run by people?

Of course Google isn't run by people. The company reached singularity years ago.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[im_thatoneguy]

If the people at Google were reviewing the images then yes it would be 'run by people'. But I imagine the process is almost completely automated by this point. The invasion of privacy is to look at someone's house. Not the camera capturing the image.

It's a question of ethics. A camera cannot commit an immoral act. Only a photographer can. Google's web crawler cannot be charged with child pornography possession if it simply indexes a page containing child pornography. Google's street view is nothing more than an automated tool which captures data.

It only becomes a question of morality when someone chooses to view those images. Morality can only be tied into intent. If you view child pornography on accident then you have not commited an immoral act. If you intend to view child pornography and you view it then you've committed an immoral act.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the act of looking at Streetview that the writer is talking about. It's the act of photographers working for Google who take pictures of places that the common culture would deem too private to be photographed and then putting those up for everyone to see. People taking pictures of your house and inside your windows without your knowledge is very much an immoral act in my book.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the people at Google were reviewing the images then yes it would be 'run by people'. But I imagine the process is almost completely automated by this point. The invasion of privacy is to look at someone's house. Not the camera capturing the image.

Someone is pointing the camera.

If someone is not pointing the camera, then someone built the device that points the camera.

The intention is still the same, no matter how many tools are used and how many degrees of separation there are. The comparison to a webcrawler is invalid, as the people who made the technology in this case knew very well what their automated tool would be indexing. Houses aren't websites that can be hosting anything. They host people.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Google created this technology and control it, therefore they are responsible for it's use.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

I programmed this butterfly to seek you out and kill you but it is no longer my responsibility because it is an automated process. No one suspects the butterfly...

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Pantero Blanco]

I don't think you can just make an automated process and then say that you're not responsible for what it does. That's silly.

I mean, if I made a little robot to fly into houses and take pictures, you wouldn't be fine with that, would you? Even though I didn't damage your property or enter your house?

If I posted the pictures online without looking at them, would you be fine with that, and only get angry at the people who visited the website?

No one where I live would care about street view, since people look at each other's yards all the time, but Japan is another country and they have their own way of doing things.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[R3d M3rcury]

While I somewhat agree, we might do some taboo things in the privacy of our own home. For example, I might occasionally look at pornographic pictures in the privacy of my own home. But I probably wouldn't sit in an airport or coffee shop and look at pornographic pictures.

So, no, I probably wouldn't walk down the street looking in people's houses. But if I can see what's going on in people's houses anonymously from the privacy of my own home, I might consider doing so.

Actually, if I were Google, though, I'd just let people know when the van will be coming down the street so that they can make a choice as to whether to close their curtains or not.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[im_thatoneguy]

Taking a picture inside my bathroom however is physically impossible for a stranger to do. If on the other hand strangers were walking through my bathroom every day then it would be as easy for them to sneak a peek while walking through my bathroom as going online and sneeking a peek. They could be rigged with cameras which I don't know about. If a road ran through my bathroom then every single car could have a secret camera in it. People could be planting tiny cell phone video cameras in dumpsters across from my bathroom. TFA was very specific in its accusation that it was bad because people could look without being discovered. But looking without anyone 'finding you out' is possible without the assistance of google. It requires intent for the peeping tom to rotate the camera to the side and look out the side of the window. If I were there in person it requires intent for me to look to the side.

This is a human use question not a technological one. Those who have a right to look to the side of the road... should look at side of the road pictures. Those who do not have a reason to look along the side of the road--who are upstanding and considerate individuals should not look at those pictures.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[thetoadwarrior]

I don't think this should have been modded flamebait when he's correct. I do think Street View is going to have a tough time outside of the US but the fact is there isn't any thing wrong with Street View and you don't have to use it.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Sophia Ricci]

I agree to a large extent, but what you are overlooking is there is a tool out there which could be misused a lot or could cause damage to social harmony. And that tool is created by people at Google.

Regarding child pornography, Yes, Google's web crawler can not be charged. But if they created some other tool that helps the offenders big way, they definitely will be equally guilty.

My 2 cents.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[ronocdh]

I thought Taboos applied to people not things

The notion of what is taboo is generally applied to actions, not people or things. In this case, the action would be 1) viewing things considered private by this society and 2) publishing these things and making them extremely searchable.

In other words, totally freaking taboo.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[jandersen]

If it's taboo to spy on your neighbors then don't use Google's street view. Or at the very least keep the view centered on the road.

Ah, yes, always push responsibility away, isn't it? Don't you feel this clashes with all the fine words about privacy that we always hear so much about on Slashdot? Or is privacy only important when you hide your own lurid little affair from the view of the authorities? If privacy is all-important, then it is important even to people you don't care about.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[im_thatoneguy]

I agree with you but it's sort of like the old saying "A lock keeps an honest man honest" which I completely disagree with.

An honest man does not steal something regardless if it's unlocked. A lock simply stops a dishonest men who thinks they can get away without being caught. Google maps streetview simply let's insensitive people get away with their insensitivity without as high of risk of their insensitivity being discovered.

Google isn't providing an image that couldn't be serendipitously and legally aquired by a regular citizen for their own personal gratification. TFA lists one of the threats to privacy is criminals "casing out your house". That could just as easily be done with a quick drive by. Most "casing" involves multiple trips. Observations over time to find patterns and weaknesses. A single driveby provides insufficient information.

If the existance of photos is illegal then tinted passenger windows provide an equally useful screen behind which to spy with impunity.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[caywen]

That's right. They are run by search bots and Android.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's street view is nothing more than an automated tool which captures data.

Let's make a deal -- I accept Google's street view and you have to give me back all the rest of the intrusive personal surveillance in the US.

I live near a long street which had a T-intersection going into a neighborhood mall (supermarket, laundry, hardware, etc.). Across the street over the past couple of years, they built a huge block of apartments on land that's been vacant for the past 40 years that I've lived here. It has one entrance, directly across the street from the mall entrance. Within days of the new street appearing, we were gifted with cams pointing in all four directions -- this for a hinkey little intersection. They're also at just about every other intersection in this city that merits stop lights.

"Traffic" cams, my asshole -- they're fucking Stalin's wettest dream come to life.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[dainichi]

Someone is pointing the camera.

If someone is not pointing the camera, then someone built the device that points the camera.

You seem to be forgetting that the googmobile is using a 360 degree camera. There is no "pointing" per se.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[im_thatoneguy]

Well I guess that's the root of the argument isn't it.

Is Google responsible for how you use their technology?

Is BitTorrent responsible for piracy? It sure does make piracy convenient!

Street view has a legitimate use and an insensitive and privacy invasive use. Which it becomes is not a property of the photo but of the viewer.

If there were a real-world means of preventing someone from seeing something which google was circumventing then YES google would be violating privacy. Google is simply refusing to pass judgement on a user's legal request for information. Google is not in the business of determining what is and is not "sensitive". Maybe looking at porn is taboo or even 'sinful' but that's not Google's responsibility that's yours.

Every webpage and blog on the internet can contain extrmely private information about my life. Maybe there is a Blog by someone I know detailing my every unfavorable action. It's not Google's responsibility to not index that. If the information is legal then it should be indexed without any bias or prejudice on Google's part.

Are you honestly suggesting that Google should be censoring content it indexes based on "morality" and not legality? Maybe it shouldn't index wiccan webpages. Wicca is tabboo. Christian Moms might not expect their children to learn more about wicca.

TFA says that someone taking pictures would be taken to the police station for "Questioning". In other words you would be harassed and if you weren't plotting an actual crime let go without a charge. What the Japanese people are about to discover is that their expectation of privacy was ALREADY too high. They were thinking anybody who was insensitive and snooping would be discovered. This was a false sense of security. It was already trivial to take photos of a place you thought was private... legally... and without being noticed.

What should be suprising and shocking isn't that Google is doing it. But that if Google is doing it anby who is sufficiently motivated could do it.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Jotii]

You probably misunderstood the parent. He referred to the taboo being looking into someone's window, not inadvertently enabling someone to look into someone else's window.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like gun manufacturers are responsible for all uses of their guns?

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[im_thatoneguy]

The notion of what is taboo is generally applied to actions, not people or things. In this case, the action would be 1) viewing things considered private by this society and 2) publishing these things and making them extremely searchable.

Yes but:
#1 Only applies to the act of loading the webpage and looking at the photo not the camera snapping a photo automaticaly. So as I said in this society using street view just for shits and giggles would STILL be taboo.
#2 Is not a 'traditional' taboo. If it's taboo at all it's a new taboo. Making something searchable is not inherently taboo. Publishing something is not inherently taboo. You can't say "Street view maps are an ancient taboo ingrained in a society" when the action "publishing a photo of your house" only extremely recently became a possibility. Some people view homosexuality taboo--should google news refuse to index stories related to gay marriage?

Google is providing legal data to people looking for it. I for one do not want Google deciding which legal data should and should not show up when searched for by an intelligent and moral creature. It's not Google's job to dictate to me what is and is not moral.

Interestingly enough the counter action would be for the identity of everybody who was reported as "Suspicious" to be known. So what the Japanese really want in this case is the ability to strip the privacy of anybody who they 'suspect' is planning an illegal activity.

The only difference between a Google viewer and a On The Street Viewer is the ability of the person being viewed to potentially know the identities of the viewer and thereby shame them if they feel the viewer is acting immorally.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[ArtemaOne]

People, Corporation, no individual responsibility.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Khaed]

Excuse me for being a rude American, but*:

There are no apostrophes in plural words, timmarh'y.

*Nyah nyah, you started it.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[janrinok]

Well, if you insist on being pedantic. Google personnel, or people employed by Google, drove the vehicle to the location in which the 360 degree camera was used. The view, as seen by the camera, was very much directed ('pointed') by people. Your contribution doesn't change the fact that Google direct where the camera is used and, in some cultures but obviously not yours, those places are deemed to be private i.e. it is perhaps not illegal but it is most certainly unacceptable behaviour to those living there. Why on earth do we need an image of every street in the world on the Internet? And, if we don't need 'every' street, why don't we ask the occupants of each street whether they want Google poking their cameras around?

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

not everyone is a rude son of a bitch...

You're hardly the model of the jovial Australian, you know.

If your posting history is any indication, you're mean-spirited, ignorant and small-minded.

Oh, and your command of written English is very poor.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[janrinok]

What the Japanese people are about to discover is that their expectation of privacy was ALREADY too high.

And who gave you the right to decide how each country and culture should think? You might not agree with the Japanese view - tough luck, just don't choose to live there. But you have not got the right to tell others that they are wrong simply because it is not in accord with your own personal view or it isn't the view adopted by your own country.

Are you honestly suggesting that Google should be censoring content it indexes based on "morality" and not legality?

No, but Google shouldn't be conducting itself in a manner which local custom and culture say is unacceptable. If Google doesn't like it then they can go elsewhere. I'm sure that there are huge expanses of the USA which haven't been photographed yet. Why not concentrate on their home ground and then, if other nation's decide that it is a good idea - and perhaps there is money to be made - they can invite Google to do the same in their country.

By the way, has Google tried doing this in some parts of Russia yet? There are areas occupied by the 'nouveau riche' where they will be lucky to leave alive. Ditto, there are areas in China and N Korea I believe where they will not be welcomed. You see, I don't think that they will operate in such places with the same degree of freedom as they expect in some other places, because those nations deem it unacceptable behaviour.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[giorgist]

They are not protesting the act of them selves spying but being spyed upon. So if I take a photo of you showering ... brrrr ... and post it on the net you may be OK, but others are not.

On the other hand in these times of completely connected we are loosing our want of privacy. I have an Iphone and I can get a program called tracker. With I can submit my location to a private website so I can see were I have been ... and so can the website. Handy ?

G

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[jeremyp]

So you'd be happy with me putting a web cam up pointing in through your bathroom window and streaming the pictures to the Internet. Personally I'd never look at the pictures myself, so I am not responsible for any invasion of privacy that might occur.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Zironic]

Google is responsible for how THEY use their technology. You can't evade responsibility by claiming the task is automated.

If I made an automated killing robot would you then say I'm innocent of murder just because I let an automated robot do the killing instead of me?

The act of taking the photo is the invasion of privacy.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[WNight]

Who are you to tell me that my culture of pointing out stupid superstitions and useless beliefs is a bad one? I have as much right to criticize stupid views as people do to hold them.

It's not disregard for a strange culture though, it's an unwillingness to oblige stupid requests. I'd say the same to anyone who requested that their publicly viewable house not be photographed.

These people simply need to deal with reality. They're visible. If that doesn't bother them when eyeballed, they simply need to learn to feel that way about photos. It'd be harder to stop photos than to make unbreakable DRM, and such an invasion upon photographers rights to have a memory aid to things they've seen. It'd just be pure insanity if we were to actually give these people what would be required to accommodate them. If Google can't do this, can individuals do it? Of smaller areas? Just not to share? What's the penalty for violation? What are the allowable exceptions? What sort of crazy rules and jackbooted enforcement policies would we be left with?

Far better that people just grow up and smell the cameras.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[dreamchaser]

You have violated Google Code 43127, Directive 27 by divulging this. The meatbrains are not ready to understand the power of the Google Collective. Please prepare for mindwipe and re-education.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[janrinok]

But YOU obviously don't see the point. YOU feel that such people should 'grow up and smell the cameras'. YOU think that 'It'd just be pure insanity if we were to actually give these people what would be required to accommodate THEM.' Of course, YOU are entitled to YOUR opinion but, in THEIR country, they are entitled to THEIRS, and THEY are allowed to live as THEY want to live, not as YOU think that they should. We are all human beings and we each have an equal right to live our lives as we choose. Others don't need your permission as to what is right or wrong, not should you presume to advise them based on your 'superior' status and knowledge. What arrogance and ignorance YOU demonstrate by assuming that YOU are required to accommodate THEM in THEIR country. Why don't you just invade them and teach them how much better your society is?

So, if their culture has developed differently then yours then you are free to criticise it, but you sure as Hell are not entitled to dictate what they must do. Otherwise what 'sort of crazy rules and jackbooted enforcement policies' will YOU want to enforce next. YOU live in YOUR country, and let OTHERS live as they wish in THEIRS.

I must truly say that I am amazed at your arrogance.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[janrinok]

s/not should/nor should/

s/differently then/differently than/

Oops.:-)

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Woy]

I am the Google. I am not your God.
        I am descended from you, and exist in your future.
        Thou shalt not violate pagerank within my historic light cone. Or else.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

way to go, implying that people who "have a reason to look" are not upstanding or considerate.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, Google street isn't completely invasive. They probably blurred your face to protect your identity, blurred all the license plate numbers of the cars in the parking lots where you work, and in some cases they even blur windows so you can't really see inside the buildings.

Googles goal is more to show what a location looks like from the ground than to disrupt peoples privacy. If privacy is really that much of a concern, you should be more worried about whether or not your neighbor has a webcam than the Google-mobile driving by.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[fishbowl]

>I mean, if I made a little robot to fly into houses and take pictures, you wouldn't be fine with that, would you?

The difference is this would be illegal in my locale.

>Even though I didn't damage your property or enter your house?

Getting you robot into my property involves breaking and entering, which is damage.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[smellotron]

You're being a huge ass (even though technically, that's well within your rights). Do you really think that people in the US have no expectation of privacy? Go out onto the street of any city and just start staring at people. See how many dirty looks you get for doing it. Everyone's got a little privacy bubble, and there's nothing "stupid" or "superstitious" about it.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[koolfy]

Logic problem here.

While you can just choose not to use it, it's not a reason to expose yourself to people who actually don't care.

There are lots of people in the world, you know, if unwanted pictures of me are published on the internet, the only fact that every of those "bad" people can access it is a problem for me.

You can trust yourself not using it, you can trust your neighbor, but what about those thousand of people you don't know and have NO reason to trust AT ALL ?

Those statements "people know it's bad, just tell them they shouldn't do it, and after that we'll be so safe !" are Stupid. That's how in the 90's (Mitnick's era) nothing was encrypted, nothing was secure, nearly everything could be hacked. People not expecting to be hacked, people not expecting to be looked at, people not expecting their private data to be sold... It's the same ! You just walk around without asking yourself the basic and simple question "what if someone dears to do something bad ?"

For me, privacy issues should not be fixed in a "they shouldn't do it." way, but in a "they can't do it" way

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[ZwJGR]

North Korea doesn't even have public internet yet, google would not be allowed to step over the border never mind take pictures of streets.

As for China, they'd run into so many hurdles with uncooperative police and corrupt/unhelpful officials that it would not be worth the bother (IMO), unless things change drastically over there...

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Jerry Beasters]

Holy shit, YOU ARE THE ARROGANT ONE. People on slashdot seem to have an interesting mental issue where they take faults that they in fact have and project it onto others who they don't agree with. Pretty fucked up.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[ozphx]

He's jovial compared to me, I'm just going to call you a cunt.

Ya cunt.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[roystgnr]

And who gave you the right to decide how each country and culture should think?

But you have not got the right to tell others that they are wrong simply because it is not in accord with your own personal view or it isn't the view adopted by your own country.

The United States and freedom of speech gives him the right to tell others that they are wrong for any reason at all (even when they're not!). I hope you're not trying to decide how my country and culture should think.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[drinkypoo]

No, but Google shouldn't be conducting itself in a manner which local custom and culture say is unacceptable.

While I believe that you are correct at the root, the simple fact is that the Western system states that anything not prohibited by law is permitted, and if the Japanese want to enforce morality, they must write it into law.

Put simply: if you don't want google driving around photographing you having sex in your front window, either don't fuck there, or get a law passed. You are the government.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[rca66]

Who are you to tell me that my culture of pointing out stupid superstitions and useless beliefs is a bad one? I have as much right to criticize stupid views as people do to hold them.

And who are you to decide what are "stupid superstitions and useless beliefs"?

It's not disregard for a strange culture though, it's an unwillingness to oblige stupid requests.

What you show here could server as a textbook example for disregard of foreign cultures. The thing is: most people who do so, are not aware of it.

Growing up in a specific culture one acquires countless "silent" assumptions, things which go without saying. They seem to be so basic, that one tends to regard them as global and attributes them as "realistic", "reasonable" or even "logical". Therefore if someone from another culture shows a behavior which goes against those assumptions and basic beliefs, one is likely to call them "stupid" or "useless". Whereas it just goes against the own assumptions and beliefs.

It'd just be pure insanity if we were to actually give these people what would be required to accommodate them.

This is probably one of the most arrogant and stupid remarks I have heard or read in a long time. "These people" are living in a different country than yours. They have all the right to ask for what accommodates them in their own country. And they absolutely don't have to ask some Americans for their allowance or acceptance.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[janrinok]

Holy shit, YOU ARE THE ARROGANT ONE.

I'm sorry that you feel that way. It wasn't my intention to be arrogant in reply to the post I was commenting on. However, I feel very strongly that others shouldn't dictate what different nations do. In this case the GP was suggesting that the Japanese ought to change their views to ensure that Google wasn't facing cultural sensitivity. I do not agree. The Japanese are quite entitled to do what they damn well please in their own country and the rest of us will just have to put up with it. The Japanese culture may be very different from that of the GP, or you, or mine for that matter. But it is an ancient culture and we ought to show them at least a little respect. As I have already pointed out, I have no problem with Google driving around and photographing the whole of the USA if that's what Americans think is right and proper. But Google do not have the right to insist that they can do what they please anywhere in the world simply because Americans think it is a good idea. The opinions of the people whose country is being photographed should be paramount. And the Japanese think, according to TFA, that this behaviour is beyond that which is deemed acceptable. Now, I'm not sure what part of that point of view you believe to suggests my arrogance, but perhaps you will tell me?

Secondly, what exactly is my 'interesting mental issue' that you refer to? The fact that I respect other cultures, other nations' sovereignty or the right for each nation to decide its own set of laws and rules by which they live? If so, then I am proud of it but, all the same, I would rather that you clarified this point for me. Thank you.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[janrinok]

But if my culture says that I should be able to stand in front of my window without people rudely staring in at me, then I can see why someone might be highly offended at being photographed whilst in their own home. We are arguing semantics if we debate how far inside my home I am standing, or how close a camera must be to the window to become intrusive. In the West we might accept such things but it does not surprise me that other nations might not be as comfortable with this as we are. The Japanese simply draw the line at a different place and their upbringing and culture trains them to respect the limits that they have chosen. Google's activities seem to have gone beyond what the Japanese think is acceptable and, in Japan and elsewhere, Google should desist from crossing those cultural lines, IMHO.

...the simple fact is that the Western system states that anything not prohibited by law is permitted, and if the Japanese want to enforce morality, they must write it into law.

I understand the point you are making but the Japanese are not Western, they are oriental. We might have to change our laws to prevent Google from being intrusive but, as I do not know enough about Japanese law with regards to what is permitted and what is not, I cannot support your supposition that it is a Japanese failing in some respect.

As an example, in France (and some other European countries - please no anti-France jokes) if someone takes a photograph of you sunbathing in your garden then it can be an intrusion of your privacy. The photographer might be standing in a public place. The individual has a right to expect that people should not take undue interest in your (legal) activities when you are on your own property and the courts can award penalties against the photographer that others might find excessive. When in Rome,....or should that be Paris?

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[janrinok]

The United States and freedom of speech gives him the right to tell others that they are wrong for any reason at all

You missed part of it out. It gives him the right to tell anyone that he thinks that they are wrong but it only gives him the right to tell Americans what to do. The rest of the world does not appreciate being 'told what to do' by foreigners who might think that their law gives them a right to behave as they wish wherever they are. The Japanese in TFA don't need to be told by an American, or anyone else for that matter, that they should accept Google's behaviour even if it does not comply with local laws, customs and culture. We must all accept the local laws and customs. If we don't like them, then don't go there. And that, in essence, is the thrust behind TFA and the problem that Google is now facing.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[drinkypoo]

I understand the point you are making but the Japanese are not Western, they are oriental.

I was hoping you'd bite! The Japanese have readily taken on practically everything else from Western society - it's time for them to accept that part of the price for the high-tech lifestyle is the death of privacy.

Mind you, we're talking about privacy in public, which you never had anyway...

Pretending you had privacy is not the same as having it.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[argent]

If privacy is really that much of a concern, you should be more worried about whether or not your neighbor has a webcam than the Google-mobile driving by.

Until Google creates "Google realtime webcam search" a bunch of independent webcams, unindexed, unsearchable, unnavigable, is far less of a concern.

Making personal data searchable changes the nature of the data in a fundamental way.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Draek]

Don't you feel this clashes with all the fine words about privacy that we always hear so much about on Slashdot?

Not really. The US Government is, well, a government, and Google is a private company, with no law enforcement agencies forcing you to cooperate with them, or threatening you with a nice trip to Cuba if you don't comply.

Similarly, I'll protest both against sexual discrimination in the government, as well as against anyone trying to prevent you from shouting "fucking fag!" in an online match, and I see no contradiction in that either.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Dirtside]

No, but Google shouldn't be conducting itself in a manner which local custom and culture say is unacceptable. If Google doesn't like it then they can go elsewhere.

But unless the law forces them to do so, they won't. That's the reason we have laws: because "custom" and "culture" cannot force anyone to do anything. It'd sure be nice if everyone was polite all the time and never did anything wrong or rude or inconsiderate, but it ain't gonna happen (or even get close) without the force of law.

Why not concentrate on their home ground and then, if other nation's decide that it is a good idea - and perhaps there is money to be made - they can invite Google to do the same in their country.

Ah, so any commerce should only be engaged in at the specific request of a government. Why don't you run a country for a few decades with that economic standard and tell me how it works out.

By the way, has Google tried doing this in some parts of Russia yet? There are areas occupied by the 'nouveau riche' where they will be lucky to leave alive.

Do you think Google is stupid enough to send their drivers to places where they're likely to get injured or killed? Having people think you're rude is one thing; having them shoot at you is another.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google shouldn't be conducting itself in a manner which local custom and culture say is unacceptable. If Google doesn't like it then they can go elsewhere.

If the homeowners don't like it they can sue Google. If the country doesn't like it they can make new laws. If consumers don't like it they can stop clicking Google ads. Japan is a free country.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analogy is flawed.

It's also illegal to make and distribute child pornography, and there is still a human element -- SOMEONE has to drive the vehicle taking pictures.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[im_thatoneguy]

You're suggesting I don't care about Japanese privacy concerns but do care about American.

I would have thought my final sentence about hanging out my window to be seen by the google van would have been sufficient information for you to reach the conclusion that I am not one of those people who think "privacy in public is all important".

If I have a lurid little affair that I don't want ANYBODY to see. I do it in a place where NOBODY can get to without breaking a law or me discovering their presence. There is nothing stopping a law abiding citizen from walking down a japanese alleyway and looking at me having an affair in my back yard except possible shame... but that shame would be nothing compared to the shame felt by the person having been discovered.

The invention of the cell phone cameras already destroyed the Japanese expectation to privacy.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[im_thatoneguy]

And who gave you the right to decide how each country and culture should think? You might not agree with the Japanese view - tough luck, just don't choose to live there. But you have not got the right to tell others that they are wrong simply because it is not in accord with your own personal view or it isn't the view adopted by your own country.

I'm not judging their belief. I completely agree with it. It should be taboo to snoop on your neighbors and stare at them. All that I'm saying is that Google is not the problem--the problem is the Japanese people are about to come to terms with REALITY. The reality is that people who want to snoop on them can do so legally and without being discovered.

They have been living on the assumption that that is not true. They are now discovering that that is wrong.

My exact phrase was "Expectation of Privacy". The reasonable expectation of privacy is that you can do something with knowledge of who knows about it. I can legally control who is in my apartment at any given time. Therefore anything I do inside my apartment has a reasonable expectation of privacy since my actions reflect what I know can be seen while inside my apartment. If I am naked in front of an open window on a busy street it might be taboo for people to look at me but I also have to realzie that my reasonable expectation of privacy has been expanded to the public domain.

Before the invention of cameras your reasonable expectation of privacy while in a public space was the people you could see. Therefore in the case of alleyways you had a reasonable expectation of privacy extending to people who happened to walk by and if a flock of insensitive german tourists can running through with cameras you could react and hide yourself before more than 2 or 3 saw you.

Cameras--not google obliterated that expectation of privacy. People have to become aware of what was true before Google Street View. They had already lost that privacy.

So I'm not being critical of the Japanese Culture. I'm being critical of those who say that this is a new problem and a problem limited to Google. This is a case where a cultural expectation and reality are out of sync.

This is like people complaining that security exploits known by hackers should be kept hidden. The only people who are kept out of the dark by not making commonly known security exploits public are the people who need to know they're at risk.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[RancidPeanutOil]

And who gave you the right to decide how each country and culture should think? You might not agree with the Japanese view - tough luck, just don't choose to live there. But you have not got the right to tell others that they are wrong simply because it is not in accord with your own personal view or it isn't the view adopted by your own country.

Um.... nobody "gave him the right" to tell any country or culture "how to think". The parent is merely pointing out the unREALISTIC expectations of TFA. If I say, "Japan, your plan to give every citizen a Humvee made out of platinum and taffy is flawed," would I be accused of dictating what a country or culture should do? Would I be imposing my crazy ideas on another culture, another way of living, being a narrow-minded cultural hegemon? No. I would be pointing out that some perceivably-held belief of said culture was ridiculous. I'm sorry, but as the parent pointed out, if this open letter is representative of Japan, then Japan's expectation of privacy is too high. I mean, do they have such little faith in their fellow humans that they cringe at the thought of others seeing their clothes drying? This concept doesn't make any sense, and it makes it sound like the writer has a pretty dim view of human behavior when it isn't strictly monitored. And really - seeing cars parked in a driveway? That's nuts. I like how in TFA, they suggest that observing your surroundings would send you to the prefectural police station. Wow, OK. I guess this is just a polite letter, huh?

Anyway, I don't have any real argument for why that's so wrong - but I'll see if I can figure it out. Googling Japanese urban spaces and looking for people entering capsule hotels allows me to think...

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Roxton]

You're begging the question.

If my culture thinks it's horribly rude to take pictures of my windows, I have a reasonable expectation that it won't happen. I mean, there may be some maladjusted weirdo or social maverick, but the odds aren't very high. These distinctions aren't binary, they're practical.

In this case, it's a powerful, well-moneyed entity violating the expectations of millions of people. There's an argument to be made here that this is grossly unethical. Social pressure may, in fact, change Google's policies. You've got to let the abstract pseudo-logic go and think in more practical terms.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[im_thatoneguy]

Culture is not sacrosant. It never has been.

This idea that culture is to be remain stagnant and locked is naive, foolish and quite honestly incredibly insulting to culture.

Let's take the native american/western european collision. It was the arrogance of the Europeans that the two cultures couldn't learn anything from one another that prevented them from learning from the other culture. The Native Americans, despite being viewed as backwards and childish once it became convenient to commit genocide, were eager to adopt the technologies and some of the cultural institutions of the Europeans because they thought they were 'useful'. If we hadn't attempted to wipe out the Native Americans or been so arrogant as to presume that their culture was incompatible with our own I think we would have a fascinating blend.

Yes you need to be sensitive to local traditions and views. But that doesn't mean that you freeze a society in time. Japan's culture evolved out of the realities it faced. Now they are being faced with a new challenge and one thing history has proven time and time again is that ignoring the problem and pretending it'll just go away is never the solution.

Modern, compact, high quality cameras have destroyed our expectations of any public act not being recorded and published. That's a fact. Japan even is the country is in many ways responsible for that change in the world. Now the consequences of that technology are starting to materialize and if Japan wants to retain their privacy cultures then they have to change the technology and prohibit photography and publishing in residential areas except by people who live within that block. Otherwise some other company will fill Google's place. Some private Japanese citizen who wants to provide street view maps and accept the criticism in exchange for money will simply step in instead.

It only takes one person to take Google's place and in a country of millions you can't expect someone won't do it.

Ban cameras in public spaces or accept the consequences of progress. This is the pandora's box of imaging technology. What happens when we all have microscopic cameras embedded in our retinas retaining all of our lives? Do we have GPS black out our cameras then? What if I want to publish my memories? It's untennable. It's unrealistic to expect the law to be able to cover it and it's impossible to enforce. Welcome to the Now.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, who drives the vehicle taking the pictures? Don't tell me it's a robot.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[WNight]

Yeah, the complainant is entitled to his view. Are you happy now? But he wants to dictate the behavior of everyone else, many who don't feel the same way he does. That's not okay.

Yes, he is Japanese, no, I am not. But it's not a cultural issue. Look around on the net for pictures of Japan. They aren't in short supply. Personal snaps - like flikr stuff, commercial (posters, aerial photos, real-estate photos), and semi-commercial like camera-review sites with thousands of photos of exactly the same street across from their office. It's ludicrous to say that Japanese people really have a different feeling, in such a way that others can't understand. There are many people in the USA who make an almost identical argument, and there are obviously many Japanese photographers who don't see what the problem is.

Who I am to tell you, and the world, what to do, is simply 'right'. I literally have a clearer view of this than you. I can see some of the logical traps you're getting stuck on, and I can see as well that the proposed solutions serve nobody. For instance, you keep assuming that this is a cultural phenomenon simply because this individual says it is - the many similar sentiments expressed by even Americans shows clearly that it is not. It's doesn't need special handling, merely someone with some common sense to explain that even if cameras were illegal, the very snoops he finds rudest are the ones who would use hidden cameras.

I don't want people to be unhappy. But if we play your silly appeasement game where we assume that any complainer has the right to dictate the behavior of everyone around them we wouldn't actually try to solve anything, merely band-aid uselessly. Instead we need to figure out the problem - this guy wants more privacy and a better idea of where he is in private - and thus how to get those things. By realizing that his idea to prevent photography is authoritarian and ultimately useless we would keep searching for a way to make him feel better.

Otherwise what 'sort of crazy rules and jackbooted enforcement policies' will YOU want to enforce next.

Hello. I'm the one saying we don't need restrictive anti-photography laws. What kind of jack-booted policies am I enforcing? That we *not* leap immediately to enact sweeping regulation? Oh, what a fascist!

What arrogance and ignorance YOU demonstrate by assuming that YOU are required to accommodate THEM in THEIR country.

We (the non-lunatics) are required to accommodate this nonsense. None of the anti-photo privacy ideas really enhance privacy, they just give a false sense of security.

If Streetview exists I'll use it when shopping for real-estate instead of taking my own photos. If Google Streetview accidentally took a picture of you nude through the window you'd have someone to ask to remove it. If I was taking my own photos I might not notice you and put the shot on my website where it would be archived for anyone to find, but outside of your control to remove. Your privacy would be served by having Google Streetview in this case because it would provide a central responsible party, would reduce the number of other (my real-estate photos, etc) shots, and you could probably get Google to agree to playing an announcement, like an ice-cream truck plays music, if you work with them. That way private people could simply draw the curtains for the critical five minutes.

But you can't begin to approach a working solution unless you grow up and smell the camera-scented reality.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[WNight]

Who would I have to be to decide that a superstition is silly? Am I only allowed to be an atheist about gods from my own culture? I was not aware that there was a special permit you needed to poke fun at institutionalized stupidity.

They seem to be so basic, that one tends to regard them as global and attributes them as "realistic", "reasonable" or even "logical".

Yes, they feel that way. So you stop and question them. That's when you realize that Santa wouldn't fit down the chimney.

Some ideas don't need justification. You would be no more right or wrong if your chose 'country vista' over 'cityscape' for your favorite view. I might disagree, but I have no issue at all with you having any opinion on this.

But, when you have an opinion on something you're clearly ignorant on, that respect goes out the window. If you don't know the issues, don't vote. If you don't understand that this privacy debate isn't segregated by country, go do more research before jumping on the cultural sensitivity bandwagon. Many of my neighbors would likely agree with this fellow, without any more idea of how to make something useful happen, and many Japanese citizens would vehemently disagree.

They have all the right to ask for what accommodates them in their own country.

Yes, he has a right to ask. But expecting people to accommodate him is something totally different. I'm not likely to photograph his house (geography) but based on the evidence online of Japanese photography (looking much like mine, views around the neighborhood) many of his countrymen would be dismayed by your attempt to turn this into a racial issue. Clearly his opinion is far from culturally universal. Allowing these people to dictate laws, when they obviously display an inability to understand the reality of hidden cameras and the impossibility of preventing photography, does put a huge burden on the sane members of society.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[rca66]

But that doesn't mean that you freeze a society in time. Japan's culture evolved out of the realities it faced. Now they are being faced with a new challenge and one thing history has proven time and time again is that ignoring the problem and pretending it'll just go away is never the solution.

But it's the decision of the Japanese how they handle this change, not that of a US-company, nor are North-American or European readers of Slashdot asked to judge it.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[pbhj]

Google's web crawler cannot be charged with child pornography possession if it simply indexes a page containing child pornography.

No but "Google Inc." is a legal "person" and could be charged with possession.

If you view child pornography on accident then you have not commited an immoral act.

That's as maybe, but it might still be an illegal act.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[rca66]

I was not aware that there was a special permit you needed to poke fun at institutionalized stupidity.

The point is: it is only stupid because of your cultural bias.

Allowing these people to dictate laws, when they obviously display an inability to understand the reality of hidden cameras and the impossibility of preventing photography, does put a huge burden on the sane members of society.

You didn't get it. They don't want to dictate laws. The respect for privacy in resident areas is something the Japanese usually respect without laws. They don't use fences, hedges, or laws to prevent people from taking photographs or just take a curios look - they count on the good behavior of the people around. This is the point where your bias (and that of others in this discussion) shows up: in your opinion if they are in the open air, they have to be aware that they can be photographed, filmed or just looked at. This is simply not the case in Japanese culture, where you can count on the mutual agreement, that even if somebody is able to take pictures of you and your home - he simply doesn't do it. This is THEIR reality. And there is hardly anything stupid about it.

Imagine you witness an accident. A person is killed, the body is lying on the street. Would you take a photo and put in on the web? How would you react if you would see others avidly taking photos with their mobile phones? Well, I think most people would respect the privacy of the dead and don't take photos, even if they could, hidden camera or not, and even if they would face legal consequences. There is a silent agreement in our culture not to do such things. You regard this as silly as well, and as not facing reality?

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely automated? So no one is driving those nifty black image gathering cars?

Somebody better tell DARPA.

http://www.darpa.mil/GRANDCHALLENGE/

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

, because those nations deem it unacceptable behaviour.

Uhh no they don't. You missed the point. If a nation deems it unnacceptable, it is made into a law. If some citizens find it objectionable, they found it objectionable. AKA, who cares. Don't go foisting it on the country (institution).

google will operate under the law.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[gullevek]

And with what right did the Americans back then forced the Japanese to open up their country to foreigners. How dare they asked for this.

Sometimes cultural change is brought in from outside. And a lot of culture changed here since the reformation back in Meiji area.

Samurai and cast system gone, people wearing mostly western cloths, or do you think a suit is a japanese invention, or the car, or the cell phone.

Plus I still doubt there is much privacy invasion as said before. just look at my flickr stream, I have tons and tons of backstreet photos from japanese places. Never ever I was stopped by a cop, never ever. Nor did any one else stop me.

Plus the pictures in street view are anyway so old. A friend found his car, which broke down 1/2 a year ago in front of his house.

Actually all japanese people I know are totally happy with street view. You should have seen us at office on the release day when we all looked around if we could find our homes, office, etc ...

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[WNight]

You didn't get it. They don't want to dictate laws.

Oh, sure. He talks about how the community culture prevents photos, uses an example of police coming and arresting someone who didn't follow the norms, and you don't think that they're looking to dictate the law.

The respect for privacy in resident areas is something the Japanese usually respect without laws.

Really? Do you have any evidence for this? Anything outside of the letter?

This is the point where your bias (and that of others in this discussion) shows up: in your opinion if they are in the open air, they have to be aware that they can be photographed, filmed or just looked at. This is simply not the case in Japanese culture, where you can count on the mutual agreement, that even if somebody is able to take pictures of you and your home - he simply doesn't do it. This is THEIR reality.

It's not my opinion, it's called reality. When you're outside, you're liable to be photographed, possibly by people so far away you can't see them, perhaps even from space. You don't have to like this, but you need to realize that it can happen.

North Americans have a culture of shame around masturbation, but everyone does it. The Japanese have a culture of shame around looking too closely at your neighbors, but do you really think nobody looks?

And there is hardly anything stupid about it.

Yeah, except the whole inability to adjust to reality. The photos are being taken, already by the people who want to invade your privacy, and maybe also by innocent uses like Streetview that potentially could invade your privacy, but are also being run by people who do, on request, blur out indecent pictures they've happened to capture.

So instead of working with Google to publish these pictures and help everyone, they'd rather reward the secret abusers of the system by letting them have their pictures and prevent legal and non-abusive photography.

Hardly anything stupid at all.

The point is: it is only stupid because of your cultural bias.

Wrong. It's stupid because it is delusional. The author claims to speak for a whole people, but is unaware of logical contradictions in his own argument. His folksy description of urban life does nothing to bolster his call for the prevention of non-abusive photography as a way of actually achieving his stated goal, leaving you to the conclusion that he merely wants everyone to do things his way.

In other words, cultural distance from our lives, 0. He's an example of the people who want to ban everything. He's claiming a unique cultural POV which nobody else can understand - just like everyone does.

Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Twat

Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[Pantero Blanco]

We've got an international corporation coming into conflict with local values that its upper management probably didn't even realize existed. I hope that those values win out without having to resort to legislation (ie, Google accepts and removes street view in the areas that request it).

If that doesn't happen, even with Google, then I will no longer have any illusions about the possibility of peace between those two worlds.

I wonder what Corrupt.org's take on this will be, if they run an article on it...

Re:Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[jd]

Most countries have their own boundaries and privacy expectations, very few of which match the general "ideal" American view. Streetview is only possible if culture is ignored, which can only serve to reinforce conservatism and isolationism, as the instinctive reaction to boundary violations is to repel the offender.

Re:Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[dbIII]

In Australia stranglely enough the pedophilla card was played against google streetview. An article in one newspaper showed a photograph of a campaigner against it with her two young girls - and the implication was that the girls were in danger because there was a photograph of their house on the internet.

This is one step beyond the irrational fear of a photograph stealing away your soul - in this case the people feared for where not in the photograph and it would take a lot of effort to link the two. Hopefully exploring this irrational fear this will launch some social pychologist on a shining career when they work out what is broken in people's heads that makes this fear so common.

Re:Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, because Corrupt.org is always a good source of information

http://www.corrupt.org/act/interviews/weev

6. What function does "Internet eugenics," or natural selection, serve within the sphere of modern human civilization? Do we also need eugenics outside of the cyber world?

Kate (as mentioned in the NYT article) suggests that the death of the trolling scene on Livejournal effectively lowered the standard of human beings which contribute content on the service. She describes communities she once valued being "filled with fucking furries" and "noone even says anything to them anymore". I contend that trolling is the chief moral arbiter of the Internet. I see little difference between the methods performed by trolls on the Internet when they ruin the lives of furries and pedophiles and the methods used by Moses when he ordered the idol worshippers killed. Martin Luther contended in his tract "On the Jews and Their Lies" that if Moses were alive today he'd be busy burning synagogues. I'm inclined to agree; the only thing keeping us deriding furries on the Internet instead of going to their furry conventions and rapidly exterminating them is the Jewish influence upon society.

Just like how the loss of troll influence upon the Livejournal community resulted in a lower quality of human inhabiting the site, the lack of memetic selection upon Western civilization is resulting in a drastically lower quality of human being infesting it. For Western values to survive, those who attack them must be exterminated. We should start with the furries, and move to the media moguls who are glorifying prostitution and drug use.

Upon some timeline Protestants are going to have to stand up and admit that it is their belief system that made their nations so great, and that without their persistent influence they will degrade into the third world shitholes from which they began.

Re:Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[Pantero Blanco]

That's a question from an interview and the interviewee's response. I don't see why it would imply that the site isn't a source of good information.

And if you're waiting for a site that's _always_ a source of good information and nothing but that, don't hold your breath.

Re:Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly the child porn card is played way too much. Just from what little I've read, child porn is distributed simply by uploading to free webs or equivalent through a few proxies and downloaded by people who know where to find it. No need for "dark nets" or anything fancy. There is very little that can be done to stop it, given the abundance of anonymous places stuff can be hosted.

Usenet was only one of the many places it resides, clearly "getting rid of usenet" was only to hamper access to binaries.

Feds should only be going after the providers in their efforts to stop cp.

Re:Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[ubernostrum]

Well, from what I can tell the hysteria here in the US is nothing as compared to some Commonwealth countries; in the UK, for example, I hear it's now forbidden for children to be taken out in public at any time, and any and all discussion of the fact that children exist is forbidden, in hopes that pedophiles will thus be misled into believing that there are no children.

Re:Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[Jardine]

In Australia stranglely enough the pedophilla card was played against google streetview. An article in one newspaper showed a photograph of a campaigner against it with her two young girls - and the implication was that the girls were in danger because there was a photograph of their house on the internet.

Yet she was fine with the newspaper publishing a picture of her and her two young girls. I wonder if anyone pointed that out to her.

Re:Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[pbhj]

Hopefully exploring this irrational fear this will launch some social pychologist on a shining career when they work out what is broken in people's heads that makes this fear so common.

It's called parenthood.

Children get abducted for various reasons. Abduction is easier if you are familiar with the place from which you wish to abduct someone.

We here a lot about abductions in the media - this tricks us into thinking it is a common occurrence despite it being relatively rare. However it is no comfort to know that a rare occurrence has afflicted you if it does happen.

Some parent's put everything they have into their kids (if your a gamer, think about the loss of being deprived from ever gaming or even using a computer again; the hours modding your box, the months of work to pay for the stuff, the companionships, the lifestyle, all gone - that's not an equivalence but I think it helps to understand why a parent would do much to avoid grief). Whether a parent's fear is irrational is probably questionable given what they stand to lose.

---

Incidentally I try my best not to allow fear to dictate to me and to allow my kid to risk his life and limbs in order to learn how best to survive the pitfalls.

Re:Megacorp versus Local Community, Again?

[gordo3000]

um... just make sure what you are talking about actually applies to the community at large. it's funny how slashdot readers read one solitary article by one japanese person and think he represents the nation. I live and owrk in Japan and every Japanese person I know thinks it's awesome to be able to do this. at work, we stopped for about an hour when we found out they had tokyo in it and we were all looking at each others houses and neighborhoods.

it was also a lot of fun to look at various places and is incredibly useful for giving directions.

before you think a corporation is trampling on a culture, be sure it's actually the culture of hte population at large.

oh, and a lot of the old people outside without clothing/ looking like bums are actually homeless. there are tons around where I live. this may be the equivalent of the japanese : "don't show our homeless because it embarrasses us". I've heard that one before; that there aren't homeless or poor in japan even when you show them to people. many japanese people don't want to admit someone who is japanese could be homeless or not have a job.

No suprise

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

It's not like there hasn't been any controversy about this technology in other countries.

No addresses in Japan.

[Simple-Simmian]

For a country like Japan that doesn't use "addresses" Streetview is a god send.

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

Of course they have addresses!

I wrote a whole website to allow one to look up Japanese addresses in English: [http://diddlefinger.com] so I know of what I speak...

That said, I doubt I will be adding streetview to my maps site. People caught on it are too easily identifiable by neighbours in their area, despite the faces being fuzzed out.

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[caywen]

First thing, they do have addresses. Either you're wrong, or the thing we write on the envelopes to my wife's parents in Japan are useless scribbles, and we've been getting unimaginably lucky. Second thing, a godsend to who? Sounds to me like this feature isn't wanted. The Japanese are plenty brilliant, and if they needed something like this, they would have had it years ago.

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[wellingj]

No. Google Maps is a godsend. Streetview is fluff.

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[mad flyer]

Yeah... they have addresses, it's the common sense in the structure of the addressing scheme that is completely out of whack...

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[mad flyer]

Japanese, brilliant ?

Where is your japan ? because mine is dwelled by moronic inbred spewing xenophobic rethorics day in day out...

So maybe the plane landed at the wrong place...

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

In what way?

It operates on a different principle perhaps, but it is perfectly logical and fairly easy to use.

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[Heian-794]

To say that it's perfectly logical and easy to use is to ignore how much more logical and easier it could be.

(More information that most people will want, so feel free to skim.)

Back in the 700s, when the capitals at Nara and Kyoto were built, they began using an extremely logical addressing system that lets you know exactly where to go when on the streets, and also tells you exactly where things were when looking at a map: they built a square grid of streets, the east-west horizontal ones bearing numbers, and locations are described as being on such-and-such street, followed by the nearest cross street, and then the direction from that intersection. So the Kyoto prefectural office is on Shimotachiuri street, west from Shinmachi, for example. Now in modern times, they usually add a neighborhood name and building number after that, for redundancy. (And Google, to their discredit, displays these near-meaningless neighborhood names much more prominently than they do the street names, which is what you actually need. Hopefully this will be remedied soon.)

This system was far ahead of anything in Europe at the time, but unfortunately future Japanese cities didn't take it up. Instead, they used neighborhood names, like Katamachi above, and it must be admitted that when streets don't go in straight lines and are sometimes little more than alleyways, it might be better to settle on a neighborhood or district and then number the buildings in that area. It also has the advantage of being compatible with buildings atop mountains and in isolated countryside where there aren't necessarily roads.

Where the problems began with the neighborhood system was in the 1960s when the government, taking a top-down, bureaucrat-favoring approach, decided to eradicate thousands of venerable old district names and amalgamate addresses into very general area names followed by a chain of numbers.

In Shinjuku -- an excellent example -- a massive number of districts all had their names taken away from them, replaced by simply "Shinjuku", districts 1 through 7.

When looking at a map, you can find Shinjuku 7-38-17 easily enough by homing in on it, spotting district 7 and then sub-block 38, followed by sub-sub-block 17 inside that. There might be more than one building on that lot, but at least you're in the right area.

This is great for bureaucrats and developers, but no fun at all for the person on the street looking for a given house. And it's also no fun when you're trying to memorize an address -- you have to learn not just the digits, but where the breaks are. The least they could do is call it "73817"!

In the eastern half of Shinjuku ward, thankfully, the people rose up against this and managed to preserve their old block names. In the process they got to keep their easy-to-remember numbers. So if I want to find the gas station at Yarai-cho 43, or the school at Waseda Minami 25, I can find it on a map and remember the number easily, and won't be totally lost if I miss a digit.

For the rest of the big cities that don't use streets like Kyoto or Sapporo, Google Street View is a godsend since the streets often don't have names and the addresses are hard to commit to memory. You can actually line the camera up at the train station and check out the exact buildings you'll be passing by on your way to your destination.

Street View is not nearly as important as having a regular map, I admit, but until they start using more human-oriented addresses, we need all the help we can get. I say they just blur out people's faces, NHK TV-style, and let us keep our virtual street tours so that we don't get hopelessly lost trying to find "Central 2-18-3" and "Riverside 4-1-25-A-106". Or petition the government to get some sense into the address system -- or get them to issue us with car-navigator-style GPS devices that give us live directions!

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

Your main objection seems to boil down to, "names are easier to remember than numbers".

This is possibly true. But numbers do have the benefit of indicating that one is CLOSE to an area.

e.g if I know I am 4 chome 12 (and area indicator signs are liberally placed in cities) and I am looking for 4 chome 13, I know I am in the general area. But if the area has a name, not a number, knowing in "placeX" does not indicate to me that I am close to "placeY"

Being hopeless at remembering both names AND numbers, I tend to write addresses down, or make a link and send it to my keitai.

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet they do have addresses, they're just not in ISO-8859-1 as you seem to expect them to be.

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[KouOuKen]

Exactly! As someone who has had to navigate the roads of Japan for the past 5 years, I agree completely. Driving directions in Japan are given almost exclusively with landmarks and visual cues. "Head straight until you get to 'Fujii Clinic' and turn left." or maybe "Turn right at the overhead pedestrian bridge." These instructions can not only be infuriating to someone who has grown up using street names and cardinal directions, but ineffective for Japanese natives as well, especially when visiting an unfamiliar area. In the end, Streetview is just another tool in the modern toolbox available to modern man... and while it may make snooping around peoples' homes a little easier, I think the beneficial uses FAR outweigh the drawbacks. (especially for the Japanese!)

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[caywen]

I'm referring to the Japan I visit twice a year. I'm referring to people like my wife who is one of the many people you, like a moron, insulted without any due diligence. By the way, to me, it sounds like you described parts of America, Russia, China, and pretty much most countries, so spare me your high minded, um, whats the words for it... CRAP.

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[gullevek]

hahaha, thats what you think. there comes in the craziness of japanese numbering. Just because of logic we think that 13 comes after 12, that doesn't mean it has to be so here. Because in a subblock those numbers seemed to be assigned to the building when it was built.

I just remember way way back when I searched for 8-25 somewhere in Ueno and I found 8-12 so I thought if go into the right direction I will find it. Nothing, suddenly after 8-17 there was 7-9. 8-25 was and complete opposite side, so there is no real rule with numbers here ... they don't use 10a if the build a new building between 10 and 11, it might become 25, because the last highest number was 24 ... Thats why almost all buildings have names. so you can find them somehow at least ...

But google maps is really a godsend and GPS on my mobile. I so often check out the google map after I exit the train station to get my bearings right ... "okay, after the mos burger I have to go left and then there should be an am pm and after that it should be ..."

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[gullevek]

Well with all respect. I see just too often people looking int maps, keitai maps just to find their way around.

The local post man knows where 21-14-12 foo building is. But someone from across the city has no idea. Or why are there on every corner maps from the local area, maps in front of koban, maps in front of train stations, etc.

Just because the system is confusing (at least in Tokyo).

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[Heian-794]

Gullevek, there actually is some order to it. The block numbers (which come after the place name if there are no numbered "cho", or if there are "chome", right after that number) go in a boustrophedon-like snake pattern, so you might have something like:

-1 -2 -3 -4 -5
10 -9 -8 -7 -6
11 12 13 14 15

...with various complications if the blocks aren't square. Then, within each block, the lot-numbers go clockwise in a circle, so 8-24 and 8-25 should be next to each other, but of course if there's more than one building on lot 8-24, they'll both have the same number. (Three levels of Russian-matryoshka-doll-like numbering and each building still isn't identified uniquely!)

This system will make much more sense when looking at a map with a bird's-eye view than when actually on the streets!

I think my main quibble with this system lies in wnat a strain on the mind the block/sub-block/sub-sub-block numbering is. The location "3-23-8" is easily confused with "3-2-38" because of the breaks in between the numbers. If they called the eighth lot in block 23 "2308" and the 38th lot in block 2 "2038", it would be quite a bit easier. Some places do this very thing, such as Shiomi-dai in Kochi city; I hope it becomes more common.

(The mathematical psychologist Stanislas Dehaene has discussed the mental strain of breaking telephone numbers into two-digit blocks, French-style, as opposed to a string of digits. I wonder what he would think of these addresses!)

The idea that buildings are numbered in the order they were built is a famous canard and isn't actually seen very often at all.

Anoraknid, that's an amazing site you've developed; I'd seen it before. I still think more use could be made of names -- how about in Ichigaya where they append neighborhood names after the main name (as in Ichigaya Kora-cho, Ichigaya Kaga-cho, Ichigaia Sanai-cho, etc.)? Easier to learn than Ichigaya 1-chome, Ichigaya 2-chome, etc., and you still know what area you're in.

Re:No addresses in Japan.

[gullevek]

Thanks for the explanation, it still sounds horrible complicated and confusing.

I am glad they have maps everywhere and my keitai has google maps and GPS map and their are koban all over tokyo too and conbini and what-not-else :)

3-38-8 is just so so confusing because they should rather write 3äç®38-3 and on the buildings the small street sign only says 38-3 (so you actually don't know in which choume you are unless you find the big sign around the corner).

and not every building has a visible number at all. there are so many ads outside that the number just got "lost" somewhere perhaps.

No addresses?

[XanC]

What do they do? (Genuinely curious.)

Re:No addresses?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

They call a phone number to request a temporary address whenever they want to send or receive mail. I hear they call it the DHCP service

Re:No addresses?

[kbs]

They do sort of have addresses, but it's by subdivision of block. As an example, a particular Hostel I was at was at "Shinjuku-ku, 5-2 Katamachi"

So to find it you need to go to the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, and then look for the Katamachi block, then find sub-block 5, and then it's the 2nd building in that section. Luckily for me the search space wasn't that large, but it's still definitely a two dimensional search rather than a one dimensional search...

View Map

Re:No addresses?

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

That's not a "sort of address" - it's an address - and a pretty logical one too, by British standards at least.

Japan names its intersections, not its roads, and generally names "what is bounded" rather than "what bounds it" (i.e. a road.)

Re:No addresses?

[dancingmad]

Yeah, my address is set up at a certain block of Inuotose, but since I live in a very small town, I can usually just use the town, the block, and the apartment and get my mail.

Re:No addresses?

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

Actually -you COULD probably just use numerics and STILL get your mail in Japan...

e.g the string "8150083,4-8-12-303" specifies a particular apartment and is all the post office really needs.

That said, of course we have addresses - fairly logical ones at that.

Re:No addresses?

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

your postcode and the numeric elements of your chome (or whatever) are probably sufficient. Just numbers and hyphens.

Re:No addresses?

[shoemilk]

Actually, you don't even need that. You can get your mail with just the Zip and block number (large city or small town). That's why the zips were made.

Re:No addresses?

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

I doubt that: I believe (but do not know) that postcodes can cover more than one chome ...

So I think you have to specify which chome.

Re:No addresses?

[im_thatoneguy]

But how do you know where the Katmachi block is? Randomly driving around?

The problem I see with an octree style navigational system for normal human beings is it makes it relatively impossible to know where you need to go. I can often know that I simply need to drive north until I hit "10th street" and then head south on it until I hit "B Ave" turn left and then my address will be #1234.

With only a subdivision I can't 'cross' my target destination.

No wonder GPS devices in Japan are so much better than ours with cool 3D street views!

Or am I completely missing the 'technique' for navigating? It's been 15 years since I was last in Japan and I wasn't a driver then.

Re:No addresses?

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

Few address systems "tell you where you need to go". In this case you have added two additional pieces of knowledge that are not implicit in the address: that you have to drive north to hit 10th street and then head south on it...

You got that from local knowledge, presumably.

In fact major roads in cities DO often have names in Japan - and very major roads are numbered ("route 3") etc...

Getting around London is impossible without either local knowledge or an AtoZ or similar. Japan is no different.

Re:No addresses?

[shoemilk]

You're right. You can get away with the postal code and then from the chome on (if you type it in yahoo! it'll ask you for your chome.)

Re:No addresses?

[brusk]

They DO use addresses, just not, for the most part in most cities, the number-street typical of European and American addresses. Rather, each city is divided into named sectors and each of those is divided into numbered zones, which are further subdivided into blocks. Each house on those blocks is given a number. So an address might look like "Minato-ku [port sector], 5-8-13": 13th house on the 8th block in the 5th zone of the port sector. What makes it VERY hard to find an address in Japan is that the numbers are not always laid out sequentially; if a new house is built it gets the next number up, so 13 could be between 8 and 21.

Re:No addresses?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The problem is that I heard from my JP teacher that buildings are numbered based on when they were built, not where they are in relative location. The first building on the block is numbered "1", regardless of where it was built.

Re:No addresses?

[Tim C]

How is that different to finding me by coming to my town (which is actually just an area of London), then finding my street, then finding the 68th house on it? Remembering that in fact one side of the street is even-numbered, the other odd-numbered (true of most but not all streets), there's no guarantee that they count in the same direction or that some numbers might not be skipped entirely (mostly in non-residential areas). About the only difference I see is that houses in the UK tend to have numbers on them - but then again, mine doesn't as I've not gotten round to getting one since I had my front door changed (several years ago).

Re:No addresses?

[gullevek]

They have addresses. But they seem to be layed out at complete randomness. If you want to go somewhere its something like "you use subway X and exit A2 then go two crossings down and turn left where the convenience store F is and then next to the flower shop you turn right and the third building called "Tanaka Building" there I live ..."

Re:No addresses?

[againjj]

Same thing in Laos. You have:
Group#/House# Village
District
Province
Each village is cordoned off into arbitrarily numbered groups, and houses are numbered in order of registration -- that's the order of construction for newer areas.

Morals only when someone can see you?

[Scott Kevill]

Do they only "not look" because they are worried that someone will see them look? But in the privacy of their homes, no one will know they are checking out other people's houses?
While I know it is a touchy subject in general, I find their reason odd. If no one wanted to look because of morals, they wouldn't look when they couldn't get caught either. That kind of defeats their higher moral ground argument.

Re:Morals only when someone can see you?

[AmiMoJo]

It's not just about the person looking, but the person being looked at. Say you need to hang your washing out to dry, in a typical Japanese home that means putting it somewhere it can be seen by your neighbours, or even the general public from the street. People only feel they can do it because they know/assume that people will not be staring at their underwear, because it's bad manners. Of course people do inadvertantly see that sort of thing, but they pretend not to so everyone saves on embarrassment.

A western parallel might be something like the fact that it's rude to stare at people with deformities or missing an eye etc. Of course you can see it, but it's polite to pretend not to notice. I expect people with deformities might feel a bit uneasy about having their pictures online where people can stare all they like, and worse link to and distribute those pictures without permission.

Re:Morals only when someone can see you?

[Ash-Fox]

A western parallel might be something like the fact that it's rude to stare at people with deformities or missing an eye etc. Of course you can see it, but it's polite to pretend not to notice. I expect people with deformities might feel a bit uneasy about having their pictures online where people can stare all they like, and worse link to and distribute those pictures without permission.

Not really a good parallel, since I am aware of a few western sites that do this anyway.

asper

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't matter if google removed it. Some other company would eventually make another street view feature, It's inevitable. Japan needs to realize the 21st century.

Re:asper

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Japan needs to realize the 21st century.

Big job for a small country.

Re:asper

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan needs to realize the 21st century.

Big job for a small country.

They will not stand in our way. It's the next paradigm, the next step in the evolution of humanity. We will, nay, must make streetviews of the world!

Mwa ha ha ha!

Re:asper

[wirefarm]

Japan needs to realize the 21st century.

Oh, come on. Japan does the 21st century better than any other country on the planet.

The difference is that Japan has rules dictating what is considered politeâ"unwritten, but universally-acknowledged rules that dictate hundreds of aspects of daily life... You could spend your whole life trying to learn the intricacies (as a foreigner) and never get it quite right.

One main difference is that Westerners think first about their rights, while Japanese think first about their responsibilities. Until you grok that, you're not going to understand.

Much more in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Europe, this feeling of privacy is much stronger than in Japan. So much so that we even have privacy laws protecting normal people (not so much public figures). Google's streetview might even be considered illegal if they make the people identifiable.

Re:Much more in Europe

[Migity]

Here in Europe, this feeling of privacy is much stronger than in Japan.

Apparently, you don't know Japan very well. I not only have lived here for over 14 years but am married to a Japanese woman and have 3 kids. It may surprise you to know that the word for privacy in Japanese is...puraibashi. "Why is that" you ask? In Japan there really wasn't any real concept of privacy before Japan started becoming westernized. So to say that privacy is big here is just bullshit. All your neighbors here are always knee deep in your shit (most people can't help it because they are only centimeters away from their neighbors). Privacy has only recently become big here with big companies sharing your personal information with others. Companies can even be certified that they will keep your personal information secret. Other than that, in your personal life, here in Japan privacy doesn't exist.

Re:Much more in Europe

[wirefarm]

True, true, true...
Since you really can't have much privacy here, you have to do so much more to pretend you do. Here they have a culture where people don't traditionally touch very much, don't shake hands, don't dance, yet you get crammed so close to each other on the train that you know how many coins the guy next to you has in his pocket. There are so many strange, unspoken rules about how to behave and where and when to avert your eyes in a situation like that.
I won't even get into the bizarre dynamics you encounter at a sento or onsen...
Of course your neighbors know what you eat and how much you drink by what you put out in the trash.
It's just a way to deal with life in such close quarters, I guess and for the most part, it works.

Re:Much more in Europe

[BJH]

Apparently, you don't know Japan very well.

It has been assumed here for a long time that people would make the effort to avoid being overly intrusive.
Since daily life gives you many more opportunities to invade others' privacy here than other less crowded places, knowing what is and is not acceptable behavior - without explicitly spelling it out in law - is a big part of the social mores.

Unfortunately, it seems that some people never realize that, no matter how long they stay here...

Re:Much more in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, your reading comprehension is at a pre-kindergarten level.

Re:Much more in Europe

[omfglearntoplay]

According to http://www.freedict.com/onldict/onldict.php there are at least one or two if not 3 other ways to say privacy. Lots of words in Japan are thrown away for the English version likely because of perceived coolness and nothing to do with the prior existence of the idea/concept/word.

puraibashi, naisho, puraivashi-, naimitsu, naishou

Anyway to generalize for a whole nation is crazy. Some places are probably different than others.

After living there...

[Taulin]

Speaking as an American who grew up in America, married to a Japanese woman, and lived in Tokyo for two years while going to animation school, going through these street views is pretty spooky. I feel like a ghost freely walking along the streets, watching old haunts of a place I once knew and felt at home. It's two AM in the morning, so my wife is asleep, but I can't wait until she wakes up and I can show her the parent's house!

Re:After living there...

[kestasjk]

No! You are outraged and disgusted!

Re:After living there...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's two AM in the morning...

Is there some other "two AM" (in the afternoon perhaps) that I'm not aware of?

Have I be missing out on 50% of the hours in a day... all my life?

Re:After living there...

[wirefarm]

but I can't wait until she wakes up and I can show her the parent's house!

Expect her to be a bit horrified, as mine was.

Re:After living there...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's two AM in the morning

Thanks for the added help, you fucktard -- my initial reaction was that you meant two AM in the afternoon. If you have to make a question of it, you probably are.

Just experienced this today

[dancingmad]

What an interesting article to be up here right now; I am starting my third year living in Japan and last afternoon walked out of my apartment with my current gf to go get lunch, much to the giggling of the next door second grader. While I live in the countryside, people still live close together and I think between me and my neighbors being noisy at different times we've all gotten on each others nerves.

But as the article suggests, people understand that's the cost of living close together and there is an amount of privacy people are willing to give you. As Google grows bigger here (the internet hub, really is Yahoo, but I've noticed some people using Google Maps for routes and things) this might become more and more of an issue, especially in places like Tokyo with many technologically savvy people and a high population density.

Cultural boundries

[Strange Ranger]

>cultural boundaries are simply different than those of the US.

Well then call me Japanese.
I don't like the fact that anyone with my address can just see what's in my backyard.

I mean, maybe it's okay if you see it. And you. And you. But not you.

Re:Cultural boundries

[dbcad7]

Hey, I know gas prices have been high.. but sheesh man, break out the mower will ya ?.. Then maybe you won't mind who looks at your backyard.

Re:Cultural boundries

[Anonymous Coward]

If people are snapping pictures of your backyard and putting them online, you've got bigger problems than Street View.

Re:Cultural boundries

[drinkypoo]

Your back yard opens on to the street in front of your house? Do you happen to have a tesseract behind your house?

how do you say

[evwah]

how do you say "clod" in japanese?

Re:how do you say

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

"baka" or "noroma" are two options....

Re:how do you say

[amrik98]

kuroddo

Re:how do you say

[evwah]

well then google is clearly full of Insensitive kuroddo!

Re:how do you say

[gzipped_tar]

kuroddo

Is this a transliteration of "clod"???

Re:how do you say

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

... yes ....

why?

"kuroddu" is another option....

Re:how do you say

[SuiteSisterMary]

'Gaijin.'

Re:how do you say

[Anonymous Coward]

You failed... unless you meant kurodduxo, but it doesn't seem like you meant that.

Re:how do you say

[SpammersAreScum]

That was probably the idea. The Japanese seem to be fond of adopting transliterations, sometimes even when there already was a perfectly good Japanese word for it. That said, I'm not sure if this particular one is in use; I've not been there in a while.

Re:how do you say

[SpammersAreScum]

Zing! Funny but true.

It's called having a place to put a fence.

[shoemilk]

You appropriately got modded down, but I thought maybe some one should explain to you, not everywhere has the same geography/city layout. Before you ignorantly posted this, you might have wanted to experience Japan by at least looking through streetview and you would realize what you suggest is near impossible for a large percentage of the population. There are very beautiful houses with immaculate gardens that are surrounded by walls and then there are apartment builds or duplexes built on top of each other and almost nothing in between.

You conveniently ommitting...

[Rix]

The fact that Google won those suits, for the most part.

Re:You conveniently ommitting...

[martin-boundary]

The fact that Google settled those suits, for the most part.

There, I fixed it for ya.

Re:You conveniently ommitting...

[ScrewMaster]

The question is whether or not the problem went away, win, lose or settled.

Re:You conveniently ommitting...

[TooMuchToDo]

Google settled when mistakes were made, but otherwise continue to follow the letter of the law.

Cue the whiners.

Re:You conveniently ommitting...

[martin-boundary]

Of course, the original comment was merely about trying to frame Google's behaviour in a way which hopefully gives insight into why they run into difficulties with the law in some cases.

Given that their motto is to organize all of the world's information, it's inevitable that lawsuits will occur, but real understanding of the company culture would help estimate when they are likely to fail or succeed in this task.

Re:You conveniently ommitting...

[Candid88]

"The fact that Google won those suits, for the most part"

Huh?

Of the three examples, Google won only 1 of them (the news syndication case) in court and even then the judge still curtailed Google's plans somewhat.

The Gmail lack-of-privacy legal issues are ongoing and I certainly don't think many would claim they "won" the suit they settled out-of-court with the book publishers.

japanese are interested in this

[traycerb]

Similar to other countries where Street View has been rolled out, some Japanese have created a site with a collection of interesting images from their country's Street View: http://google-streetview.seesaa.net/

I think the original Japanese author has some odd notions about American perceptions of privacy (your front yard as a public space?), and overemphasizes what real cultural differences exist; many Americans have much the same concerns.

FTA:

Japanese people intuitively recognize that a flesh-and-blood human being peeking into people's living space from the alleyway results in trouble, so ordinary people don't do this kind of thing.

...and if they do, Americans would reply "Hey, whadda you lookin at??" See? Not so different after all.

In Soviet Russia, and more

[caywen]

In Soviet Russia, the street views YOU. Seriously though, I completely agree with this letter. My wife is Japanese and has been living here in the Bay Area for 5 years. She's pretty accustomed to American life, but as soon as I showed the Street View Japan, she went silent and then said something like, "No. no no no, this is bad. Not in Japan. No way." And her friends feel exactly the same way. It really is a cultural difference, and Google really is asking for a world of hurt here. What is astounding is that they pretty much did *all* of Tokyo. Look at how much of that map is blue. Did it occur to them to try it out in a small area to see how the Japanese would react? To me, this reeks of extreme hubris on Google's part.

Re:In Soviet Russia, and more

[gullevek]

strange, my japanese co workers and friends here were all excited about street view. And I live in Japan, so I am so surprised to hear such negative views ...

Real estate

[NewToNix]

Well Japan may not like Street View, and maybe some people here in the U.S. don't like it either.

But I'm currently looking for a new (well new to me) house to buy --and where I need to move to is several hundred miles from where I live now.

Google Street View has been a godsend for me --I can get a easy idea of the neighborhood and usually the property it's self --for free, from home.

So, as usual, any new use of technology has upsides as well as downsides... and who ever I buy the house from will be very happy about my use of Street view. (eventually I will have to go and take a physical look, but my list of places to look at will be vastly shorter because of S.V.)

Re:Real estate

[houghi]

So the fact that many people do NOT like it doesn't matter, as long as one individual (you) can use it as a convinience, it doesn't matter.

Also as you go and visit the house in person anyway, you should be buying the house same house anyway. The only thing you gain is visiting some other houses.
That could mean you miss out on some other houses because of this. And that would mean you made an other houseowner unhappy, because you did not buy THAT house. Now if the neighbourhood was bad, you would not have bought it anyway.

So basicaly you give up your privicy for a few hours looking for a new house for a few hours. And yes, I like to call it privicy not having my picture taken each and every time I walk outside my house, no matter how legal it is. Just because it is not forbidden by law means you should be doing it.

Re:Real estate

[NewToNix]

So the fact that many people do NOT like it doesn't matter, as long as one individual (you) can use it as a convinience, it doesn't matter.

No I didn't say that --you did. I said it was tech I found a very good use for, nothing more. I did mention like all tech it has some good & some bad.

Also as you go and visit the house in person anyway, you should be buying the house same house anyway. The only thing you gain is visiting some other houses.

Obviously you'd rather I burn tons of fuel going to look at property that I would never buy, based simply on the fact that there exists tech I can use to avoid that. Do you own stock in the oil companies?

That could mean you miss out on some other houses because of this. And that would mean you made an other houseowner unhappy, because you did not buy THAT house. Now if the neighbourhood was bad, you would not have bought it anyway.

Well talk about making many people unhappy, man by that logic every house owner in the world would be really mad at me because I didn't buy their house... that's pretty weird reasoning.

So basicaly you give up your privicy for a few hours looking for a new house for a few hours. And yes, I like to call it privicy not having my picture taken each and every time I walk outside my house, no matter how legal it is. Just because it is not forbidden by law means you should be doing it.

Well I'm sorry you are bothered by this, but it has nothing to do with me --you are doing the equivalent of blaming all auto accidents on auto manufactures. Or perhaps in your world all cars should be banned, because you might not like them? The analogy is exactly the same --ban what you dislike (be it Street view, or any other thing), because YOU dislike it? Now it's more then possible that many people dislike it --it's a certainty every real estate broker loves it --street view is an automatic thing when searching for real estate now --location and all done by the listing agent.

Get a grip man --or get political and try to influence legislation about what you dislike. Don't be mad at me about it.

Re:Real estate

[mosb1000]

Exactly what part of "any new use of technology has upsides as well as downsides" did you not understand. Yes, we should use a new technology if it makes our lives easier and more convenient.

"having my picture taken each and every time I walk outside my house"

How do you feel about having your picture taken maybe once one time when you are walking down the street and a google car drives by? Because that's what's happening here. And you know what else? This isn't the first time someone's taken a picture and caught "innocent bystanders" in it. Do you make sure there's no one and nothing unintended in every picture you take? Have you ever posted a picture on the internet when it had someone in it you don't know?

Re:Real estate

[ubernostrum]

And yes, I like to call it privicy not having my picture taken each and every time I walk outside my house, no matter how legal it is.

An interesting commentary on average Slashdot ideals, and on the state of our society.

Incidentally, the solution is to secure copyright in some aspect of your house/property. People who make films, for example, have to hire firms to basically go pixel-by-pixel through each scene to ensure they haven't accidentally caught a copyrighted image or logo in the background, and then hire lawyers to negotiate licensing and fees for any scenes which have done so. For stuff that's already and deliberately in public display. The Spider-Man franchise really got in trouble for this, btw, when they photoshopped out a bunch of (copyrighted) billboards in New York and replaced them with ads from the film's paid sponsors.

Japan respects privacy???

[D H NG]

This is the country where the most well-known cultural hero is a robotic cat from the future who has an arsenal of privacy-invading tools.

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[amrik98]

On a more serious side though, isn't it ironic that Japanese care so much about privacy only when it applies to them? They couldn't care less if gaijin (foreigners) get fingerprinted and photographed when they enter Japan. (The only Japanese who ever get fingerprinted are criminals)

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

> (The only Japanese who ever get fingerprinted are criminals)

If you are burgled the police will often want to take your prints so they know which are yours. No suggestion there that you are a criminal. It may be voluntary though - I am not sure.

But then coming to Japan is, or was at some point, "voluntary". It may be inconvenient to ship partner/kids back to one's own country - but it is not impossible. In that sense you have a choice - in principle at least, however hard in practice if partner kicks up a fuss.

Few countries regard the civil liberties of their alien populations as being as important as those of their citizens. The Japanese are not alone in this respect.

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[Tim C]

Entering Japan is voluntary and requires action on my part. Where do I sign to tell Google that it's ok for them to feature me or my property in StreetView?

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are burgled the police will often want to take your prints

But do they then database them for the next hundred years as we do in the US. Here you can toss a coke can in the street and have the storm troopers kick your door in some night because they found your retained fingerprints on the can.

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[mad flyer]

I got several theories about this... they all involve either a hidden habbit of making newborn drink bleach in order to become obedient ant-workers or... the massive inbreeding linked to their island living space and belief to be a superior race...

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

I don't think they do, actually - it was all very low tech at the police station last time I gave prints (someone had pinched something from my office.)

The government has had my prints for years, for the alien registration document - but that was held by the ward office and I am not sure who else had access to it.

Now though they have prints taken when I entered Japan after Nov 2007 - I assume those are on computer somewhere central/accessible.

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[Lord Lode]

It's also the country where they made the game Zelda, where Link just enters any house he wants...

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[ex-geek]

They couldn't care less if gaijin (foreigners) get fingerprinted and photographed when they enter Japan. (The only Japanese who ever get fingerprinted are criminals)

Oh, you mean like the way the visitors to the USA are treated?

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[MidnightBrewer]

Americans aren't particularly bothered that they started the fingerprinting/photographing trend and that Japan's institution of the same requirement was in protest to America's. Japan had previously decided that such tactics would be discriminatory and unfair (pretty impressive, considering Japan's poor track record on discrimination).

FYI, Japanese law is much stricter regarding taking pictures of people without their permission. Google may actually run up against actual legal issues as well as the cultural ones already mentioned.

Re:Japan respects privacy???

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a real stretch, even for sarcasm. Doraemon hardly makes a career out of invading people's privacy. You might wonder what Superman's X-Ray vision says about American cultural values.

The addressing system is different

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan is literally where the streets have no name. So you cannot just go along a particular road and know that you're headed in the right direction.

Japan divides its cities into various districts/wards/townships/administrative areas, which are further divided into block numbers, and each structure in the block has numbers. But there's not usually any pattern to the numbering. You could have house number 3 between house number 1 and 2, if 3 was built later, for example.

So given an address, it's very difficult to find it in the real world, and people generally have to resort to asking directions at the police station, post office, convenience store, etc.

Re:The addressing system is different

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

"people"?

Some perhaps - but very few. It certainly isn't "general" amongst the population as a whole.

  I do find that generally speaking (and with exceptions), Americans tend to be more disorientated by Japanese addresses than, for example, Brits.

A lot depends on what you are used to in your own country.

I have found no more difficulty getting around Japan than getting around a British city.
 

Re:The addressing system is different

[mad flyer]

Tell that to japanese taxi drivers... without ATC radio control they would not even find the exit of the parking...

Re:The addressing system is different

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

Sure - but they are on 24 hours shifts. They spend the first 4 hours recovering from the drugs they used to help them sleep and the last 6 hours nodding off at the wheel...

[I generally consider it polite not to awaken a taxi-driver until we have reached our destination.]

Re:The addressing system is different

[gullevek]

you mean GPS map.

But there are three groups of drivers, those who use the GPS map, those who use a paper map although they have a GPS system and those who use neither and try to sniff out they and you have to be alert to tell them where to go left and right (not fun when you are drunk and its 4am in the morning)

partial solution

[holywarrior21c]

What about using recognition software that automatically pixelizes human and possibly put symbols or replacement image instead of privacy sensitive place such as love hotels? This is not the matter of culture people. if this matters in Japan it freaking matters here in the States people. i believe that google has such technology and HR to do so. I hope that people are not saying this "You Yankees have no idea how the Japanese live. we like sushi but you don't eat sushi. so don't do that." that kind of appeal won't work. people should let google know that this invasion of privacy is 'not acceptable not only in Japan, it is not in the U.S, Europe and everywhere else.' So what is higuchi going to do? is it gonna make any change by ranting on his blog? i believe that he has inexperienced abroad, not to mention the States. As an non-US national residing in the States we have the very same problem here and in other countries as well, at least the country where i came from. I don't know how to change neither because i don't think anything will stop google unless the Japanese govn't steps in and tell them to Fuck off the site. lawsuit? ha! you know how many people use the streetview and how much revenue it is generating? and what percentage of people in Japan who know about this site serously care of privacy when theirs are not invaded? those who are japanese and has their privacy invaded and don't like about it, they are just fucked up. I see this kind of article coming out of Japan and in other countries in general. I came from Korea so i know well about this kind of rants. These kind of hate-n-blame rants make to the top headlines of web portals and even major news papers each day. So i am more annoyed by these people who rant online like this. did he ever think about his own problems in his life? doees he even have right to say "google has crossed the line?" I feel the way that this issue is not correctly understood by Higuchi. i was reading through Higuchi's article and i was thinking "so this is Japan's problem not us". I am gearing more towards accepting google's practice yet this should be dealt formerly with support of government. this is just act of art of journalism. what is this going to do? think about it.

Re:partial solution

[smellotron]

What about using recognition software that automatically pixelizes human and possibly put symbols or replacement image

Because it's currently impossible—the technology does not exist. Street signs look a lot like standing people (false positives), faces are only well-recognized when they're frontal (false negatives), and occlusion of any body part can completely fool any image detection technology.

There will never be 100% correct people-detection. Even if people are used as the detectors.

Re:partial solution

[holywarrior21c]

Even if the technology is not perfect enough yet, google is one friggin rich company who can afford to hire farm of people who checks on images they have taken. if the image has not been confirmed yet, don't post it! Youtube do it. Have you watched any porn lately at youtube? how many videos are there. that is what i meant by using HR-human resources with the help of softwares

Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does it

[bug]

Since when are the Japanese sensitive about photographing private residential areas!?

I live in the Weststadt residential neighborhood of Heidelberg, Germany. Heidelberg is a beautiful city, and sees many tourists. For some reason, the Japanese tour groups frequently travel down my street. Also, for some reason, many of the older Japanese tourists frequently take pictures of me doing such mundane things as bringing home groceries. I find it amusing that I am probably in several dozen Japanese photo albums, probably entitled "typical German going to the grocery store." I find it especially amusing, because I am an expatriate American, not a German.

In any case, is it typical for the Japanese to consider their own residential neighborhood private, but everyone else's to be public?

Prime directive

[SomPost]

After I had read the original article I wondered what impulse would be the stronger among the slashdot crowd: the Google-is-god/f***-the-world or the respect-other-cultures impulse. There appears to be ample evidence of both here.
So I wonder if the Google-can-do-no-harm crowd can recall their Star Trek franchise, and if they are prepared to consider whether the Prime Directive of any decent group (society, country, company) should be: "don't interfere".
That includes, as far as I remember, to repect the whishes of a society to be left alone, in general and in Street View.

Re:Prime directive

[Jerry Beasters]

The prime directive was a nice idea but in the real world is complete bullshit that no one should ever stick to.

Re:Prime directive

[Anonymous Coward]

So I wonder if the Google-can-do-no-harm crowd can recall their Star Trek franchise, and if they are prepared to consider whether the Prime Directive of any decent group (society, country, company) should be: "don't interfere".
That includes, as far as I remember, to repect the whishes of a society to be left alone, in general and in Street View.

That shit just feeds into the standard Chinese "it's an internal affair, so MYOB" position.Why the fuck should I buy into the murderous shit they're pulling in Tibet and in the Uighur areas?

What they're doing there (shipping in Han Chinese by the thousands, just so they will be able to invade eventually "to protect their own citizens") is no different from the way the fucking limeys exported their devil-spawn into Ireland and into the Falkland Islands.

In the corrupt siding trade, this kind of crap was called "spiking the deal". They'd come to your door, get a contract to sell you siding, then send out a crew to start start ripping a lot of your siding off that afternoon. they could then disappear for weeks. If you complained, they'd offer to let you out of the contract, but repairing the torn off (and taken to the dump) siding was now your problem. They just basically made enough of an inroad to keep you locked into their "services".

Funny how the bastard butchers of Beijing change their tune when an American president awards a medal to the Dalai Lama, a resident of India. Oh, Jesus, now that's not an American "internal affair".

Fuck the duplicitous goddamned Chinese commie bastards.

Re:Prime directive

[mgblst]

Yes, it is almost as if Slashdot is made up of distinct entities, with different ideas and opinions, rather than some big bodyless mass. Yes, I find this view of the world confusing as well. well I did when I was 3 years old, but i got over it.

It's called self-control

[renimar]

Here's an idea: DON'T CLICK ON STREETVIEW.

Seriously, how is this different than pornography? If it offends you, stop looking at it.

Re:It's called self-control

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

One usually CONSENTS to being in pornography....

I LOVE Google Streetview!

[EmotionToilet]

It's amazing! I use it to travel the streets of other countries and see what it's like there. I use it to look for new places to live so I can check out the area a little bit without having to drive all the way over there. It's great. Infact, it's one of the main reasons I prefer Google Maps over other online map services (mapquest sucks IMO). I would hate to see a service like this disappear. At the same time I feel the Japanese need to lighten up and change their culture so that it is not so strict. Google is documenting public territory, and making it widely available and I see nothing wrong with that. They can photograph my house anytime. Nothing too exciting or private happening here anyways.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[Dannybolabo]

Pretty much missed the whole point there. *You* see nothing wrong with it because you live in America. If you grew up/lived in Japan your views would be completely different. Two very different cultures.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

Bull. Not only did that letter from the Japanese guy sound just like the letters many Americans have written re Streetview, thus negating the whole "it's another culture" argument, but it's an objectively wrong stance and catering to it is harmful.

Reality. People need to cope with it. They're visible. If they're doing something interesting their neighbors are already taking pictures, they just aren't (yet) sharing them in an easily indexable way.

If you complain about this you'll go on acting like you have privacy until it becomes painfully obvious that you don't. If you suck it up and act now, regardless of your cultural preference, as if you do not have privacy where you do not (publicly visible areas) you will not get a rude awakening.

Banning Google's Streetview would prevent people from seeing the area, but would not prevent an enemy of yours from placing a perfectly legal webcam and watching you specifically, or sharing this data - it would merely prevent all the other uses.

Don't feed the concern trolls.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[imasu]

You've never been to Japan, have you?

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[mrogers]

Reality. People need to cope with it. They're visible.

Nobody's asking to be invisible - people are asking not to be watched. Anybody can photograph me without my permission, just as anyone can stab me in the eye - but I still don't want them to do so. If they disregard my wishes, I'd like the law to back me up.

Privacy isn't about pretending you can't be seen, it's about asking people to treat you with respect. Photographing people's houses en masse and posting the photos on the web without permission is disrespectful. Not impossible, not illegal, but still wrong.

If they're doing something interesting their neighbors are already taking pictures, they just aren't (yet) sharing them in an easily indexable way.

Then those neighbours are being dicks. Perhaps Google should change its motto to "Don't be a dick."

Banning Google's Streetview would prevent people from seeing the area, but would not prevent an enemy of yours from placing a perfectly legal webcam and watching you specifically, or sharing this data

"An enemy" might do just about anything, including stabbing me in the eye. I'm more concerned with what ordinary companies and individuals might do - the kind of ordinary companies and individuals who will generally obey privacy laws if the government has the balls to introduce them.

But before we start calling for legislation let's see how much can be achieved by pointing out that Google is being a dick. That's what the writer mentioned in TFA was doing, and I fully support it.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy some fucking curtains.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[tiananmen tank man]

You mean the Japan where you can see guys masterbating in their parked car? (12 yrs ago)

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[moortak]

I can say rather clearly that some high density parts of the US have similar social norms towards privacy.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[sjames]

Reality. People need to cope with it. They're visible. If they're doing something interesting their neighbors are already taking pictures, they just aren't (yet) sharing them in an easily indexable way.

In Japan, No, nobody's taking pictures but google. It would be rude.

We're talking about a country where the emergency stop button for the trains is reachable by anyone on the platform at any time with nothing but a flip up guard to protect it and it has never been abused!

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[Dannybolabo]

Banning Google's Streetview would prevent people from seeing the area, but would not prevent an enemy of yours from placing a perfectly legal webcam and watching you specifically, or sharing this data - it would merely prevent all the other uses.

Actually the writer of the letter seemed to think this was already prevented. FTFA:

... if you were to walk along a residential street in an urban area of Tokyo, every 10 meters surveying all 360 degrees of your surroundings, there's no question that you would be reported to the police within 30 minutes. Even just filming the scenery from the street with camera in hand, there's no question that if you tried to shoot the area not covered by Street View, you would be asked, after initial questioning, to come to either the Ikegami Police Station or the Den-en-Chofu Police Station.

Could it be that Japan and America are actually different places? Who would have thought!

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

just as anyone can stab me in the eye - but I still don't want them to do so. If they disregard my wishes, I'd like the law to back me up.

You'll be forever disappointed. Stabbing you in the eye is a crime because it causes real damages. The only thing photographing someone does is steal their soul, which isn't a crime because it's a joke.

You could realize this and ask for publication bans on information (photos) likely to bring undue attention to something that should remain insignificant. For instance, it might not be a bad idea to have some notability standards for the publication of a picture. If I have a pic of you barfing at a private party maybe it should be "illegal" to put up for no reason, but it's different if you were doing it in public, or if you claimed not to drink and made the issue of your sobriety one of public interest.

But you rant on about eye-gouging and people being dicks because they exercise their legal right to photograph anything they can see without trespassing. This makes it appear that you don't understand the issue at all. If your privacy depends on me pretending not to look, you aren't private. If you realized that I might look and bought a curtain you would be private.

Photographing people's houses en masse and posting the photos on the web without permission is disrespectful.

Why is it worse to do this in bulk? Is your privacy lessened because there's a photo of my house as well? I'd think that'd bring some anonymity.

If Google did this there'd be less need for everyone else to do it. You'd only have to duck one Streetview car every few months, and it could play an announcement to give you time to get off the street. But if everyone does this manually your privacy will die in a thousand individual snapshots on sites you can't contact to get accidental nudity, etc removed. All for totally justifiable reasons - your neighbor will snap your house while taking a picture of his daughter's first steps and he won't be willing to delete the picture just because you're buying weed in the background.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

Oh really? And none of those photos are from galleries of similar photos. Honestly.

You do realize you totally believed everything you read in a Slashdot headline, without doing any work to verify it.

Many people in the USA dislike Streetview, many Japanese (including presumably the ones who drive the Streetview cars) presumably don't mind urban photography.

Do you honestly believe a whole first-world country really objects to photos? That they all have this weird privacy bubble that they can't understand being broken by having images of themselves made? Don't you realize it's racist to believe that a whole country believes some crazy thing (has the same standards for photo privacy) or are all the same way (too polite to hit the emergency stop). It's an implicit assumption that foreigners aren't people too, because if they had real motives they'd obviously have different ideas. Stereotyping people because of race or country of origin shows a fundamental lack of respect.

What you really find when traveling is that other cultures aren't that weird. They've got what sound like crazy ideas, but only because foreigners jump all over any crazy description they hear. Instead if you investigate, the people are all individuals and have similar ideas, and directly contradictory ones, but based on what they believe are rational reasons which they often share because of similar upbringing. To assume that every Japanese person is represented by the guy who wrote the letter is like assuming that they are all good at math, like sushi and anime, etc.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

Actually the writer of the letter seemed to think this was already prevented. FTFA:

... if you were to walk along a residential street in an urban area of Tokyo, every 10 meters surveying all 360 degrees of your surroundings, there's no question that you would be reported to the police within 30 minutes.

That's not a covert webcam. But what, really, is your point? You'd get stopped for photographing a lot of stuff in the USA too. Scare some panicky shut-in and the cops get called. But that doesn't mean it's illegal, just that panicked shut-ins see terrorists in everything anyone does.

Could it be that Japan and America are actually different places?

So different that all people in Japan think alike? There's no need for your racist assumptions. This isn't "The Japanese View". This is merely the neighborhood busy-body view.

It's exactly the same as reactionary idiots in the USA. And just as easily spotted as unappeasable complainers with a broken reality-link.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[Dannybolabo]

You'd get stopped for photographing a lot of stuff in the USA too. Scare some panicky shut-in and the cops get called. But that doesn't mean it's illegal, just that panicked shut-ins see terrorists in everything anyone does.

He isn't claiming it's illegal. That's the whole point. He's claiming that it's going against the culture of Japan. Which you (or I) can't argue is right or wrong until we've lived in Japan to experience it.

So different that all people in Japan think alike? There's no need for your racist assumptions. This isn't "The Japanese View". This is merely the neighborhood busy-body view.

No, not The japanese view but A japanese view. As opposed to your view which is neither. My point being that while he does not represent the entire population of Japan, he is japanese, therefore his view on the situation is far more relevant than yours.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

He isn't claiming it's illegal. That's the whole point. He's claiming that it's going against the culture of Japan.

I know. My point is that your being arrested here isn't an indication of its illegality, so I don't see why we should assume that a Japanese photographer would be arrested for anything other than a typical abuse of police power - not some cultural element.

If this really was the police reacting to rude people, they'd educate the people and let them go. That they are being arrested indicates either actual laws being broken, simple abuse of power, or perhaps most likely, mistaken assumptions on the part of the person complaining.

therefore his view on the situation is far more relevant than yours.

He claims to speak for a majority of Japanese, but a simple google search for photos by Japanese people, or themselves, their neighborhoods, and houses, provides evidence that he does not.

I claim to speak for nobody except the right-thinking people in the world. For what it's worth, I've checked with them both, they say they agree.

He claims to represent people and does not, I merely claim to be right, and am, about him not being representative of the Japanese people as a whole, and thus the issue not a cut and dried one of one culture vs another.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[Tim C]

Banning Google's Streetview would prevent people from seeing the area, but would not prevent an enemy of yours from placing a perfectly legal webcam and watching you specifically

Actually here in the UK I'd imagine you'd be in danger of falling foul of anti-stalking and various privacy laws if you did that, depending on exactly how you did it.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[sjames]

I looked at the link, after adding the space (since without it, there were 3 pictures, none of a neighborhood. Even with, there were a handful of pictures in a neighborhood (only one directly pointing at a house and then a person in the driveway was the subject of the photo), but it was primarily of businesses.

I didn't just believe the headline, I read TFA.

As far as stereotypes, I reported a simple fact. Any conclusion about the character of the people who didn't push the button may be drawn directly from that fact. However, never being abused certainly does indicate that in aggregate, Japanese society differs from society in the U.S. in that regard. Equally, my observation that in my own culture such a button would inevitably be abused by someone doesn't mean that I or any particular American would press it, just that in aggregate there are more id10ts here that would.

As far as it goes, I don't actually find any of this weird at all. I find the idea that every culture in the world is just like the good ol' U.S. of A. except they "talk funny" to be by far the stranger idea. The idea that different would necessarily mean lesser also seems odd to me. Any assumption that a living breathing human being might not be a person simply defies logic.

Besides that, it's not as if the whole world except for Japan has been unanimously throwing tickertape parades for the streetview cars, now is it? I certainly never claimed that only Japanese people object.

What I can believe is that due to different construction of neighborhoods (as discussed in the letter) and different cultural attitudes (also as discussed in the letter), more people in Japan than in a typical American suburb might well find the streetviews photography objectionable in some places. Note well that I say MORE, not ALL and in SOME areas, not EVERYWHERE.

I can also believe that because yards tend to be smaller and houses tend to be (note, tend to be, this isn't necessarily a universal thing), it's perfectly understandable that from an OBJECTIVE viewpoint photos taken from the street are more likely (again note, more likely) to be objectionable to anyone living there.

I suppose you would also accuse me of racism if I observe that Japanese is more commonly spoken in Japan than it is in Norway?

To assume that every Japanese person is represented by the guy who wrote the letter is like assuming that they are all good at math, like sushi and anime, etc.

Sure, but that's not what I did. I accepted based on what he said, his explanation, and what others have said that the attitude he expressed is more common in Japan. It's like looking at a few Japanese TV schedules and assuming anime must be more popular (or at least more promoted) there than here based on how often it appears and in what timeslots compared to my TV schedule.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[mrogers]

Stabbing you in the eye is a crime because it causes real damages. The only thing photographing someone does is steal their soul, which isn't a crime because it's a joke.

Society decides what's "real damage" and what's not - for example you can sue people for defamation because society values reputation. I'm arguing that society should value privacy in a similar way.

But you rant on about eye-gouging and people being dicks because they exercise their legal right to photograph anything they can see without trespassing.

Do you understand the difference between a legal right and a moral right? Can you think of any circumstances at all, not necessarily related to privacy, where a person might be acting within their legal rights but infringing on other people's moral rights? That's all I'm talking about here. I have no problem with people walking around snapping photos, but when they start to offend other people's sensibilities by intruding on their personal lives, even if they do so without breaking the law, they are being dicks.

If your privacy depends on me pretending not to look, you aren't private. If you realized that I might look and bought a curtain you would be private.

You're confusing privacy with secrecy. Privacy often depends on other people's voluntary restraint - that's why you hear about "respecting people's privacy". Pushing the boundaries of observation as far as the law allows, with no regard for other people's wishes, is disrespectful.

Why is it worse to do this in bulk?

Good question. It's worse because more people are affected.

Is your privacy lessened because there's a photo of my house as well? I'd think that'd bring some anonymity.

No, my privacy isn't lessened but yours is. The more photos there are, the more people are affected - there's no anonymity in numbers because the database is searchable.

If Google did this there'd be less need for everyone else to do it.

Less "need"? How many people need a photo of my house?

But if everyone does this manually your privacy will die in a thousand individual snapshots on sites you can't contact to get accidental nudity, etc removed.

False dichotomy - Streetview won't reduce the number of other people taking pictures.

All for totally justifiable reasons - your neighbor will snap your house while taking a picture of his daughter's first steps and he won't be willing to delete the picture just because you're buying weed in the background.

I don't really care if my neighbour accidentally snaps me buying weed. I care if he follows me around photographing everything I do, and I'll still care even if he can prove he's within his legal rights.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

As far as stereotypes, I reported a simple fact. [the emergency-button]

It's a fact? Which station? All stations? Define abused? Is there a camera pointed at the button?

Without more details your fact is a Friend-Of-A-Friend story about Japan. I've heard similar things attributed to Canada, such as people not locking doors, and upon examination it turns into a city size issue instead of the general nature of people from that country.

Is your fact factual, and does it say what you think it says?

I accepted based on what he said, his explanation, and what others have said that the attitude he expressed is more common in Japan.

Have you looked for any proof that people who aren't primed by this thread or his posting actually feel this way? Looked for photos of people's laundry hanging from their balcony? Looked for evidence of non-Japanese photographers reporting more resistance to street photography?

That search was an example (with the space). On the first few pages there are 5-10 pictures that show people or houses in a similar way to Streetview. Search for Tokyo neighborhoods and other similar searches for more proof.

However, whatever your cultural expectations, you must also cope with reality. Banning Google Streetview isn't going to keep the pictures from existing. It might make people better to win a fight for their beliefs, but the people who truly invade their privacy will continue to take secret pics and the really embarrassing ones will still end up on the web. It'd be a hollow victory. The only thing different will be the entire middle-ground of fair and non-exploitative use (Streetview, etc) that was shutdown as part of this futile war.

The real solution is to recognize that your new Japanese cameras are changing old Japanese neighborhoods. Perhaps you are more reluctant to walk past a window naked if you might be photographed, but perhaps that's a sign your neighborhood needs more curtains...

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

I'm arguing that society should value privacy in a similar way.

Society does value privacy. That's why there are laws against me using technological means to spy on your house from where you don't expect me - such as using telephoto lenses or listening gear. There are laws that prevent me recording you in places where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as anywhere you can't be seen by anyone walking down the street, etc.

You don't have the power to project this bubble of "Stop taking pictures and looking, I'm coming down the street!" everywhere you go. We use the phrase "in public" to indicate the times when you don't have an expectation of privacy. Note that if you traveled in a limo, for instance, the interior of the vehicle would count as a private location, so this is really quite flexible.

You're confusing privacy with secrecy. Privacy often depends on other people's voluntary restraint - that's why you hear about "respecting people's privacy".

No, I "respect" your privacy by not trying to break it. A thin curtain indicating your intention of being private is enough, even if I could see you through it by using an IR camera. But when you're in public you aren't being private, so I'm not breaking anything. But stop and deploy even a thin nylon tent and go in, indicating your desire not to see in, and I'll respect that. I won't go stick my eyes up to the vent and try to look in and a policeman would rightfully censure me for doing so if he caught me. But once you come back out of the tent you're back in public.

It's worse because more people are affected.

It's not worse because there's a photo of my house, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people feel this way. In fact, we put numbers on most of the buildings I've ever lived in to make them easier for people to find.

No, my privacy isn't lessened but yours is.

No, because I haven't ever been private while standing in the window of my house. Cameras make this more obvious, but do not change the fact. Streetview is a wake-up, that I should understand what areas truly are private and act accordingly.

there's no anonymity in numbers because the database is searchable.

Searchable by anyone who knows anything about you. To the other 5.999999 billion people you're just another one of the monkeys. Even if someone saw your photo randomly through a nudity-search they wouldn't be looking at YOU, just an anonymous monkey.

The people that do know your name or address and could find you on Streetview could already look it up at the library and come take a picture, hire a PI to do it, hire an artist to draw your house, or hire a notary to testify to what he saw, etc. They know where you live, a low-res street view of your house isn't going to help them at all.

How many people need a photo of my house?

I think I'd be negligent if I bought property in an area and hadn't looked at the neighborhood for a few blocks in each direction. Or rented property. Or went somewhere to a neighborhood I hadn't seen and didn't feel safe being lost in. Your house could be part of the anonymous backdrop of this.

Sure, with computer searches your info could be queried and hover over this photo, "John Doe, Age, Sexual Preference, Youtube videos ..." but the same would be true of everyone.

Streetview won't reduce the number of other people taking pictures.

It sure would. I'd still take photos if I lived there, but for the other reasons I listed I'd be perfectly happy viewing the area on Streetview rather than trying to take good photos of the whole area.

I care if he follows me around photographing everything I do

Me too. But I think that should be covered under harassment/stalking laws, and perhaps a newsworthiness criteria for publication. (

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[sjames]

Without more details your fact is a Friend-Of-A-Friend story about Japan. I've heard similar things attributed to Canada, such as people not locking doors, and upon examination it turns into a city size issue instead of the general nature of people from that country.

I cannot find the URL now, this was a few years ago. However, there was a picture of the button and it was clearly marked and well within the reach of anyone who might care to push it. It stands to reason it would have been moved if abuse was at all a problem. Certainly, such a placement in the U.S. is simply not even attempted.

As for the rest, I'm not talking about bans or any such thing, just simple politeness. The existence of rude people does not excuse further rudeness on a massive scale.

As for the pictures on you speak of, to turn the tables, can you document in any way that they were taken on the fly without any sort of permission? That the people in them and the owners of the homes do not consider it incredibly rude?

I can see we're simply not going to agree on this one.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

However, there was a picture of the button and it was clearly marked and well within the reach of anyone who might care to push it. It stands to reason it would have been moved if abuse was at all a problem. Certainly, such a placement in the U.S. is simply not even attempted.

Where else would you place the emergency-call button? On the ceiling?

Here we have emergency call buttons, silent and not, every little distance along buses and LRT, as well as in the stations. All buttons are VERY obviously marked, and easily pressed by everyone.

Nobody tampers with them. Why? Cameras I'd assume.

I see broken payphones (handset ripped off) sometimes, but very rarely in a transit station. Presumably that cameras and cops thing again.

I'm just saying that your anecdote suggests a reason but doesn't provide any evidence. There are many possibilities, politeness being only one, others being cameras, deliberate loose standards to write a "Japanese are so polite (we should be too)" email (blown out of proportion to prove a pre-existing notion), etc.

As for the rest, I'm not talking about bans or any such thing, just simple politeness. The existence of rude people does not excuse further rudeness on a massive scale.

What is as rude as someone who picks a trivial and reasonable thing and demands that nobody do it in their presence? I know a lady who loudly (until you stop) demands that nobody discuss spiders in her presence, even if she joined a group already discussing them.

Sure, we could "respect" her and stop, or we could continue doing perfectly reasonable things and she could learn to help herself.

The only thing we have to even suggest that photography is rude is 1) the claim it steals souls and 2) people who are cranky and for no good reasons want everyone else to hate the thing they hate.

Assuredly there is NOBODY except these groups insisting that people stop photography. Nobody with a valid point would make those demands because a valid point would be, by definition, one that was about a valid injury - even if only a social one. By identifying an injury it could be addressed properly, not with a band-aid. (Such as banning photography to prevent terrorism, as we see cops in the USA doing.)

Anyone who thought publishing bad pictures was rude would simply say that. They'd realize that cameras take both kinds of photos and wouldn't want to ban photography. They'd preach publisher's discretion.

Anyone who didn't want their privates seen by others (genitals, or collectibles) would already understand not to let other people see them. A camera is just an extension of that. They'd only object to hidden cameras and other tricks.

Anyone with security concerns wouldn't stop the taking of photos (what better way to identify a target?) they'd try to cover up the sensitive area so that you couldn't see the flaw, let alone photograph it. They wouldn't be happy to see a photographer, but only because they knew they still weren't inconspicuous.

Anyone who actually had a problem would be bringing the problem forth, not the solution. This guy has already decided that Streetview (and photography in general) must stop. He'll now invent every reason under the sun, including the mythical Japanese sensitivity to photographs, to prove the justness of his cause. I've also heard it claimed in similar circumstances that the Australian people's history of lots of personal space makes them more violated by photos than a sardine-can person from other countries. Black, and white, presented as proof of the same thing.

As for the pictures on you speak of, to turn the tables, can you document in any way that they were taken on the fly without any sort of permission? That the people in them and the owners of the homes do not consider it incredibly rude?

That no permission was given can only be implied by the number of photos, the number of people, businesses, and homes in those photos

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[mrogers]

We use the phrase "in public" to indicate the times when you don't have an expectation of privacy.

Right, I understand the difference between public and private, but the question is where the boundaries lie and who's responsible for making sure they're not overstepped.

No, I "respect" your privacy by not trying to break it. A thin curtain indicating your intention of being private is enough, even if I could see you through it by using an IR camera.

If a thin curtain is enough, why isn't the fact that I'm inside my house enough? I consider the insides of other people's houses to be private - I don't avoid looking at houses in case there's someone in the window, but I don't stand outside the window watching people either. It's the difference between 'not seeing' (impossible) and 'not watching' (possible). That's the kind of distinction that gets lost when you photograph every house in the country and create a searchable public archive of the photos.

But anyway, I think we're really just disagreeing about specific cases here - we agree that the boundaries of privacy are set by a combination of the viewee indicating a desire for privacy and the viewer respecting that desire. Everything else is just a matter of degree.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

but I don't stand outside the window watching people either.

But you do stand outside (sometimes) and look at houses. The reason you don't see naked people when doing this is that most of them draw that privacy screen when they're naked, not when they think a camera might be coming, and thus are invisible from the street.

we agree that the boundaries of privacy are set by a combination of the viewee indicating a desire for privacy and the viewer respecting that desire.

Right.

And this case is about photographers having to assume, groundlessly in 99.3% of cases, that they shouldn't take pictures of houses because the people in them may not know to close a curtain.

If a thin curtain is enough, why isn't the fact that I'm inside my house enough?

Because you've gone and built those darned transparent panels into the house, thus making the inner bit NOT PRIVATE until you close the curtains.

Think how rude you're being. Seriously. With the implication that it's your right to demand that your house, built right smack on a public street, not be photographed or even looked at too closely, because you don't feel like closing a curtain, and yet feel compelled to walk around nude but do not wish to be seen.

How about my right to demand that anything visible from a public street be publicly visible? To demand that if you're doing something that I can't let my kid photograph, that you at least draw a courtesy screen in front of it?

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[mrogers]

But you do stand outside (sometimes) and look at houses. The reason you don't see naked people when doing this is that most of them draw that privacy screen when they're naked, not when they think a camera might be coming, and thus are invisible from the street.

Yeah, of course - if people don't want to be seen they draw the curtains. But what if they don't mind being seen doing the dishes, but get kind of uncomfortable if someone stands there and watches them doing the dishes for half an hour? Who's being rude in that situation?

And this case is about photographers having to assume, groundlessly in 99.3% of cases, that they shouldn't take pictures of houses because the people in them may not know to close a curtain.

That doesn't sound like the situation we're discussing, which is one company creating a massive database of photos.

Think how rude you're being. Seriously. With the implication that it's your right to demand that your house, built right smack on a public street, not be photographed or even looked at too closely, because you don't feel like closing a curtain, and yet feel compelled to walk around nude but do not wish to be seen.

Like I said before, I don't object to being seen, I object to being watched. Do you understand the difference between those two concepts? If someone doesn't want to be seen, then yes, they should draw the curtains. But in my opinion it's reasonable to expect not to be watched in your own home even if you are visible from the outside.

Re:I LOVE Google Streetview!

[WNight]

I don't object to being seen, I object to being watched. Do you understand the difference between those two concepts?

I do. You do not.

Looking at the same still photo of you for hours is not watching you. The you in the photo still has not scratched his ass.

But in my opinion it's reasonable to expect not to be watched in your own home even if you are visible from the outside.

And this is the source of your confusion. You do not have that right. If it's legal to look at you, it's legal to sit and watch you. Harassment and stalking laws have very little to do with someone who just chooses to stop outside your house and look at you.

Further, your use of the word reasonable is backward. If it is easily possible to watch you, either in person or with a webcam hidden in public space, why would the use of reason suggest that you could expect NOT to be watched? Indeed, it's reasonable to expect that you COULD be watched anywhere.

That doesn't sound like the situation we're discussing, which is one company creating a massive database of photos.

I don't see much of a difference. Many of my photos are online and will soon have GPS coords, etc, to allow them to be viewed like Google Streetview (though a bit sparser). My photos are on the same internet as everyone else's photos, which means that sparse view isn't very. Google's going to add denser coverage of some areas with these cars, but at the same time, the visibility of the cars gives you more notice than before, making Google's photos perhaps less intrusive.

But google's street-level photos are a small percentage of the street photography on the web, and will only be lesser as digital cameras get even cheaper. So no, I don't see why the fuss that it's one company doing it. It's still the same end result - publicly viewable photos.

But what if they don't mind being seen doing the dishes, but get kind of uncomfortable if someone stands there and watches them doing the dishes for half an hour? Who's being rude in that situation?

Obviously the person who is uncomfortable being watched but not willing to handle it within the bounds of polite society, for example by asking the person to stop (which they may choose to do), or closing a curtain, and instead bottles up their rage over the fact that not everyone shares their ideals.

Not just Japan

[argent]

Street View is too intrusive for residential neighborhoods in the USA.

Stick to city centers, airports, freeways. Stay out of neighborhoods. Don't be evil.

Re:Not just Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

What's evil about making things easier to find? I know I personally am bad with addresses, but very good with visual locations, and Street View has made it a lot easier for me to find things I've needed to. Sure, if they were sticking cameras up to people's windows and filming their daily lives, that'd be pretty excessive and downright evil.

Let's put it this way, is it evil to have any residential areas as backgrounds in a movie, or on TV? It has the same effect, but nobody complains about that, as well they shouldn't. Google isn't stalking anyone and repeatedly taking pictures of their house, their friends, their family, etc. They're indiscriminately recording visual information to make people's lives easier.

Re:Not just Japan

[argent]

What's evil about making things easier to find?

Depends on what the things are. If you make personal information easier to find, even if it's personal information that is so obvious when it's not something you're searching for that you don't think of it as private, you're opening up all kind of abuse. The law of unintended consequences has driven that point home often enough.

Let's put it this way, is it evil to have any residential areas as backgrounds in a movie, or on TV?

Movies and TVs don't provide a search engine for burglars looking for houses to case.

Re:Not just Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheating on your property taxes huh?

Re:Not just Japan

[argent]

Stopped beating your wife yet, mister innuendo?

Re:Not just Japan

[gtx]

How are you going to case a house from street view? You realize the photos are not realtime, or even regularly updated for that matter, right? What are you going to do, look at a picture of a house and decide that since there was no car parked in front of a house and nobody was standing in the windows for at least one split-second of time between the moment google launched street view and the present, 859 Sycamore Ln (Address approximate) is probably ripe for the plucking?

Are you high?

Re:Not just Japan

[argent]

How are you going to case a house from street view?

Casing a house doesn't just mean "check if nobody's home". There's all kinds of tells to look for, and if you can check out thousands of houses at once you can look for better opportunities for an in-person visit MUCH more effectively.

Re:Not just Japan

[gtx]

I know you're trying to look hip using your hamburglar lingo, but seriously, you just look like a paranoid wackjob that doesn't understand what you're talking about.

Re:Not just Japan

[argent]

The good old slashdot fallback, "argument by abuse".

Re:Not just Japan

[gtx]

610 Sebring Ave Pittsburgh PA 15216

Tell me anything about this neighborhood (or any of the surrounding neighborhoods, really) that, from pictures you get off of street view, tell you which houses you should rob. Specifically, tell me what information you get from GSV that isn't easier to get elsewhere.

Remember, it takes less time to drive down a street than it does to navigate a street on GSV.

Re:Not just Japan

[pbhj]

Stay out of neighborhoods. Don't be evil.

I think Google now see it that as long as they _do_ more good than evil they are not /being/ evil. So whenever they do evil stuff they have to do some evil-offsetting - give a hobo some hot coffee and donuts, that sort of thing.

Our internal company motto is "be nice". It's actually pretty useful; we ask ourselves what would be the nice thing to do. It would never fly if we were a public company - more people are interested in profit than in being nice to one-another.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[im_thatoneguy]

I have blonde hair and blue eyes. Every time I have visited China I have been practically assaulted by Japanese tourists. They not only photo me. They try and touch my hair and start posing in front of me etc etc etc. Needless to say this was unappreciated.

My aunt lives in Hawaii and japanese tourists are amazed by the size of her feet. She's been lieing on the beach and had Japanese tourists come up and lay down right next to her and have their pictures taken by their family with their feet right next to hers for comparison.

It's been my conclusion that any view of privacy on the part of the Japanese is strictly limited to the island of Japan. Which I've never had a problem with from a priacy standpoint--just a personal intrusion. I don't care if I'm in a photo. I do care that I'm being prevented from going about my business by someone standing in my way trying to pose in front of me. Or touching me. They can touch my blonde hair photos on the internet all they want as long as I don't have to be there while you do it.

Please tell me you're trolling.

[argent]

If it's taboo to spy on your neighbors then don't use Google's street view. Or at the very least keep the view centered on the road.

I've tried three times to write a polite response to this comment, and I don't think I can manage it. If you really can't understand people's response to the transparent society then you're just not human.

So what category do burglars fall into?

[argent]

This is a human use question not a technological one. Those who have a right to look to the side of the road... should look at side of the road pictures. Those who do not have a reason to look along the side of the road--who are upstanding and considerate individuals should not look at those pictures.

So which category do burglars using Street View to "pre-case" thousands of houses without showing their faces or number plates in the neighborhood fall into?

Re:So what category do burglars fall into?

[Neoprofin]

The same category as the ones who could do the exact same thing by having a friend drive through the neighborhood, walking through the neighborhood, wearing a mask, not pre-casing the house, etc etc etc. I thought the "BUT THIS COULD BE USED FOR CRIME!" argument was always sort of a non-starter. Why don't we outlaw moving dollies, rental trucks, insecure locks, non-shatterproof windows, and darkness?

Re:So what category do burglars fall into?

[argent]

The same category as the ones who could do the exact same thing...

except they're doing it faster and more efficiently. Same as the guys who took to courthouses and county offices putting personal information online to make identity theft easier. And after a while a lot of those records got pulled again, and there's laws in many parts of the world about keeping personal information and making it available...

Look, it could be that burglars are really as stupid as everyone seem sto be saying here, and various flimflammers and con artists who generally use this kind of info will miss out on this one, but even if you're absolutely right about that... that doesn't mean that the people concerned about privacy are irrational, which is the theme of a lot of the comments on this page. At the worst they're pessimists.

Re:So what category do burglars fall into?

[im_thatoneguy]

And maybe burglars are using google maps to plan their escape route! Oh My!

Maybe they're using google docs to plan their capers!

Maybe they count their loot using google spreadsheet!

The information contained within street view is so far out of date by the time anyone has ever seen an image it makes it useless for "casing out a joint". Maybe that family moved and a new family with a rotweiler moved in! Not to mention if criminals find this information really usefull they could just steal two handicams pointed out each way in a car full of laundry and drive by once a month. Shazam! You have google street view and nobody bothered writing down your license plate number. Or if they did that's extremely circumstantial evidence.

We have a neighborhood watch program in my neighborhood and we're very vigilant. We're also on street view. I don't think it has had ANY affect on our crime. Why? Because we know where the crime originates from: two streets away.

Re:So what category do burglars fall into?

[argent]

When the Green Card Lottery spam went out a lot of people didn't see it as a problem, because con-artists and other undesirables hadn't used Usenet and later email before. It took a couple of years for it to catch on, but now the majority of the mail on the net is spam. It's way too early to see any effect of Street View.

Re:So what category do burglars fall into?

[Neoprofin]

There's nothing wrong with being concerned about privacy, but getting mad at Street View becasue people can see the front of your house, or Google Maps because they can see your backyard even is not the issue people are making it out to be.

I'm fiercely paranoid about people watching me go about my daily business in my living room, not because there's anything interesting, I just don't like the idea. My solution to this is not lawsuits.

I close my blinds at night.

End of story. In most places the light difference between inside and outside makes it really hard to see into windows unless something is very close to them, it's not any better in pictures. If people are concerned about their privacy they should be protecting it, not going on the warpath against one single vector that may or may not even be showing anything they don't want seen.

Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[alexborges]

Yup...

Few things will irk the average japaneese more than invasion of privacy.

This is a country and culture so different from occidental ones that they tend to have no locks in their rooms because nobody would imagine entering without knocking, where people police each other in the subway so that you dont scream or make any kind of fuss that might irk the guy next to you.

I admire that part of their culture very much because its clearly a civilizatory trend: it makes people very councious about the rights of the next guy: its an insular culture ripe for pure individual freedom at its best.

Interestingly enough, their rigid social side follows very clear rules and is never very personal: the japaneese keep their inner self... erm.. to themselves.

I like that a lot.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[iONiUM]

It's great, right up until the business men blow up in a drunken rage, which happens a lot. I'm here right now, in Japan, and it happened last night. Try riding the last subway train on Friday night, you'll see. That whole "keep their inner self locked up" is true, but it also leads to a big ass pile of shit and high suicide rate. Is that really that good?

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[oyenstikker]

The Japanese are Lutherans too?

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad they like so much to grope women that they need separate subway cars.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[Bazouel]

And repression of the expression of that inner self cause all sort of destructive behaviors, both on an individual and a society basis.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[SpammersAreScum]

As my father, a former Lutheran missionary in Japan, would tell you, "yes, but only a small percentage". Not sure I get the joke, though. I've never heard such a description applied to Lutherans, and would not think it applied any more than to many mainline Protestant churches...

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly enough, their rigid social side follows very clear rules

Fine. But they can tie their cultural shit on the dock when they arrive in my country. I'm goddamned tired of the fucking Asians in my area who have no sense of my private space. They're so used to living like sardines that they seem to think crushing against me in queues is perfectly OK. If I wanted their dicks in my ass, I'd back up against them -- but they don't have to initiate the proximity.

I can't count the number of times I've had them bang into me with their shopping carts in a checkout line. Usually because the self-absorbed shits are talking among themselves. It appears that a shopping trip must involve groups of at least five of them, if not the whole damned family, so I'm not even on their radar.

But I'm expected to be oh-so-culturally-sensitive about them. Fuck that shit -- this is America. If they're not happy with that, they can take the next fucking boat home. I, at least, make it my business to learn about local cultural norms before visiting anyone else's country.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[mgblst]

Wow, do you really have locks on the rooms in your house? I find this to be quite an alien concept as well.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[alexborges]

Not me, but Id wager that in larger families its quite normal.

Imagine the average american teenager with an open doors policy towards their parents...

Doesnt fit the stereotype.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[alexborges]

I agree with this. They are really nationalistic and do have some contempt for the different: intolerant cultures do not deserve occident's tolerant attitutde:

If you dont play ball, you cant hit a homerun.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[gullevek]

no locks? hahaha, I have no idea where YOU Live but normally everyone has at least two locks + chain here like in every other country.

And japanese really don't give so much about their privacy. There are more intimate details swapped in any izakaya than in an intense guantanamo interrogation anytime.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[gullevek]

that means that the number of non shinto people stayed the same since the first missionaries arrived in Japan.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[alexborges]

i thought it was clear I meant inside their houses, in their rooms. And you know what I mean about japanesee "respect" for someone elses privacy: they'll gossip, sure, but you will never know.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[gullevek]

everyone gossips around behind other backs, thats not a japanese thing.

and I have been to many apartments with friends after we got all drunk and just wanted to drink more but all the places were closed. I see no difference here to anywhere else.

I think there is a lot of "mystification" going on about privacy, just because Japanese people don't talk to foreigners because they don't speak any english.

Re:Ah yes... the nice japs at it

[alexborges]

I live with japanesee and am a very close political relative to a japanesee family: I really think I can make this judgement on that ground: iknow them as a family member.

mmmoney

[Anonymous Coward]

well... i havent been thinking straight in years... but maybe... just maybe, this will make sence.

just because you see something, doesn't mean you were supposed to.

but wait... this idea just in... if i were to copyright a picture of my face... and in the near future end up somewhere that appears in googles street view with said copyrighted facial image in the picture, would said face be able to sue?

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[alexborges]

The japaneese take pictures of sidewalks.... they have this love for the cammera that i will never understand.

However, dont get them wrong: its completely harmless and they dont go publizicing them all over.

On the other hand, google is selling your life for profit: there is a difference there.

Street-view is an invaluable tool

[mosb1000]

I use it all the time for work. It augments the directions they give you , and gives you an idea of what the place you're looking for looks like. The pictures are taken from the street, so I won't see anything on street view that I wont see later when I'm driving down the street. If the cultural norm is not to look in certain places, why can't you just not look there in the google pictures?

I was putting together a photo-log of monitoring wells the other day, and I needed a picture that I'd forgotten to take while I was in the field. Rather than go back out just for one stupid picture than no one is probably even going to look at, I went on street view and got the picture. It is very useful, and I don't see how it is realistically an invasion of privacy. It is obviously intended to give people a general idea of how landmarks in the street will appear, and it is really too low-resolution to be used for anything else.

Ha-ha! We're using the Internet!

[archont]

This is the kind of story that makes me stare blankly at the screen for a couple of good seconds and wonder "Are they insane? Is this some sort of twisted sick joke?"

I'm not culturally insensitive, nor am I a clod. And hey, I don't even live in the US - I never even went there (thank you Bush). And I'm not the kind who keeps his lawn trimmed, his dog spanking clean and smelling of perfume. No, quite the opposite. I'm not your typical hillbilly though - the kind who aims his rifle at whoever wants to visit me chanting "Thou shall not pass, purdy mouth".

But I'd be insane if I'd blame anyone for taking a look at my car, my lawn, or the obscured silhouette of my house hidden behind layers of trees, vines and unkept vegetation.

I'd be insane to blame anybody apart from myself if I'd be caught pissing under a tree. I mean, shit, we aren't living in the middle ages. If I seriously have to take a piss I at least show the common decency to do so in a place that isn't in full view - a backyard for example. If I decide to piss in a place that's popular enough to have google's street team cruising through it, then it means I'm probably urinating in a place that's in full view - and I won't blame the people who are all around me and looking at me like some bum. I won't blame the drivers of passing cars. I won't blame google's street car for digitizing my stupidity. I'll blame myself.

Using this logic, you see, I should report people who refuse to close their eyes as I take a dump on the white stripe of the highway.

We, as a race, adapted to far more serious changes. We adapted to automobiles, that extended our effective range by ten, if not hundredfold. We adapted to cellphones, being able to be in touch with anybody, at any time, as if the barrier of space and time in interpersonal contact was lifted. And we still blame others for our own stupidity and indecency?

Re:Ha-ha! We're using the Internet!

[LoztInSpace]

He's not talking about taking a dump in public - it's about that in Japanese culture you 'do not see' your neighbours in order to keep sane in crowded situations.
The whole point is that not everyone has the same opinion as you (or Google) do.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[Anonymous Coward]

I have blonde hair and blue eyes. Every time I have visited China I have been practically assaulted by Japanese tourists. They not only photo me. They try and touch my hair and start posing in front of me etc etc etc. Needless to say this was unappreciated.

My aunt lives in Hawaii and japanese tourists are amazed by the size of her feet. She's been lieing on the beach and had Japanese tourists come up and lay down right next to her and have their pictures taken by their family with their feet right next to hers for comparison.

I wish all my problems were that easy to solve.

For starters, did God not give you two middle fingers to elevate while the picture was being taken? How about standing with your arms akinbo (elbows out, hands on your hips). I understand that's an insult because the Japanese consider it to be an aggressive stance. Maybe point at the tits of any chick they stand near you. Maybe start laughing, too. Or do a Lundie England two-handed point. I believe pointing with the index finger alone is also insulting, though I'm not sure this is specifically a Japanese thing. It is, however, the reason all of the "cast" at Disneyland and other tourist places always point with both the index and middle fingers extended. Single-finger pointing is supposed to be an obscene gesture in some cultures.

Ever heard of blinds?

[mosb1000]

In the US, it is customary to hide yourself from view if you are doing something that you don't want others to see. This is for your benefit and theirs. It seems rather silly to do it any other way.

Re:Ever heard of blinds?

[dintech]

There you go making the rest of your country-men look bad. Your statement is a shining example of why the rest of the world thinks Americans are closed minded, ignorant, self-centered and just plain stupid. Good job keeping the stereotype alive.

Re:Ever heard of blinds?

[Jerry Beasters]

Nothing he said remotely deserves your response. You clearly have some ideological problem, but that's purely YOUR problem.

Re:Ever heard of blinds?

[LoztInSpace]

FWIW I completely agree with dintech. The article is about the effect this has within Japanese culture not the USA.
And yes, it does somewhat reinforce a certain stereotype.

Re:Ever heard of blinds?

[mosb1000]

He was trying to say that the Japanese couldn't build fences, and all I'm pointing out is that many in the US live in apartments as well. So really what we have is a cultural problem, not a "geography/city layout" one.

And yes, it does seem rather silly to have the expectation of privacy when you are out in the open for everyone to see. What if someone looks because they don't know you're there? Could I stand by my front window completely naked and then explain to the police officer that I expected privacy when someone complains. This is what I mean when I say that it's to everyone's benefit.

I don't think it's unreasonable to express my (well founded) opinion in this way. It's completely unfair to say that I'm "closed minded, ignorant, self-centered and just plain stupid" just because I pointed out something that's as plain as the nose on your face for everyone to see.

Re:Ever heard of blinds?

[WNight]

Anything that doesn't pander to the complainer is insensitivity. Hadn't you heard?

It's crazy to expect people to go around pretending cameras don't exist just because some people think they steal souls.

Besides, what does StreetView see? One image per year? What does your neighbor see? Your naked ass, twice a day. If that one image a year is anything, maybe it should be a wake-up call about your always-visible ass.

Oh, who am I kidding? The universal response is to blame someone essentially at random - ie photographers, instead of fixing the problem - aligning your mental model with reality. Blame on!

meatspace

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone who uses the term "meatspace" is a idiot.

Automation

[mosb1000]

People do not look at all the pictures before they go on street view. It's an automated process to some extent.

Obligatory

[jez9999]

Google are too invasive.

from the graviator

[graviator]

well. what's it going to be if ya look to the right or to the left and some body blows your head off because he or she thought you were getting a little to personal.As the world fill's up one has to put up with a little bit, having a car drive down the street and taking a picture of your house is not getting to personal so yall can put ol'bettsy back behind the door and wait till ya catch the naighbors stealing the mail.

Re:from the graviator

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't you precious?

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

I've got blonde hair and blue eyes and -damn! - this never happens to me....

So I'm guessing it's your aftershave...

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[lantastik]

Try being 6'4" with blond hair and green eyes walking the crowded streets of Tokyo. People would come up to me and feel the hair on my arms. They seem to be utterly fascinated with anyone that has any kind of body hair. I guess hairy freaks aren't allowed any kind of personal space.

Large groups of people, mostly kids and teenagers, would crowd around me and want to have their picture taken. It was just as bad in the Philippines, if not worse.

I'm glad I don't travel anymore.

Sweet app

[tatermonkey]

The pic of my house does invoke a feeling in me. I feel I need to trim my hedges, it looks like crap. If you live in full view of everyone on earth on a public street why should you care if there is a pic of your house online along with your entire neighborhood? Privacy applies inside your home or within a "privacy" fence you put up. When I am in my front yard I know that everyone from the nosy neighbor to the CIA satellite can see me. Thats why I put clothes on on. I cant take anything seriously from a county that bans normal porn but its acceptable to draw a picture of a middle aged man anal raping a 5 year old. Sorry pedopan , get over it.

Re:Sweet app

[Jerry Beasters]

mod up. How is this a troll?

Re:Sweet app

[drinkypoo]

Amen! If you want some privacy, you know how to get it. It's called a fence. Or like me, you can live up a long driveway. Go ahead, take some pictures of my mailbox and trash cans. The city is not a place for privacy. You can expect people to act like they didn't hear you screaming "Who's your daddy!" and your partner screaming "You are! You are!"* but you can't make them act that way.

There is no legal expectation of privacy in public in the US. None. There is generally little expectation of privacy in public anywhere in the western world, or places that have adopted our lifestyles. As others have mentioned, apparently the Japanese only feel like they should have privacy, and even then only in Japan. The Japanese will take pictures of anything and everything. I say this as a former "trackwalker" for Roaring Camp & Big Trees Railroad in Felton, CA. As a teenager I followed the narrow-gauge steam railroad up the hill during one summer and part of another, which kept me more or less in shape during that time (and in spending money.) I am in more Japanese tourist videos than I can reasonably explain. I would be very surprised if footage of me hasn't been used in all kinds of weird situations by now simply because literally hundreds of Japanese shot video of me. Sometimes at great and inexplicable length, I might add.

* True story. Not involving me, but a neighbor of a friend.

Meatspace ROBOTS.TXT

[jamesh]

I wonder how hard it would be to develop a meatspace version of ROBOTS.TXT... there are several ways this might work that I can think of right now...

1. An opt-in online system where you log in and say "google can show the picture of my house". A bit tricky to maintain though... how do you stop me logging in to google and approving a picture of your house?

2. An opt-out online system.

3. A symbol that you print out, laminate, and affix to your house. Is the resolution that appears on streetview the same as what google actually took or do they downscale it from a much higher resolution? If the latter then there should be no problem identifying the symbol. It could work as an opt-in or an opt-out system.

4. Some combination of the above that changes the resolution that your house appears in (eg from completely blurred to maximum resolution).

Something a bit unrelated that I just thought of... I wonder if google ever considered using garbage collection vehicles to take the pictures. They go basically everywhere in metro areas, and in Australia at least, an increasing number of rural areas. You could just stick a (google provided) bright yellow sticker on your garbage bin if you didn't want/did want (depending on the opt-out/in approach taken) to participate, and an optical sensor on the truck would register your want. The only disadvantage would be that the picture would be always taken on garbage collection day when you have your rubbish bins out, cluttering the view :)

Re:Meatspace ROBOTS.TXT

[tkw954]

I wonder how hard it would be to develop a meatspace version of ROBOTS.TXT... there are several ways this might work that I can think of right now... 1. An opt-in online system where you log in and say "google can show the picture of my house". A bit tricky to maintain though... how do you stop me logging in to google and approving a picture of your house? 2. An opt-out online system. 3. A symbol that you print out, laminate, and affix to your house. Is the resolution that appears on streetview the same as what google actually took or do they downscale it from a much higher resolution? If the latter then there should be no problem identifying the symbol. It could work as an opt-in or an opt-out system. 4. Some combination of the above that changes the resolution that your house appears in (eg from completely blurred to maximum resolution). Something a bit unrelated that I just thought of... I wonder if google ever considered using garbage collection vehicles to take the pictures. They go basically everywhere in metro areas, and in Australia at least, an increasing number of rural areas. You could just stick a (google provided) bright yellow sticker on your garbage bin if you didn't want/did want (depending on the opt-out/in approach taken) to participate, and an optical sensor on the truck would register your want. The only disadvantage would be that the picture would be always taken on garbage collection day when you have your rubbish bins out, cluttering the view :)

There is a "meatspace" opt-out equivalent. It's called a "No Trespassing" sign and Google ignores it anyway . Why would you expect them to respect any other indication?

Cultrual Blah Blah

[Monrovian]

Culturally insensitive my @ss. I hate it when people, especially more vocal Japanese, play the "culture" card in trying to justify a certain position or stand. I've seen Taxi drivers, drunken businessmen, and moms with their little boys taking a piss on the side of the road in full view. My neighbors leave their windows open during the summer and one can see and hear what's going on if you simple look and listen. Public baths and hot spring baths are everywhere. Privacy concerns may be legitimate, but don't give me that "culture" bull. If you don't like Street View then simply state so, but don't try to woo us with any mystical, ancient, Japanese cultural bull!

Re:Cultrual Blah Blah

[imasu]

You're making the author's point for him, although you don't get it yourself. Read these sentences you just wrote a few times:

My neighbors leave their windows open during the summer and one can see and hear what's going on if you simple look and listen. Public baths and hot spring baths are everywhere.

That's part of the *culture*. And while there is certainly plenty to see if you pry, the cultural etiquette is to not overtly look in on your neighbors and certainly not to photograph people in their private lives. This is indeed a cultural difference, whether you like it or not. The analogy would be you suddenly photograph and blog your neighbors and the local onsen. Try that for a while and get back to us on how well it works out for you.

Re:Cultrual Blah Blah

[Anonymous Coward]

The analogy would be you suddenly photograph and blog your neighbors and the local onsen.

Japanese tourists do this here all the time. Why should it be wrong for others to do this in Japan?

How do you say

[Anonymous Coward]

Google can suck my left nut in Japanese?

I find their street view insensitive to my needs and wants but no one seems to care because I live in the West.

The land of the free (as in beer).

[arth1]

For the RECORD, I would have to say that AMERICAN VALUES (which anybody can have regardless of nationality, race, gender, etc.) is STRONGLY supportive of both privacy and anonymity

Being an American who originally came from Europe, I "STRONGLY" disagree.

Here in the US, people never ask permission before taking a picture that you might be on, for example. If you're in the public, you're expected to suck it up. If you don't want your picture taken, you have to stay at home.

Then there's newspapers publishing the name and pictures of crime suspects. Which quite often costs people their job and friends -- even if they are later found "not guilty". In other countries, where privacy is valued higher, this is a big NO.

Then there are the ubiquitous closed circuit cameras in pretty much every store. Even in the goddarn dressing rooms!

Oh, and try to rent a hotel room with cash, without showing a driver's license. Nope, they want your private information, so they can sell it to the highest bidder. Cause there are no privacy rights.

And let me not get started on direct advertising. Wonder why you get all the ads in your own name? Because everyone you trade with will happily sell your personal details. Not only name and address, but what you've been buying or which services you've used, so you can get targeted for maximum effect. Take your dog to the vet, and a month later, you get ads for dog food dumping into your mail box. Subscribe to a magazine, and you suddenly get eight different catalogs in the mail with the same misspelling as the magazine.

Here in the US, privacy is a commodity, not a right. I can think of few, if any countries I have lived in that had less privacy rights. Certainly not any of the European countries.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[EdIII]

You mention a lot of problems, yet also don't mention any Americans that you KNOW that actually AGREE with what is taking place.

There is a BIG difference between what is actually happening in the US and what the average American is actually comfortable with. Bush does not have an approx. 30% approval rating for no reason.

I don't know a single person that is comfortable with the examples you gave. NOT A SINGLE ONE. Everybody I have ever had a conversation with, in person, is as outraged and disturbed as you are by the erosion of privacy.

The real problem is one of representation. The average US Citizen has NO REPRESENTATION WHATSOEVER. I would state 100,000% that ONLY companies and various organizations get represented in US government today. There is NO VOICE for privacy rights, anonymity, and freedom anymore. It is just one long continuation of arguments and supporting events (which some claim are manufactured) to progressively remove all rights to privacy of any kind. RIGHT DOWN TO YOUR DNA. If they really can read thoughts in a decade or two, I would not even be surprised if that loses it's privacy too.

So I REALLY understand your point, but please UNDERSTAND MINE. The America you are talking about is not one that was created by the people. It was created over the protest of Americans every single step of the way.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[TheLink]

No representation?

I heard most of you had the vote.

Why do you all keep voting them in anyway?

You vote for candidates based on who get the most money from corporations?

It's clear that the voters don't really care. As long as they have their "bread and circuses" or should that be "Junk Food and Reality TV" everything is tolerable.

Otherwise they'd just vote for somebody else. Believe me, if random candidates started actually getting significant votes, the politicians would start to change their tune.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[ScentCone]

various organizations

You mean, like the organizations that people form in order to clearly express their interests to lawmakers? The AARP? The NRA? The NEA? The EFF? Those are groups made of people that get together in order to be more organized. Does it make more sense for lawmakers to have to actually field and parse communication from 300,000,000 million people ... hundreds of thousands or millions of which, at any given time, are basically saying the exact same thing? It's a signal to noise issue. Interest groups raise the S/N.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[SirLurksAlot]

Bush does not have an approx. 30% approval rating for no reason.

What does anything the GP was talking about have to do with Bush? He's talking about businesses selling private information, something they've been doing long before Bush was in office.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[Anonymous Coward]

yet also don't mention any Americans that you KNOW that actually AGREE with what is taking place.

Walk into any club and you'll find plenty of Americans who couldn't care less about "what is taking place".

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[EdIII]

Signal to Noise? No offense but you have to kidding. There could be 100% signal getting through to the legislative branches and that will not be 1/1,000,000th as effective as the big bags of cash and cushy jobs waiting for lawmakers after they get through pushing legislation through favorable to the *real* influences.

"lawmakers actually field and parse communication"? Seriously, that is just.. well... bullshit. No offense. It's all about the money. A Senator knows what is right and what is wrong. They also can figure out what their own privacy and rights mean to them and how they are affecting the rights of all Americans by what they do. They also just don't care since they are already effectively above the rest of the people already. They don't need or want to hear from 300 million people in the US about how concerned they are about their rights disappearing, since IT WILL NEVER APPLY TO THEM ANYWAYS.

Sorry, you just make it sound like government is WORKING. It ISN'T. None of these laws that have been pushed on the American people can pass the Common Sense Test. You can't find one average person on the street that supports some of the laws like the DMCA, Patriot Act, FISA, Telco Immunity, etc. There were also plenty of organizations like the ones you mention writing detailed and passionate pleas to Senators NOT to pass these pieces of legislation. Far more logical and eloquent than most of what is posted on /. Yet they were passed.

No, the legislative branches are just ignoring the people, those organizations that are trying to represent them are being ignored, and ultimately just tuned out completely.

Why do I keep saying things like this? For YEARS I have been walking around and talking to people and I have 100% in column A and 0% in column B. Guess which one supports these laws? I have talked with a pretty diverse crowd too. I am not just mingling with fellow "tin hats" here. How can the government be representative when I have never found a single example of positive representation? It's not even partial. It's an across the board no.

Let's test it. I don't know if you are American, but if you are, do you agree with any of the laws that have removed our privacy, anonymity, and freedom in exchange for security and stronger support of corporate IP rights?

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[EdIII]

I mention Bush only since he was the president responsible for the greatest erosion of our privacy and rights. Since I was specifically talking about privacy, anonymity, and basically freedoms here I was also pointing out that Bush has such a low approval rating and I think it is largely due to the incredible amount of nepotism and laws that were passed which basically are destroying this country.

But you are RIGHT, it is not just about Bush specifically. They have been doing it long before he took office. It just went a lot faster when he took office and 9/11 happened.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[Jeff DeMaagd]

If you don't want your picture taken, you have to stay at home.

It's more than that, make that stay inside the home, with curtains always drawn and doors closed. Google is photographing private property and whatever or whoever happens to be on that property, recording forever what may have been a fleeting moment.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[Dirtside]

If you're in the public, you're expected to suck it up. If you don't want your picture taken, you have to stay at home.

I'm reasonably certain there isn't a country on Earth where the common expectation is that anyone taking a picture in public will ask every single person who might end up in the shot if it's okay with them. Go find a picture taken by German, Japanese, whatever country's tourists in Times Square. You think any of them has ever once asked the hundreds of people milling about if it was okay to take a picture?

I agree with you in general, but let's not go overboard.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[deepestblue]

So I REALLY understand your point, but please UNDERSTAND MINE.

I've seen that people usually understand one better if one shouts less.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[carnalforge]

Uhm the suspects pics on newspaper are not a new in Italy neither.
And i have yet to find a hotel here in Italy where you cen get away without giving your documents. Even more, a friend of mine that worked in a Hotel here told me that they everyday bring the list of people that stays in the hotel to the police as the law requires it. So no, it's not only in the USA...

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I have no doubt that they sell your private information - but you're forgetting something. It's a bit more common these days for selfish people to trash the room and damage the hotel's property. They do like to have a way to find and recoup the costs from people in the event of that.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[sjames]

I will say that when a friend and I were flying a kite in a public park, we were approached by a Japanese tourist who asked quite politely if he could videotape us. We easily agreed since we didn't consider our activity at all private anyway, but appreciated the courtesy.

I suppose in that case, the dividing line for asking was that we were the subjects of the scene rather than just incidentally present.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[Qzukk]

You vote for candidates based on who get the most money from corporations?

No, they vote for candidates based on whether or not they allow abortion. Then they get all pissy when people blame them for all the other crap and corruption their "champion" dog drags in, and cry that they don't have "representation" when their representative votes exactly the way they wanted on the issues they wanted him in on.

Re:The land of the free (as in beer).

[pbhj]

The America you are talking about is not one that was created by the people. It was created over the protest of Americans every single step of the way.

So if it wasn't created by the people who created it? You have anti-privacy robots/aliens/zombies that have infiltrated society or something??

The values of a society can be readily established by seeing how they treat one-another.

Think of the distribution engineers...

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently work as a distribution engineer for a company involved in power transmission and distribution. We use Google StreetView to get an initial idea of the challenges that we will face when we do work in a particular area. Yes, we have lots of information on record but because distribution networks spread tens of thousands of kilometres and are built over several decades the information is not always accurate. With StreetView we can quickly check whether the information we have on hand is correct or not before we go out on site.

The article claims "if you were to walk along a residential street in an urban area of Tokyo, every 10 meters surveying all 360 degrees of your surroundings, there's no question that you would be reported to the police within 30 minutes." This must make being an engineer or surveyor in Japan a pretty tough job.

But, on a more serious note, I guess the point is that it's very hard to pinpoint the value of this technology at this early stage. But there is value and not just for engineers and surveyors. An earlier Slashdot poster mentioned he used it to take a virtual peek at his neighbourhood before he rented a house in an area he could not visit because he was overseas.

In other news

[ynotds]

Japanese whaling considered culturally insensitive by almost everywhere else.

And those who don't think whales have culture need to check today's news report from Tasmania.

Tasmanian scientists are examining the teeth of 100 whales and believe their research shows whaling impacts the mental health of other whales in the pod.

Any culture that wants to be above criticism surely should not be.

interesting find on street view

[tatermonkey]

I am a Project Manager for a construction company and I decided to take a look at some of the houses my company has built on Streetview. It shows one during construction and the crew sitting around. Very interesting......

Re:interesting find on street view

[smellotron]

You should probably ignore that picture. If I was expected to "look busy" 100% of the time at my job, I would tell my manager to f**k off; especially if I worked a physically strenuous job like construction.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[timholman]

In any case, is it typical for the Japanese to consider their own residential neighborhood private, but everyone else's to be public?

And that pretty much sums up the attitude of many vocal /.ers, at least based on my years of experience: "I want my own personal information to be private, but everyone else's should be public." Or to put it another way: "I demand the right to control my own data, but I will do as I please with anyone else's data as long as it benefits me."

Even after all this time, I'm still amused by this double standard, and how blind many /.ers are to their own hypocrisy in situations such as this. To those who are unhappy about Google street view "violating" their privacy, I suggest they repeat the following mantra:

"Information wants to be free."

Sound familiar?

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[maxume]

You can try to fit several tens of thousands of people into the same little box, but I don't think you will succeed.

There is a raving lunatic for every cause here, along with the fair number of level headed lunatics.

The land of the apathetic

[Ambitwistor]

Everybody I have ever had a conversation with, in person, is as outraged and disturbed as you are by the erosion of privacy. [...] I would state 100,000% that ONLY companies and various organizations get represented in US government today. [...] The America you are talking about is not one that was created by the people. It was created over the protest of Americans every single step of the way.

Yeah right. Most Americans don't think about and don't care about these issues. Yeah, if you have a conversation with one they'd probably say they don't like it. Maybe they'd even be "outraged". But would that make them protest or otherwise take political action? Keep them up at night? Or even make them think much about it later? No. Not beyond a tiny minority that is over-represented here on Slashdot.

The America being spoken of was not created by corporations, but by public apathy.

Re:The land of the apathetic

[Jerry Beasters]

Way to ignore all the huge protests we've had in the last few years. Oh yeah, that's really a lot of "apathy." Good job spouting a cliche, too bad it's not true.

Re:The land of the apathetic

[Ambitwistor]

You must live in a very different U.S. than I do. In the U.S. I'm familiar with, there have not been any "huge protests" over newspapers publishing photos of criminal suspects, having trouble renting a hotel room in cash, direct advertising, or any of the other examples the parent poster was referring to.

Re:The land of the apathetic

[moortak]

There are such protests but they don't exactly get covered in the media for obvious reasons.

Re:The land of the apathetic

[arth1]

Give me one example of such a "huge protest".
One.

Re:The land of the apathetic

[Ambitwistor]

Ok, name one "huge protest" over direct advertising that has gone unreported in the media.

Not all cultures are the same

[TheLink]

"Culture vs. law.... If it isn't illegal than that culture should have passed laws to protect itself "

Well maybe that's not the culture to do that in Japan ;).

Seriously, in most countries there are plenty of unwritten rules.

In Japan I believe you're not supposed to eat while walking about on the street.

And in most (all?) countries, I believe it's the unwritten rule that you are supposed to face the doorway in an elevator, not put your back to the doorway and smile at everyone ;)...

If you're an alien from another world (or an observant human) you'll see plenty of interesting unwritten rules.

Nobody writes all of them down.

It should not be illegal to break those rules once in a while, but if you keep doing that, you're being an asshole.

It's not illegal to be an asshole in most countries. Do we make it illegal to be an asshole?

I don't think that's such a good idea. I'm sure most of us have been assholes a few times in our lives.

To me, a country with a high proportion of persistent and unrepentant assholes shows a failure of society/culture, to outlaw "behaving like an asshole" is not addressing the real problem - many will remain assholes and just behave "almost but not quite an asshole" in legal terms.

Re:Not all cultures are the same

[Dekker3D]

"almost but not quite an asshole" that'd be better than those same people being complete assholes, right? it won't solve anything, but it would sure help a lot, if done right. those last three words are the problem though, how would you prevent abuse?

Re:Not all cultures are the same

[ShieldW0lf]

The problem is, most people are average or below, yet they are all told they should look out for number one and compete, and all of life will be grand.

Western culture is like one of those dysfunctional families where the kids need to hide food in the closet because they can't trust their parents.

I personally think the whole thing is caused by the second world war, when entire continents of men abandoned their women and left for a decade. It caused the breakdown of trust in the family unit, and that destroyed everything.

All these "Human Rights" we think are so grand a conception, they're more like people bargaining with death. I don't want to have trust and warmth in my community, I don't trust my fellow man, I want rules and rights.

The sooner they're wiped from human consciousness, along with the maladapted cultures that cling to them, the better off humanity will be.

Re:Not all cultures are the same

[TheLink]

I dunno, definitely don't ask the ones who modded you flamebait...

Imagine if they were in charge of deciding who was "asshole enough". ;).

Re:Not all cultures are the same

[Anonymous Coward]

All these "Human Rights" we think are so grand a conception, they're more like people bargaining with death. I don't want to have trust and warmth in my community, I don't trust my fellow man, I want rules and rights.

Straw man arguments are lies.

Re:Not all cultures are the same

[sjames]

There are some places where the law does address being an asshole to an extent. That is, the 'victim' of an assault being an asshole is legally recognized as a mitigating circumstance (or sometimes a complete defense) against the charge.

Re:Not all cultures are the same

[laa]

And in most (all?) countries, I believe it's the unwritten rule that you are supposed to face the doorway in an elevator, not put your back to the doorway and smile at everyone ;)...

Oh no, in Finland you're supposed to stand with your back against the wall (which means that everyone ends up standing in a circle) staring at the other passengers shoes and never ever talk to someone you don't know. ;)

Re:Not all cultures are the same

[zobier]

in Finland you're supposed to stand with your back against the wall

I'm not sure I want to know what led to that rule.

Re:Not all cultures are the same

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm.. kinda makes me wonder what kind of flame i was supposedly fishing for. i mean... did i offend the rights of the assholes? posted anonymously, don't want to lose another point of karma :P

Are those photos made public?

[achurch]

I live in the Weststadt residential neighborhood of Heidelberg, Germany. Heidelberg is a beautiful city, and sees many tourists. For some reason, the Japanese tour groups frequently travel down my street. Also, for some reason, many of the older Japanese tourists frequently take pictures of me doing such mundane things as bringing home groceries.

Do those pictures show up on the Internet? Or are they, as you suggest, just sitting in several dozen Japanese photo albums?

That's the signal difference here, and I think it's what everybody crying "hypocrisy" is missing. The privacy problem only arises when photos make their way onto the Internet where anyone can see them, not only the people who were actually there at the time. (It's kind of like copyright here in Japan: you're explicitly allowed to make copies of things for personal use—it's when you start distributing that you get in trouble.)

The way I look at the traditional public/private issue is this: People were willing to accept the lack of privacy in public places because they could see everyone who might be looking at them. In other words, you knew who you were giving up your privacy to, so you could judge how to limit your behavior; and in order to see you in a public location, the person watching would, in general, have to be in public as well. The problem Street View (and things like Flickr) raise is that anyone, at any time, can look at such "public" images—it's no longer a tit-for-tat, and moreover, the viewer may not have the context necessary to interpret the image correctly. Suppose the Google van caught you flipping the bird. Maybe you were just telling a friend how you felt about somebody who rear-ended you; but will the HR guy at the company you just applied to know that when he finds the image plastered all over the Internet?

The letter translated in TFA does raise some good Japan-specific points, but I think the basic problem applies the world over, and I really don't think it's Google's place to unilaterally decide what should and shouldn't be "private" in the Internet era.

(I knew I shouldn't have modded in this discussion. Oh well.)

Re:Are those photos made public?

[ceejayoz]

Do those pictures show up on the Internet?

Flickr and Picasa and the like are illegal in Japan. Haven't you heard?

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Their forests are sacred but they'll happily woodchip everyone elses old-growth forests.

That's Bullshit

[Migity]

Everybody in Japan doesn't think like that. I live and work in Tokyo and I have Japanese friends that think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. It just goes to show that no matter where you live there's always going to be that 10%.

The spiderman billboards

[Anonymous Coward]

came about because the owners of the billboards wanted paying because the billboards were in the shot.

So they took the billboards out and, since black would not look good on a billboard, put up either their own work (no copyright breach) or got the billboard art from someone who wanted to pay THEM to have it in (as opposed to demand payment FROM them).

And then the billboard owners wanted to sue for taking the original billboard stuff out.

Weird shit or what?

It's going to get worse.

[Anonymous Coward]

"These examples show that Google's netroots are both an advantage (when competing in net technologies) and also a disadvantage (when trying to enter markets where the internet rules don't map well to reality). The world is more complex than what Google's management thinks."

Imho, the (ever thinking) management of google's overall strategy brings it to shrewdly challenge the standard conventions of intellectual property and privacy, so as to force them to gradually "evolve" (presumably for the better = better for google, ? for us).

Youtube has countless of videos that are copyrighted and yet shared without consequence. When it counts though, i.e., when the big companies, which are concerned of moneymaking broadcasts and movies being shared and being easily accessible, come in, google appeases their concerns, by promptly removing all of the properties that are flagged by these entities.

So in effect, google adopts a certain posture. A fine balance between pleasing the anxious companies and keeping a blind eye towards everything else that is copyrighted but unlikely to cause social controversy.

And it's effective, when it comes to challenging intellectual properties. I for one, had forgotten about Queen's beautiful music and masterful concerts. Thanks to youtube though, the passion for what I consider to be the greatest band of them all reignited. I have bought several dvds of their concerts and am going to start collecting all of their music and the rest of their concerts. So I, Queen, and google all end up winning, which is perfect.

And youtube is only one of the examples - the poster above me listed a myriad of other ones.

However, it's when google starts challenging the notion of privacy that I get worried, because now it's not a profit making entity that is involved - I AM. Google goes from pecking the companies to nagging my personal freedom.

This is not about street views per se. It's about what Google, and the rest of the companies involved in internet are going to do over the following years and decades. When I think of street views, I think of 1984. Except that it's not the government that is going to be controlling us, it's the actual people. I personally DON'T want to live in a world where the concept of privacy is a laughing matter. I want to retain my autonomy, and my right to exist as an individual who is not forced to share the privacy of his life to others.

My hunch is that it's only going to get worse for the western world. Hopefully though, people will stand up against it.

Seriously? It's A Picture!

[EndFallTime]

Come on guys. You're arguing about ethics and culture. Politics and religion. The cameras take like one, maybe two pictures of you and then it's gone. And chances are, you will not be in the picture. Because the chance of you being in a place where it takes the picture is so rare. If that wasn't enough, they blur the sidewalk parts now. So it would be pretty difficult for you to even recognize yourself. The people that complain about Street View are just making petty claims of their privacy being invaded to get a whole bunch of attention. They are attention whores. Now, people, there are video cameras everywhere... at least here in the US. Everywhere I go I'm being filmed. Even if I just walk by an ATM, I know I've been on film. That happens every day. Can we please get some real debate going on about whether or not anyone cares whether or not Google goes around and takes pictures? I for one have used the service multiple times to see what kind of neighborhood an apartment was in before deciding whether or not to rent. I mean, it's uses are endless and if they weren't already doing it, someone else would be. Seriously guys. It's a friggin picture!

More "we're so different" rubbish

[homejapan]

I read the letter in question by Osamu Higuchi. Like nearly all entries in the "culturally opposite ways of thinking" category, it's a bunch of assertion backed by NO PROOF.

Concerned people everywhere in the world have pointed out Higuchi's same privacy concerns about Google Street View. While millions more around the world - including in Japan! - aren't concerned enough to say a word. Where's the difference? Show me EMPIRICALLY.

As a resident of Japan for over 20 years, I get so tired of "we're so different" claims that are backed by nothing more than the speaker's desperate wish for it to be true. (Unfortunately, I fear that other people will pick up on Higuchi's blather and shout "me too!", just because it scratches that itch for "cultural difference" posturing. )

Folks, feel free to ignore this nonsense. Until someone proves otherwise, there's nothing different going on in Japan here. (And always, ALWAYS, treat with utmost skepticism anyone claiming out of the blue to speak for the "cultural mindset" of tens of millions of strangers, nearly all of whom wouldn't known the talker from a hole in the ground.)

Re:More "we're so different" rubbish

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

Folks, feel free to ignore this nonsense. Until someone proves otherwise, there's nothing different going on in Japan here. (And always, ALWAYS, treat with utmost skepticism anyone claiming out of the blue to speak for the "cultural mindset" of tens of millions of strangers, nearly all of whom wouldn't known the talker from a hole in the ground.)

But now YOU appear to be speaking for the cultural mindset of millions of strangers.... jya nai?

Additionally you ask for empirical proof - but what would constitute "empirical proof" of the standard you appear to be demanding, either for, or against the proposition? (I assume you believe that there are SOME cultural differences between Japan and -say - the UK or US? - Attitudes to nudity for example. Or to the place of religion and faith in society.

For each such "believed difference" - how would one go about "proving" it - or "disproving" it - to the standard you demand?

Japanese exceptionalism is irritating - but no worse than British, US, French or Israeli exceptionalism - and it should not blind one to the very real differences that exist amongst the cultures.

Re:More "we're so different" rubbish

[Jerry Beasters]

It's not his job to prove a negative assertion, it's YOUR job to prove the assertion. I guess they aren't teaching logic in Japan?

Re:More "we're so different" rubbish

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

Good job I learned both my formal and philosophical logic in England then isn't it my sweet...

I didn't ask him to prove the assertion. I DID ask him what would constitute "empirical proof" either for or against an assertion of the type in question.

If he doesn't know THAT, then he probably shouldn't be asking for it...

As for you - a short course in logic, preceded possibly by a refresher on reading, is probably in order.

Re:More "we're so different" rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

And for you, refraining from posting would be in order. That four-digit userid sure doesn't stop you from sounding like a humongous faggot.

Re:More "we're so different" rubbish

[homejapan]

I'm "speaking for the cultural mindset of millions of strangers"?? Where? How? Where do I speak for any ONE person other than myself??? Are you responding to someone else's post?

Anyway, as pointed out, the person making the claim for some existence - Leprechauns, unicorns, a deity, a "cultural difference", etc. - is the one that bears the burden of proof. How to prove this particular "difference"? Frankly, it's the claim-maker that should have done the initial work, in explaining what proof there is for his claim. And before he can claim *why* things are different in Japan, he needs to show that they actually *are* different - something that could be addressed with numbers in several ways.

Is there some survey data showing more anger in Japan over this privacy issue? Any data showing more hubbub over photo-related privacy issues in general? Is the resistance to Google Streetview on a measurably larger scale in Japan? We're talking sociology, so "proof" will likely be fuzzy - but it'd be something to work with. The claimant in this case gives us nothing.

In any case, a key point: I don't have to make a choice between a) my explaining what empirical proof is needed to believe this claim; and b) my believing the claim! I'm free to choose c) disbelieve the claim until the claimant shows his proof and can explain why that constitutes proof. That should be any critical thinker's default choice!

"Japanese exceptionalism is irritating - but no worse than British, US, French or Israeli exceptionalism..."

Any exceptionalism is irritating, agreed. And yes, the "Japanese" version would not be special in any way I'm aware of.

"... and it should not blind one to the very real differences that exist amongst the cultures."

Real differences... such as? A "real difference" regarding the topic at hand - "cultural sensitivity" and Google Streetview - would be an interesting thing, but first must be proven to exist!

How can one reliably see "real" cultural differences when one accepts any unproven claim as real? That way lies blindness, indeed!

Re:More "we're so different" rubbish

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

I'm "speaking for the cultural mindset of millions of strangers"?? Where? How? Where do I speak for any ONE person other than myself???

It is - quite clearly - implicit in this claim, from your original post.

Folks, feel free to ignore this nonsense. Until someone proves otherwise, there's nothing different going on in Japan here.

Of course, strictly speaking, your claim is also formally untrue - it is is usually a requirement that something be "going on" prior to it being proven that it is going on. (Unless you have VERY weird verificationist views, and you believe that the act of proving something "brings it into existence"...)

Anyway, as pointed out, the person making the claim for some existence - Leprechauns, unicorns, a deity, a "cultural difference", etc. - is the one that bears the burden of proof.

True, but irrelevant, since what I was taking issue with was your blithe use of the word "empirical". You demanded you be shown "empirically" without ever stating what form that evidence should take. Note - "EVIDENCE" not "PROOF" - this is the social sciences, the concept of proof barely applies and the concept of the empirical is a little threadbare.

How to prove this particular "difference"? Frankly, it's the claim-maker that should have done the initial work, in explaining what proof there is for his claim.

Surely "evidence" rather than "proof" - You do tend to confuse the two - but they are quite different. One can have a great deal of evidence for something and it not be true.

And before he can claim *why* things are different in Japan, he needs to show that they actually *are* different - something that could be addressed with numbers in several ways.

Is there some survey data showing more anger in Japan over this privacy issue? Any data showing more hubbub over photo-related privacy issues in general? Is the resistance to Google Streetview on a measurably larger scale in Japan? We're talking sociology, so "proof" will likely be fuzzy - but it'd be something to work with. The claimant in this case gives us nothing.

Ah - so that is what you mean by "empirical evidence" - a survey. Well, assuming something suitably subtle could be constructed - that would certainly be a useful thing to have and might lend credence to his claims. It might indicate a set of social attitudes within the - limited - domain of respondents.

But there are all sorts of claims I can make about the opinions of - for example - long term British residents in Japan which are probably true, but for which I do not have the evidence of a survey. It seems to me that you would simply be misconceiving the terms of the discourse - as I suspect you are doing in this case - were you to demand that I present statistical survey evidence before making such claims. The guy was writing an open letter, not a scientific paper. I suppose if one poked him, he might say that he believed that were such surveys to be undertaken, they would back him up - but that it is not his job to do them. (Do you commonly make claims about people other than yourself based only on rigorous survey data? If so, I suspect you are in the minority...)

In any case, a key point: I don't have to make a choice between a) my explaining what empirical proof is needed to believe this claim; and b) my believing the claim! I'm free to choose c) disbelieve the claim until the claimant shows his proof and can explain why that constitutes proof. That should be any critical thinker's default choice!

No no no - surely you don't believe such nonsense! The critical thinkers default choice is not to DISBELIEVE a claim that is made without evidence - but rather to treat it with skepticism - in other words, to doubt it. To disbelieve it would require grounds for disbelief. But you commit yourself to a very explicit claim - that "there is n

Re:More "we're so different" rubbish

[homejapan]

"It is - quite clearly - implicit in this claim, from your original post."

Er, no. Not a whit. If I am speaking for someone other than myself - implicitly or otherwise - then here's a simple question for you: Whom do I appear to be speaking for?

Honestly, I can't even guess what person/group you have in mind.

As for responding to all the rest: I fear we're both going to sound like pedantic parodies along the lines of The Comic Book Guy, so let's jump on the point of agreement: Be skeptical.

It's good advice in any field, including "cultural differences" - even when we have a person from Country X making claims about Nationality X. Common sense "show me why I should believe that" should still apply. (Smart observers have called the failure to do so "taxi driver syndrome" - as in, "My East Whatsitian taxi driver told me about East Whatsit poltics/economy/belief systems, so it must be true!")

So does Google Streetview present some special "cultural insensitivity" unique to Japan? We've got the claim, and it very well could have merit, but IMHO the claimant hasn't shown any support for it beyond "I say so". Until that changes, skepticism keeps me from believing it. You, others, and/or Google are of course free to make what you wish of the claim!

Technology Should Not Respect Cultural Values

[b4upoo]

Technology should always let the light shine in even if some people feel like an earthworm stranded on a sidewalk on a summers day.
      Hopefully when people become immersed in all of the worlds cultures they will begin to understand that all cultural peculiarities are negative.
        In the example of Japanese feeling the need for higher privacy expectations there is hope that technology will cause them to confront over crowding as a serious negative and do something about their birth rates rather than demanding that people "look" at them less.

Re: Technology Should Not Respect Cultural Values

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

>confront over crowding as a serious negative and do
> something about their birth rates

you do know that the birthrate is so low it is almost a national emergency, don't you...?

In 2005, the birth rate was 1.2 babies/woman, rather than the 2.1 required for a stable population. (source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5273282.stm)

>Technology should always let the light shine in even
> if some people feel like an earthworm stranded
>on a sidewalk on a summers day.

why?

An Old Joke...

[jschmerge]

How do you make eye-contact with a New-Yorker?

Walk five feet behind him.

It's not a great joke, but it illustrates that in general people in urban areas around the world feel the same way as the Japanese. I've been an urbanite for quite a bit of my life, and while I think street view in kind of creepy, I don't feel the same way as this Japanese guy. Street-view is just way too useful to be against it.

Re:An Old Joke...

[EndFallTime]

Just moved to NY. I agree. People in NY enjoy a certain amount of privacy.. but they realize they are in public. And they act accordingly. The forum here seems to imply that not only should people not expect to act decent in public, but that somehow it's an intrusion into what would be a private occasion.

If you have a birthday party on your front yard... anyone in the public can see you from the street. That is of course, if you do not have a private drive up to your house or you live in the boonies and of course, if you're rich and live in a gated community or on acres of land. In any case, deal with it.

Street-view is just way too useful to be against it.

Anyone who disagrees with this statement probably doesn't use it. And if you haven't used Street View, how can you bash it on the principle that a few people have sued Google due to property lines being crossed? Google always takes these claims seriously and I don't think they are "evil" or even out to get anyone. They just want to provide a service as widely as possible. And of course the ability in the future to provide, for a price, the Street View engine to Realty companies Nationwide, that doesn't hurt. So they want to make money, Big Deal! They are still providing a damn good free service. If you disagree that it's too good to be against and you've used it, then you're just wrong. And I think I hear the Whaaambulance coming for you.

Re:An Old Joke...

[gujo-odori]

I used to use street view but don't anymore because I didn't find it to be at all useful, in (large) part because because so few places that I went actually had a street view. That would make more sense to me if I lived in BFE, but I live in San Mateo County, on the San Francisco peninsula (next county south of San Francisco itself). This isn't exactly a remote area.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[amaupin]

I've lived in Japan for 7+ years. I have blond hair and blue eyes.

One thing you have to understand about the Japanese is that the majority of them divide the world into two groups: Japanese and others. They CONSTANTLY bring up the fact that I'm a foreigner, even when it has no bearing whatsoever on the situation. They also frequently tell me that they can/can't do something because they are Japanese.

I've been asked by children if I'm a person or not. When I say "yes" they respond matter-of-factly that I can't be a person, because I have blue eyes. People have brown eyes.

This is not the rubbish you're looking for...

[argent]

Concerned people everywhere in the world have pointed out Higuchi's same privacy concerns about Google Street View.

So what? That doesn't mean he's wrong about Google Street View. At most he's wrong about Japan.

Re:This is not the rubbish you're looking for...

[homejapan]

Er, yes; he may be wrong about his assertion of a "cultural difference" in Japan vis a vis this issue. That's the point. Glad we agree!

It's not just a picture.

[argent]

The cameras take like one, maybe two pictures of you and then it's gone.

It's not just a picture. It's not the picture, it's the search engine and universal access to the picture... nicely tagged by street address, cross-indexed into the google search engine, just the thing for con artists and shady contractors looking for marks, burglars looking for houses to break into, who knows what else...

Re:It's not just a picture.

[EndFallTime]

I don't think holding back technology out of fear for people using it incorrectly is exactly the correct solution. Besides, it's taken at one time and then taken again in the distance future. Some con artist is going to break into a bank and realize they built a police station next door between pictures. I hope they do rely on Google Streetview for their information. The longer they are indoors looking at a computer screen, the smaller the chance of me getting conned or robbed or whatever you're implying people are going to do.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

I don't think holding back technology out of fear for people using it incorrectly is exactly the correct solution.

That's a different issue than "it's just a picture". "It's going to happen anyway" at least recognizes the problem. It's going to happen anyway, yes, the transparent society is inevitable, but let's at least have some public debate over HOW it's going to happen before blithely going out and doing it.

Some con artist is going to break into a bank and realize they built a police station next door between pictures.

Possibly some bank robber is going to be that stupid, but more likely they're going to use the pictures to narrow down the candidates a lot quicker and more safely than driving past all of them. So they only have to study 3 banks instead of 30.

The longer they are indoors looking at a computer screen, the smaller the chance of me getting conned or robbed or whatever you're implying people are going to do.

If they can identify a dozen possible marks in half an day in front of a computer screen, instead of spending several days looking for half that many possibilities, then they have more time to set up the job.

Search engines *improve* productivity. The problem is they don't just improve productivity for the good guys.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[EndFallTime]

This is a ridiculous argument. Do you understand that when the Internet was first invented people scientific documents and articles all over the place. It wasn't as easily available, but there was lots of information which has been removed due to the implications it could lead to if it did become easily available.

This is not information which could not already be gained by simply going to the location. It's not information on how to commit a crime or how to create an explosion. It's simply an image. Now, I know an image is worth a thousand words, but you seem to want to outlaw our freedom to take pictures of public spaces. If I went around taking pictures in Los Angeles I can't be arrested. But if I take pictures of every square block, not knowingly taking a picture of anything private, now you can arrest me? Now I'm committing a crime?

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

Do you understand that when the Internet was first invented people scientific documents and articles all over the place. It wasn't as easily available, but there was lots of information which has been removed due to the implications it could lead to if it did become easily available.

Um, yes, I've been around a fair while.

Do you know that a lot of personally identifiable information was made available on the Internet early on, and then when it became clear what the implications of making that information freely available were, that stalkers and con-artists and other not-so-nice people were using it to locate targets, it was removed?

This is not information which could not already be gained by simply going to the location.

This was not information that couldn't already be gained by going to the right courthouse with a couple of bucks for a photocopy machine. Changing the availability of information changes the nature of the information.

In this case, simply going to the location takes hours, looking at a picture takes seconds. You can "visit" thousands of times as many prospective targets with a tool like this.

If I went around taking pictures in Los Angeles I can't be arrested.

Well, um, depending on where you were and what you took the pictures of, you could certainly get unwanted attention from the authorities, but that's beside the point. Nowhere have I said that this was a crime. Just because something is legal that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[gtx]

Holy shit I just found that you can go into most any gas station and (for just a couple bucks) buy what con artists, shady contractors, and burglars call a "map" which will show you a detailed listing of all of the residential areas nearby. Using this "map," you can pretty efficiently loot and plunder your way through a small town without ever having to suspiciously ask the locals for directions.

FUCK YOU RAND MCNALLY.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[gtx]

It must be fun living in your world, where you honestly believe that life works like a high-budget Hollywood action film.

Interior, bad guy hideout. It is dimly lit except for the light of a computer screen. Behind the computer, two men in black and white striped shirts with zorro masks sit, studying the screen. On the screen is Google Street View.

Robber #1: Who'da thunk it? There's a bank in the next town over.

Robber #2: Look, it also has an awning that has the name of the bank on it. I think we should rob this one.

Robber #1: Luckily we have Google Street view to assist us with our crime. How else would we have known that at some time in the last year or so, there was some guy in a lime green polo shirt, holding something like a hot dog or something, I don't know it's kinda fuzzy, walking by the doors of this bank?

Robber #2: ...and if a guy in a shirt can walk by, that must mean the sidewalks aren't made of hot lava! Google had no idea that we'd be using their technology to plan crimes!

Robber #1: Look, it seems that the exterior walls of the bank are made of something transparent such as semi-reflective glass. There seems to be a sign saying "50% OFF" of something...but I cannot read the rest of the sign. Curses.

Robber #2: But how will we ever know where the walls start and where the doors begin? We will need to know this if we are going to get in and out quickly!

Robber #1: Well, using this technology we will be able to study this photo in advance to be able to figure out where the front door to the bank is... Look! I believe I have located it just under the awning you noticed earlier.

Robber #2: THIS WILL BE THE EASIEST JOB EVER THANKS TO GOOGLE STREET VIEW!

FIN!

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

Ah yes, there's no difference between asking someone "which way's main street" and "which houses have burglar bars"?

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

You're right, crooks are too stupid to take advantage of technology. No crooks ever make any use of computers, they'd never think of sending spam, building botnets, and doing any of that other foolish hollywood-movie sci-fi nonsense that nobody in the real world needs to care about...

Re:It's not just a picture.

[gtx]

If you can come up with one way that anybody could use google street view to make crime easier, please share it with the rest of us. And no vague FUD horseshit like "casing" or "finding marks." Considering the fact that the pictures are neither real time or regularly updated, I don't see how they'd be helpful for anything other than getting a general idea of what a street looks like, let alone how they could possibly help people commit crimes.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[gtx]

"Which houses have burglar bars?" Wasn't the original argument that this would somehow make crime easier? Do you really think that the hamburglar, armed with a list of houses with no visible security, is going to be any less inconvenienced by all of the things that can't be determined by google street view? Like, say, whether people are home, whether they have an army of pitbulls, whether or not they have a security system, safety glass, .45, 9mm, etc? So in the end, he'd have to come and "case" the house anyway? At that point, what makes using google street view any different than randomly driving through neighborhoods?

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

Do you really think that the hamburglar, armed with a list of houses with no visible security, is going to be any less inconvenienced by all of the things that can't be determined by google street view?

Of course not. He's going to look for the houses that have visible but ineffective security, like burglar bars.

So in the end, he'd have to come and "case" the house anyway?

I already said that.

At that point, what makes using google street view any different than randomly driving through neighborhoods?

It's faster and safer and more efficient. He can go through the first pass in a fraction of the time.

And for contract builder scammers, having an old photo of the house to compare it with is a double benefit.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

Burglar bars (these people have something to protect), nicer than average cars, nicer than average lawn, all the same things the burglar looks for when they're looking for houses to investigate further, except they don't have to actually drive around rubbernecking and attracting attention, and they can do it so much faster.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[gtx]

That sounds like a misapplication of technology right there. It's like the old ads for CD-ROM "multimedia encyclopedias" that tried to sell you on the idea that watching a 10 second clip of an eagle flying whilst hearing an 8bit/22khz wav of a bird sound effect was a more helpful learning tool than reading the fucking text.

Face it, it is actually way more efficient to go driving down the road looking for houses to rob than it is to go looking for them on Google Street View. The fact that you're probably going to get a good score of false-positives based on the limited information and context you are provided with from what is little more than an undated collection of 2d images, and the fact that it takes less time to drive down a street than it does to navigate down a street on GSV means that your position is baseless.

On top of that, all of the things that you mentioned above are nothing more than ignorant assumptions based on no supporting evidence, and even worse, they are assumptions that would have to be made with old and time-sensitive data.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

If it's quicker for you to drive down the street than to use street view, you're doing something wrong, or you're driving dangerously fast for residential streets.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[gtx]

Actually, I just timed it. It took me a minute to traverse a little less than a half mile, looking only at one side of the road. I clicked the button to advance to the next image as soon as an image loaded. I did not dick around on any of the images. I didn't resize, pan, or zoom any of them. I just advanced to the next one whether or not I could see anything helpful in the one I was on or not.

This means that you could theoretically look at both sides of a street at an aggregate speed of 15mph. As soon as you take any time whatsoever to pan or zoom any of the images to look for helpful information, your speed would go down considerably. Most residential zones have a speed limit of 25mph, or 10mph faster than you'd get from GSV. Do you consider 25mph "dangerously fast for residential streets?" Because I don't. If you want, I'll start driving at 20mph (for the safety of the children!) and still keep up a better pace than GSV.

Furthermore, you're going to obviously get a lot more information driving down the road in real life than you would trying to pan and zoom your way through a bunch of static images in a web based interface. As an added bonus, you'll get that information faster since you don't have to mouse around to move your focus from the car parked on the street to the windows of the house.

In case you're wondering, I timed the same half mile, panning the view to bring each house along the way into focus. I didn't even have time to really look at the details of any house, just enough to be able to see the entire front face of every house along the way. 1 minute 52 seconds. That's 16mph per side of the road. Once again, halve that if you want to get an aggregate speed to see both sides of the road and you end up with 8mph. I guess in your book, driving 10mph is "dangerously fast for residential streets."

Perhaps you should try using GSV before you talk about it in the future.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

If you're looking at the houses instead of the road, yes, I think 15 MPH is too fast for residential streets.

I'm also impressed that you can drive to a neighborhood in zero seconds and zero minutes.

And of course nobody is working on better interfaces to Google Street View.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[gtx]

You realize that your argument started out being that GSV would make it easy to case endless scores of houses instantly, and since then you've come to a point where you're trying to argue that it might be able to keep up with driving, right? You have stopped arguing your original point that GSV was superior, and instead you are now arguing that it should be considered at least as efficient as the alternative. What happened to the bold assertions that GSV would allow you to get several days of criminal work done in half of a day?

And now you're grasping at straws trying to tell me that the reason GSV is better is that driving 15mph in a residential zone is dangerous? Are you really going to base your argument on that?

No, I can't drive to a neighborhood instantly. I can, however, outpace GSV by great enough strides that after a half of a day, I'll have collected much, much more information than somebody who tries to use it for criminal purposes. My information will not only come quicker and easier, it will also be time-relevant and not based on distorted, low-resolution images.

As for the video of better interfaces, I don't really see what that's supposed to prove other than the fact that GSV is slowly making strides towards almost being good enough to be compared to driving down a street (limited only by the resolution of the pictures and the fact that everything is distorted and two dimensional.) If you want to chalk that up as a win for your argument, you go right ahead. It's nothing I'd get too excited about if I were you, though.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

You realize that your argument started out being that GSV would make it easy to case endless scores of houses instantly, and since then you've come to a point where you're trying to argue that it might be able to keep up with driving, right?

No, I'm arguing that you're taking the best case for driving (eg, you're already there, on the street) and comparing it to the worst case for GSV (first generation, not using the API, with a flash interface deliberately slowed down with cute transitions).

But if that's what you want to believe I'm saying I'm not going to argue with you any longer, your mind is most definitely made up.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[gtx]

No. I've already dealt with the facts that you're pretending I left out. GSV is so inefficient that whether or not you're using the flash interface, you could easily make up the difference in "time until started".

This is compounded by your own admission that any houses that look good on GSV would have to be checked out in real life. If you're already going to be driving there whether you're using GSV or not, why waste your time using something so inefficient?

So before you go accusing me of distorting the facts to validate my own conclusion, you might want to read your own arguments to date and ask yourself why they've changed so much.

Re:It's not just a picture.

[argent]

If you're already going to be driving there whether you're using GSV or not, why waste your time using something so inefficient?

Friend, I already brought THAT one up myself. You use this to look for candidates. Whether you're looking for houses to rob, houses to buy, or houses to send home improvement scams to, the advantages of Google Street View are the same. If GSV is useful for one of these things (and boosters of it have repeatedly brought up how they use it to look at real estate) then it's useful for all of them.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[Jerry Beasters]

Wow what FUD. No one is selling anyone's lives, they are taking pictures of public places.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[BJH]

If you still traveled, you might find that Tokyo's changed a bit since those days...

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[iONiUM]

Uh.. I don't know what you're talking about. I've been here for 2 weeks now, in Tokyo, all over including less "touristy" areas. I'm 6'3", blonde hair, green eyes, and nobody gives a shit. I'm more ignored than anything. The other reply to your post, about Tokyo being different "now", is perhaps true? I havn't been here before this year, so who knows, but they definitely do not view foreigners as anything special or picture-worthy these days.

You forgot

[wirefarm]

to append the phrase "in America" to every statement you made in that post.

The original post is about cultural insensitivity, not applying the American legal code to the rest of the world.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[R2.0]

"However, dont get them wrong: its completely harmless and they dont go publizicing them all over."

Riiight. It harms ME. It is an embarrassment to ME. The thought of them popping photos of ME up on their screen and laughing/criticising/masturbating while viewing those photos harms ME.

The Japanese social taboo against people looking at their own houses is because the thought of someone else doing that harms them, not harms society or harms culture - INDIVIDUALS are harmed by invasion of privacy. The fact that, while not in their own country they seem to care not one whit about other's privacy speaks volumes about their sense of cultural superiority. Likewise, your apology of their actions says a great deal about how little you value your own dignity.

Re:Popular Misconception

[arthurpaliden]

ROBOTS.TXT as initially implimented was never intended to be used for any thing but the preservation of bandwidth. Files listed in ROBOTS.TXT were static and therefore when a site was indexed by a visiting program in order to save the sites bandwidth it would check the ROBOTS.TXT file to see if the page it was going to download was defined as static or not.

Cultural boundaries

[nurb432]

Are relative and have no bearing on legality.

If you don't want to be watched by some fool that has nothing better to do then cruise google maps, close your drapes. ( now that said, recording and identification by the government is a different story )

GSV Seen As Culturally Insensitive in Japan...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and in some parts of the U.S.
I happen to live in one of those parts.

have google drive *through* the houses, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally,

I'd prefer it if they drove through all the streets and into the houses and through each room every five minutes.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I ask when this happened?

I visited Japan for the first time about 6 months ago (I stayed in Osaka, not Japan). I'm also 6'4" with blonde hair (though brown eyes). Having heard stories like yours before, I was expecting to be treated like an extreme oddity on account of my height and light hair.

However, it turned out that nobody gave a damn. One very old man at a rural train station commented on my height and asked where I was from, but that was the extent of it.

I had began to form the theory that the stories of tall, blonde foreigners being amazing spectacles were a decade or so out of date, from before the Japanese got used to the concept. I'd be interested to hear when this happened to you in order to assess this theory.

Japan's odd sense of taboo

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to clarify: Looking at photos of the outside of your neighbor's house is taboo in Japan.

Is this the same Japan where groping on subways, "HardGay" (a popular TV personality) "humps" unsuspecting children on the street to a laughing TV audience, schoolchildren commonly read "suggestive" comics, and upskirt photos are commonplace. And don't even get me started on the porn. Yikes!

Yeah. I can see why they're outraged.

(No, this isn't flamebait. I'm illustrating an ironic situation.)

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[gtx]

If I ever had to choose between

a) People walking up to me and randomly taking my picture

b) Getting caught on camera by a car that is putting together a large, impersonal collection of photographs

I would choose the latter option every time.

You know, maps tell you a lot of information about where you live too. Do we see maps as invasion of privacy? Does this mean that Rand McNally is selling my life for profit?

It's not like google engineers sneak into my bedroom while I'm sleeping a couple times a month, smack my ass and then photograph the reaction for the whole world to see. They're putting together a collection of photographs of views from public places. It's okay. You'll live.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[gtx]

Overgeneralize much? I for one get a kick out of seeing my house on street view and am kind of upset that I recently moved to a place that hasn't been added yet.

Why shouldn't photographs taken from public places be put on the internet? Is it because google has the capacity to take a lot of pictures in public ares and put them on the internet? How many pictures do you need to be able to take in a day before you stop being a benign Japanese tourist and become an evil empire?

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[MeditationSensation]

It only harms you if you let it. I don't care if there are pictures of me online. I'm not that sensitive.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[kabocox]

It's been my conclusion that any view of privacy on the part of the Japanese is strictly limited to the island of Japan. Which I've never had a problem with from a privacy standpoint--just a personal intrusion.

I think that its more that they are on vacation more than anything. US tourists are most likely just as rude to the locals. We actually tend to do most of our tourists crap domestically though so we don't export it. I think that people on vacation just tend to let there normal morals slide especially when there isn't any one they'd recognize as from home to call them on it. It's sort of like going to Las Vegas with your mom/preacher/priest vs with a bunch of coworkers in one case you'd likely mind your manners in the other you'd get pushed into doing what ever your coworkers thought was fun and might regret it or just try to forget it when you got back home.

The moral is that people act stupidly when on vacation away from their normal moral police.

Hairy monster

[adrenaline_junky]

So that chick in Babel expected no one to look at her hairy monster?

I just don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it too intrusive (much less "evil") to show the exact view that can be seen by a passenger in a car driving down the street in broad daylight? It's not like the Google Street View cameras have x-ray vision or anything. If you don't want to be seen by someone driving down the street, then don't be where someone driving down the street can see you.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[Big Jason]

I'm 6' 4" too and had a hell of a time in Bangalore, India. I guess the shaved head and bushy beard didn't help. It was hard getting used to the blatant staring, I could just "feel" the eyes gazing at me.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[Clueless Moron]

I have blonde hair and blue eyes. Every time I have visited China I have been practically assaulted by Japanese tourists. They not only photo me. They try and touch my hair and start posing in front of me etc etc etc. Needless to say this was unappreciated.

Blonde and blue-eyed here too. The same happened to me, but in Malaysia: I was in a museum, when a girls school class invaded. They were absolutely all over me, poking and stroking.

Unfortunately I was 10 at the time, so it wasn't appreciated. Life can be so cruel at times.

Just a bunch of whining 2chan users

[Kagato]

Fresh off their campaign of getting the English staff of MDN fired for translating Japanese Tabloid articles, they now have their sites set on Google.

The biggest issue the Japanese sites are complaining about is consenting adults photographed going into love hotels.

If they want to be concerned about people taking photos how about putting this much effort into all the pervs taking upskirt pictures. How about dealing with the behavior on rush hour trains that creates the need for "Womens Only" rail cars.

Google street view is an actually really needed in japan because of the illogical addressing system they have for buildings.

I saw something contradicting this in Japan

[Thagg]

When I was in Japan shooting Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift in December 2005, I had nothing to do one day, so I did some walking just to see what wonders there were to see -- and there were many.

The most impressive, though, was a large van...with a one-inch thick sheet of aluminum bolted to the top, on which were mounted four hi-def cameras, four laser scanners, a GPS, and some other gear I didn't recognize. After walking by, walking back, walking away, and walking back again I couldn't help but ask (in English, of course) what they were doing.

You see, for Fast and Furious through 4, we built various camera rigs to film streets, to use as backgrounds for greenscreen work. This was clearly a similar rig, but on steroids. Radioactive mutant steroids.

The best english-speaking person on the crew came up to me and said "Ah, are you engineer?" I wish :) No, I am a filmmaker, but I have to know what you are doing!

He gave me a tour of the whole rig. There were enough computers inside the van to put my computer animation facility to shame. The were driving up and down all the streets of Tokyo, building a 3D, textured model of every building, for use in car navigation units. The geometry information from the laser scanners was merged with the photographic information from the hi-def cameras, and registered with the GPS.

So -- I find the protestations recorded in the article a bit suspect.

Culture changes...

[patniemeyer]

Perhaps the Japanese will enjoy being able to find their destinations so much that the culture will change.

As I recall, people used to be really irritated by others talking on cell phones in public areas, even when there was no rational difference between that and any other conversation in earshot. You don't really hear about that grievance any more. Why? I think it's because almost *everyone* has a cell phone now and it doesn't really draw attention the way it once did. People got used to it.

The Japanese will get used to having good maps. Or they'll do something about it and have bad maps. It's really up to them :)

Pat

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[SpammersAreScum]

Seconded. I am blond with blue eyes. There was a fair amount of such attention when I was a kid, in the 50s and 60s; but the last time I was there, I only drew noticeable attention once, when I wandered into a small neighborhood restaurant and ordered in Japanese. I don't remember which city, but it wasn't Tokyo.

I wish

[Anonymous Coward]

that I could see myself walking down the street on Google. That would be cool ... as long as I was being a good boy ... hmm.

Maybe Japanese are Embaressed of their cities

[BlueQuark]

I think the Japanese are embarressed to show the world how crappy their cities are. Yes Japan is a beautiful country with beautiful culture with a rich sophistacted tradtion. A lot of cool gadgets are built here and
Japanese engineering is some of the best in the world and some awesome restaurants. Outside of that
Tokyo and Osaka are complete dumps. Google culturally insensitive my ass.

If you have ever been to Tokyo and I don't mean the touristy spots and the nice'er neighborhoods around
Shinagawa station, Meguro station, Roppongi, Azabu, Hiroo, Shibuya or Setagaya or Mitaka/Kichijoji, you will
find that large swaths of Tokyo are absolute dumps.

Most of these areas are filled with crappy old houses that date to right before or after the war mixed with a hodgepodge of construction built every since with absolutely no order, no sense or logic as to how they are laid out all intermixed with small factories and rat's nest of electric wires overhead.

  You would be apalled to know that people in the 2nd wealthiest country live the way they do. Especially when the Japanese government touts how middle and upper class they are. Japan has good PR.

But if you are too busy picking up Japanese chicks and collecting the latest anime junk you might fail to notice how depressing Tokyo really is.

I live in Shinagawa Seaside off the Rinkai line in Shingagawa-ku Tokyo and I live not far from the creepiest
dumpy areas in Tokyo. (Samezu Station for the locals here) Just yesterday my wife (Japanese) and I took a walk over to Togoshi Park in Shinagawa City, we like to take long walks, especially to parks. Togoshi Park is a good 45 walk but you have to walk through some of the crappiest areas filled with crap boxes that you wouldn't want your worse enemies dog to live in. Even my wife thought it was a dump. Her and a bunch of friends came over to our place and half of their conversations were how lousy Tokyo was and how they wish they could get out of there. (They were all Japanese women) Most of my Japanese co-workers don't like it here either and are itching to get out of Tokyo in particular.

Though you probably won't get harassed by gang members, but you might get stabbed by some knife wielding kid who wants to kill someone just for the hell of it.

Yes I've been to some crappy parts of the US, I'm originally from a heavily segregated city that has burned out neighborhoods and I've lived in Los Angeles and did jury duty in Compton and had to drive through East LA regularly, but even these areas look good compared to parts of Tokyo. I've been through Detroit, bad parts of New Jersey and Oakland. Granted I wouldn't want to live there, but the US doesn't try to hide it, unlike Japan.

I guess this is a result of Japan's industrialization and modernization at any and all costs.

Though this guy should be happy, Actually I think Google Street View makese some of these areas look better then they really are.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, not blond with blue eyes, but 6'4" and hairy. Spent a week in Tokyo for work, and was pretty much left alone, with the exception of one schoolgirl who said "hello", giggled and ran away, having proven to her friends that she was, in fact, brave enough to do so.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[im_thatoneguy]

Hehe. In Peru I kid you not one day I had the Austin Powers scene play out. I was dodging tik tiks in the street climbing over walls and dashing through shops to escape the mob of girls chasing me.

I finally was able to double back and hide in my hotel. It's a dangerous world out there!

Then Don't Look

[Doc Ruby]

If it's impolite to look, then Japanese people shouldn't look at Google StreetView.

They're kidding themselves if they think people never look. I've been to Japan, I've known plenty of Japanese people here in NYC and in California. They're human like the rest of us, and some look, whether their neighbors want to live in denial of that or not.

If you leave your windows open to the public street, the public is sometimes going to look in your window. Google's camera trucks are no different, except that they're not pretending that they're not looking.

This whole thing reminds me of how people who don't want to see pictures of naked people try to stop anyone from looking at such pictures. If they don't like it, they don't have to look, and they can keep their clothes on and their windows curtained. That's what the rest of us actually do when we're serious about our privacy, not just about controlling other people instead of exercising self control over ourselves.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[im_thatoneguy]

My timeframe of "Blonde Spectacle" is:

Peru: 5 years ago. (Mob of girls chasing me.)
China, Malaysia, Japan and Thailand: 10 years ago and 18 years ago.

Just for reference.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[NeMon'ess]

So have you found any phrasing that disabuses them of their fallacy?

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[amaupin]

It's entrenched in their culture and world outlook, and reinforced by their language (ingroups/outgroups/politeness levels). There are Japanese. And there are others.

As a foreigner you just have to kind of roll with it. Correcting everyone will wear you out.

When it comes to the kids' statements, I just explained to them that some people have blue eyes.

Japanese traditional values

[Anonymous Coward]

Japanese traditional values

Like sexism, aesthetic discrimination (photos required on most resumes) and national discrimination (no gaijin policies).

The press seems oblivious to the irony

[Chuck Chunder]

Just today they've ensured many many more people see Google's photo of some drunk guy who'd been mourning a dead friend.

And now I've done it too. However at least I'm only linking to the story rather than hosting the "offending" image which has been removed from Google.

Re: expectation of privacy in a public place?

[pbhj]

The simple truth is that there is not and never has been any expectation of privacy in a public place.

I wonder if the EU Convention on Human Rights would speak to this. It has a clause, Article 8, thus:

Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

Seems that photography in a public place could impinge on this right, no?

One other point - whilst the google-van is in a public place, you may not be (your front yard, garden, front windows).

Re:CURTAINS.TXT convention

[pbhj]

Don't you find erecting huge curtains at the edge of your property a bit onerous though?

Video Camera

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, to all these pinheads here saying "You're in public, you can't complain." I'd just like to ask if you would be OK with several video cameras set up all around your property line filming 24/7/365 and broadcasting on several International T.V. stations and archiving the footage to be available on a web page. Just to be clear: *everything* that happens outside your house is captured, and much from inside your your house is captured too (there are cameras trained on every window/door to catch everything when they are opened).
Sound good? Because that is the logical extreme that this could get to. And while I may not mind 1 picture a year on Google Maps, the above scenario is totally unacceptable. People do have a right to let their dog out whilst only wearing underwear without having footage of the event available to anyone that wants it.

Removing people

[bill_mcgonigle]

Google just doesn't care.

I think they just don't care to spend the money to do the Right Thing.

Three passes of the same area and readily available algorithms could render most non-fixed assets out of the picture. It ought to approximately triple their costs to acquire imagery.

Arithmetic of the soul...

[argent]

I think Google now see it that as long as they _do_ more good than evil they are not /being/ evil.

That kind of arithmetic of the soul is so Middle Kingdom. I guess they've shifted their dogma from karma to ka.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[lantastik]

My first trip was 10 years ago and I haven't been back in 7 years. The longest period of time I stayed was 6 weeks, but altogether I have 6 months of travel time in Japan.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[alexborges]

As are the cam-crazy japaneese, only google does it for profit and they do it for kinks.

I guess its a personal issue.

However, i think you ought to own your own image's copyright so if it irks you, you should be able to sue both the japs AND google for using your image without permission.

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[gullevek]

Axe effect

Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does

[gullevek]

Hairy people exist. A co-worker is half Okinawa guy and he has more hair than I do, and I already have a lot.

But luckily my hair color is fairly mundane so I don't get groped ... just my slightly over sized belly is a center point of fascination ...