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Angry Villagers Run Google Out of Town

Posted by samzenpus on from the and-stay-out dept.

Barence writes "A Google Street View car has been chased out of a British village by angry residents. The car was taking photographs of Broughton in Buckinghamshire for Google's when it was spotted by a local resident who warned the car not to enter the village then roused his neighbors, who surrounded the vehicle until the driver performed a U-turn and left. 'This is an affluent area,' protester Paul Jacobs said. 'We've already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike. I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police.'"

8 of 1,188 comments (clear)

  1. Angry Mob Wins? by The+Raven · · Score: 5, Informative

    So the bizarre flashmob of angry residents barricades a public road and illegally blocks Google from taking photos from the public streets? This is in the UK... those people are already putting up with a billion cameras, what's one more?

    --
    "I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
  2. Re:Ah, Little Britain... by dueledge · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think you mean the league of gentlemen

  3. Would someone please link to this location? by neo · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can't figure out where to take my camera, can you give me a link to this location on Google Maps?

    Oh here it is.

    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Buckinghamshire&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=51.754532,114.257812&ie=UTF8&ll=51.880332,-0.873456&spn=0.019895,0.05579&t=h&z=15

    Don't blink as you drive through.

  4. Watch out, realtors! by c0d3g33k · · Score: 5, Informative

    They will be coming for you next for put stuff like the following online:

    http://www.homes24.co.uk/property/search/?ps_type=1&loc=Aylesbury&prop_type=&min_price=0&max_price=0&min_bedrooms=0&keywords=&maxdist=0&age=-

    I wonder how posting full price info, detailed descriptions of the home, exterior *and* interior photos is less revealing than driving down the street with a camera mounted on the car. I suppose the xenophobia response doesn't get triggered when it's members of the local community that engage in privacy-violating activities.

  5. Re:Glad to see.. by mlyle · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not as if Google doesn't pull photos all the time from Streetview due to people requesting it.

    I've made repeated requests to Google to pull a couple of images of my property from streetview, and they've been ignored for a year now-- both by email and by the 'report inappropriate image' option.

    So despite Google's overtures to the contrary, I don't think they yank anything unless they are sued.

  6. Re:Glad to see.. by Lakitu · · Score: 5, Informative

    Of course it is.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States

    http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0389_0347_ZS.html

    http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-8508.ZO.html

    But just as a thermal imager captures only heat emanating from a house, so also a powerful directional microphone picks up only sound emanating from a houseand a satellite capable of scanning from many miles away would pick up only visible light emanating from a house. We rejected such a mechanical interpretation of the Fourth Amendment in Katz, where the eavesdropping device picked up only sound waves that reached the exterior of the phone booth. Reversing that approach would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technologyincluding imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home. While the technology used in the present case was relatively crude, the rule we adopt must take account of more sophisticated systems that are already in use or in development.

    The only difference being that it is not a government organization, but that's kind of besides the point.

    not that the uproar over this is any less silly, but if you're going to mock the outrage, at least properly mock it. I wonder if this angry mob was caught on CCTV?

  7. In the US: Photographer's Rights by Mansing · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

    The general rule in the United States is that anyone may take photographs of whatever they want when they are in a public place or places where they have permission to take photographs. Absent a specific legal prohibition such as a statute or ordinance, you are legally entitled to take photographs. Examples of places that are traditionally considered public are streets, sidewalks, and public parks.

  8. No, actually. by canthusus · · Score: 3, Informative

    I invite you to poke around the official numbers for both the US and the UK and make a counter argument.

    Those statistics are measuring quite different things, and cannot be meaningfully compared.

    The US figures are offences recorded by the police.

    The UK figures you give are from the British Crime Survey - a survey of people, who are asked if they have been victims of crime. Such surveys always give much higher figures, for a variety of reasons.

    In many ways a crime survey gives more useful numbers, as it measures victims rather than crimes, and isn't subject to recording differences. But the two really cannot be compared.