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Angry Villagers Run Google Out of Town
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.'"
I'd fire that driver for turning tail. Lock the windows and keep driving. They can blur the faces of the mob later.
As for calling the police, go right ahead, I'm sure Google is breaking no laws.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Ah yes, a story about Google Street view and an article with no mention of guns gets turned into an anti-socialist, pro-gun debate.
Kuddos to your crafty (yet really quite subtle) way of getting your point across while staying on topic.
One could look at this situation and say, "If you don't want Google taking pictures of your house, build a ten-foot wall in your front yard." Do we really want to resort to that, though? Technically, yes, Google is legally within its rights to take photographs of people's houses from the street. In a more civil world, though, if somebody is taking pictures of your house, you walk down to the road, ask them to stop, and they do. Google is exercising its legal rights but doing so in a way that many people feel erodes their dignity.
Most people don't want a wall in their front yard because they want to be open and welcoming to their neighbors, but not necessarily to strangers with cameras. Do we really want to foster a scenario in which people have to close themselves off to everybody in order to protect themselves from strangers with cameras? What Google is doing isn't wrong, but it isn't nice either. There's no law against being not nice, but I certainly don't think it properly coincides with Google's vow not to be evil.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
IANAL, but anything plainly viewable from public property is not considered private.
On the other hand, if Google had developed a portable camera that can see through walls, blinds, hedges and clothes, and started driving that around public property, I think the locals might have a leg to stand on. For that matter, I'd like to see how close they'd get to Langley, or Fort Meade for example.
Interestingly, if everyone has access to said technology, it's no longer exotic or invasion of privacy. There's a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, "The Light of Other Days," in which technology to remotely view any location on earth becomes widespread, convenient, and eventually, integral to modern life. When anyone can watch you anywhere, no matter what you're doing, does privacy even make sense?
Food for thought, as well as a rebuttal to you begging the question (that it is illegal to take pictures from a public road of private property.)
The lack of respect being shown isn't for their 'wishes' it's a lack of respect for how they choose to enact the fullfillment of those wishes.
They were idiots, they may be normal people. That's OK, normal people can be idiots too. But they were idiots. A small group of people made a decision for the entire community. They probably broke the law by impeding traffic, and all for what? Because they didn't want their homes to show up on Google? They could have just logged in and actually indicated that.
It's not as if Google doesn't pull photos all the time from Streetview due to people requesting it.
And this BS about 'being worried this would attract burglers'. Come the eff on. No one but the locals knew about your place. And the locals already had plenty of ways of casing your joint without Google. In fact, the ones that were responsible for the six burglies in the article not only managed to do it without Google Streetview, but it's likely they got away with it right under the resident's nose.
But now, everyone in a huge radius knows that this place not only is an easy mark (after all they've been knocked over six times already) but there's still stuff left for the taking since people are paraniod about who is coming through.
Also, Britain has roughly 8 times the "hot burglary" rate of the US, meaning that in the UK, criminals enter your home without bothering to see if you're there first. In the US, they purposely enter when you're not home so they won't get hurt.
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Because a few vacation photos, over a hundred tourists, equates to the same thing.
Because you already have several non-viloent ways of actually politely requesting they don't.
Because regardless how many little unspoken rules you've made about your life remain 'unbroken', none of the rest of us actually agreed to crap.
Because I'd like to see where I'm going when I plan my tourist trip.
Because it really isn't harming you.
Because no one really cares about your shit in your yard.
Because the world really isn't about you. Or me.
I don't believe it is. Close your blinds.
Not really any different from sitting in a high rise with binoculars.
Actually, they go after people on the Hollywood sign for a slightly different reason. You won't find many pictures taken from the south-west that show anything above the "D" without airbrushing out the background.
Among other things, there is a cold-war era relic for the governor's fallout bunker, but this isn't the issue.
You see, unlike us savage Americans, the British know that it's not a violation of privacy if the government are the ones watching you.
Google should just cut a deal with parliament to use the 88,000,023 cameras already installed across the UK.
Causation can cause correlation
When in the UK it was hilarious to read in the newspapers, about the numerous citizen complaints against the police. Turns out the police didn't want to hire the staff to check the video footage for certain reported crimes like theft (despite knowing the times AND places the thefts occurred, giving a solid starting point) to identify and catch crooks.
Well done UK, saving your draconian measures for political agendas. Your people deserve what they get.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
They don't care about being spied on, they find the idea that any pleb with an Internet connection can look at their house without their knowledge distasteful. If the government made the results of this (I must say ambiguously defined) spying public in the way Google plans too, expect an uproar.
Considering the explosion of surveillance in British cities, I'd think they've made it clear they don't expect any privacy in public. I fail to see how living in an "affluent area" allows you some extra privacy rights others do not have.
But hey, I guess rich people really feel like they're entitled to special treatment. You'd think having the money would be enough.
The difference is that all those 'other' cameras don't actually work, since they are neither maintained, nor recorded, or watched by anyone.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It is an entirely legitimate desire not to have your home's photo on Google. Streetview is a convenient tool for burglars to scope out neighborhoods, since Google has already done all the legwork for them. The residents' concerns in this case are perfectly valid. There is absolutely nothing wrong with stopping the googlemobil. Why should anyone waste their time asking Google to remove the photos, when they can stop Google from taking the photos in the first place? As if Google asked them for permission to take the photos in the first place. In many communities it is actually Google that is breaking local law by engaging in unlawful surveillance. But Google's size and deep pockets protect it from lawsuits. I wonder how long I would stay out of court (or jail, for that matter) if I would photograph random private residences and post the photos online, accompanied by location details.
If I take pictures of the family in my yard, the neighbors can't object to the fact that their houses might be in the photo. Same if I put those photos up on the internet. I really don't see why Google should have special status here.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
100's of sets of tourist photos randomly scattered across the internet, being added and removed and reorganized by their takers at their whim is not remetely the same thing as a single permanent indexed geo-tagged database filled with photos that were carefully and systematically taken and stitched together.
Nothing preventing Google from indexing those photos, right?
Nothing to prevent The Internet Archive from archiving those photos, right?
Why does one private party get special status here?
No, this is not a legitimate concern. If you can take a photo of it from the public right of way, you can do so. If you don't want your stuff visible from a public right of way, don't keep it visible from a public right of way (it doesn;t take a bunker, just keep it out of public view if you don't want the public to see it....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The problem is really what the photos are cross-indexed with, and what lines to draw. I haven't seen any good arguments that a company shouldn't be able to cross-index photos with the text that appears in the webpages where they were taken from; in addition, there's such a thing as robots.txt that can be used to opt out from indexing by many parties.
I still think a geo-tagged systematic database of photos of every residential street in my town is a privacy problem. Such a database "hits closer to home," almost literally; it indiscriminately broadcasts facts about my residence (and thus indirectly about me) to absolutely anybody; and I have no good way to opt out. With a web page index, on the other hand, I have a lot more control about what I disclose and what I choose not to.
If I live in an ugly-looking neighborhood, and I'm applying for a job elsewhere, I don't want the potential employer to Google the home address from my job application, see a bunch of run-down houses, and reject the application for that reason. More generally, people in our society are judged to be perfectly justified to use selective disclosure of information (and even some degree of misinformation) to their own advantage in all kinds of contexts; this is in fact a pretty useful definition of "privacy" to apply in many cases. Google Street View and many other technologies undermine that by making it harder for me to conceal facts about myself that, by societal standards, I'm justified to conceal.
Are you adequate?
You're right -- the rate of burglary in the UK is about 3 times the rate in the US. Of course, the murder rate in the US is about 3 times the rate in the UK, so gun laws aren't all bad.
Furthermore, it isn't as if burglers can't drive around the neighborhood scouting it out themselves or wouldn't be likely to do so regardless of whether Google Street posts the images.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Why don't you go do a comparison of types of crimes, crime rates, and methods of counting crimes?
Certain crimes are higher in the US, most crimes are significantly higher in the UK- including several categories of violent crimes.
After that, you can re-evaluate your cock-sure sarcasm.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Maybe it's irrelevant how much in taxes they paid. Taxes are collected for the entire region, not just a bunch of idiot yuppies living in a neighborhood. Since they have earned more due to society, do they not automatically owe something back to the society?
I can't believe I'm replying to an AC, but here goes.
I don't believe it is irrelevant how much we pay in taxes. Taxes are effectively fees for services rendered. Why should one person pay more for an identical service rendered than another person? If you think it's irrelevant then the next time you pay someone to change the oil in your car how about you pay them twice as much as the guy in front of you in line. Suddenly doesn't seem so irrelevant I bet.
They don't seem so idiotic if they can group together and keep GOOGLE out of their neighborhood. Show me another neighborhood that's been able to accomplish that.
Assuming these people are not crooks, they earned more from society by providing society with some form of goods or services. They've already given to society what society wanted. Why should society now get freebies? If what society wants is "more for less" then they should stop paying sixty fucking dollars for a video game, or over a hundred dollars for a damn concert ticket. These people are filthy stinking rich because 'society' keeps giving them money.
The way I see it you have three options. Either become one of those people, stop giving them money, or shut the hell up.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I don't see why someone should follow your special rules because you've arbitrarily deemed it to be polite. You give absolutely no reason except that "they don't get it." If they don't understand, please explain it. Why is it not polite to do so? and don't just say, "because I don't want it." I want real reasons.
Speaking as someone who in a previous life committed a 'burg' or two, I can safely say that Google streetview is a fucking useless tool for burglary for a very simple reason, it shows only the visible parts of the property - the parts that are visible to anyone who walks past.
The last thing a burglar wants to do is to hang around on the most visible part of the property where anyone driving past can see them. Google street view provides a really slow, probably out of date and restricted way of doing the easiest part of a burglary, driving down the street and looking for a house to go into.
Seriously, it takes about two minutes to case a whole street in a car, but it takes about 15 minutes to do the same with Google. If someone is stupid enough to leave expensive items like jewelry or their PS3 on display in a window, then they're likely to get burgled by local feevs long before their photo pops up on Google.
Having said that, I could believe that 'steal-to-order' car thieves might find street view handy (car thieves already use tools like registration plate lookups to find a target), but home burglaries aren't lucrative enough to warrant a lot of preparation, especially when it doesn't seem like it would make home burglary any safer or significantly more profitable.
Yeah, that antenna farm up there is unsightly as hell.
A bunker, on top of a hill, right smack in the center of a target area - hundreds of miles from the governor's residence? Cite please.
It's not a matter of whether they have a right to post them, the GP was refuting their parent in saying that Google will take down pictures due to someone requesting it. There's a world of difference between a company that will pull those pictures down whenever the owner asks and a company that must be compelled to do it.
However, I do think that this is much ado about nothing. After all, the car's not seeing anything that anybody else driving down the street wouldn't be able to see. In addition, the benefits are enormous; when looking for directions, the first thing I do after finding the destination address is to check the street view. I hate not being able to find the place because I didn't realize that the bakery they were referring to is decorated like an abandoned warehouse. I'd rather find that information out while I have the resources of the internet at my disposal instead of having to rely on a cellphone to clear up the misunderstanding.
They weren't actually worried about common burglars. They were worried about governmental and semi-governmental burglars. The TV licence thugs, the Inland Revenue Service, the Zoning Commission, the Historical Society, those bastards can fine you and put you in prison any time they want. And it only gets worse if they can prove with actual photographs that the new converted alcove on your house is less than a few years old, or that google showed that your television was on last year.
JK Rowling stole from me. She wrote her first book while claiming state benefits. Then when she got rich and famous, she ran off to the USA, so none of her taxes are going back in to top up that pot that she leeched from.
Personally, I'm not convinced that having something visible to a passer by or even a photographer is quite the same as having every detail photographed and plastered on the net for everyone to see.
The guy in TFA makes a good point when he talks about break ins. Criminals can now scout areas from the comfort of their home. At least if they have to go past your house and look in and take photos themselves then there may be witnesses that someone was acting suspiciously. Of course, because they don't have to be there and can do it from their own home they can spend all the time in the world examining photos for entry points, on how to evade security lights and so on. If someone spent ages looking at every inch of someone's house in the street then someone is going to ask questions, just like someone might ask questions if they take a photo themselves.
I'm not saying I'm totally against street view, but I don't think it's as clear cut as "Well if you don't want people seeing it, don't have it on display". I think the key difference is that if people wanted to go and be nosy they at least had to get off their arse and make the fucking effort which was enough to deter most snoopers but now they can do it regardless.
That said, from what I understand Google have removed some images where people have requested their property not be on display, so perhaps the best course of action rather than turning the vehicle around when it'll probably just come back some other time is to let them take photos and have everyone complain to have their house picture removed and leave a big chunk missing from the system.
To be honest though, I'm not actually sure what everyone's house being photographed even achieves, that's the bigger question for me. I can understand major city centres such as London and so on because it can be used for advertising in conjunction with Google maps and people can have the chance to see these major cities. Purely residential streets though? does it even actually achieve anything?
"Obviously, in the US this would be plainly moronic, since it is, indeed, the case, that in public there is no expectation of privacy."
I think this is part the issue though, I think this goes beyond privacy. If someone walks up to your house and keeps constantly photographing it or plasters photos of your house and stuff on the internet it's borderline harassment. The fact Google blurs faces and is willing to remove photos suggests they accept that at best they have a moral duty to respect people and their property but possibly even that there are legal implications for what they are doing.
That's the problem in rural areas. The police don't turn up at all. It's hardly surprising that a spirit of vigilantism is developing there. The state may in theory protect the public in public spaces, but the reality is very different. If you don't live in a rural area, surrounded by `traveller' camps, you have no idea what's actually going on.
is that Britain(at least London) has become a total surveillance society with every bloody move of their citizens recorded on camera for use by Big Brother.
Perhaps they should consider gathering the neighbours and kicking the government out of town?
I think many of my fellow Brits are not too keen on cameras but are very against being watched by companies.
From what I can see, it looks like the other way round in the US.
Why the difference? My 2pence worth is as follows...
In the US do you feel that everyone in positions of authority has worked to get there? This may well have involved getting people to vote for them. Politicians are not famed for their honesty in general. Succesful businesses, on the other hand are such because they are good at what they do and responsive to customer demmand.
In the UK, we may have once had a higher opinion of politicians than you. Above them waas the aristocracy who had been brought up to lead. There was the ethics of "fair play" fed to them when they were at Public School. If the politicians were bad, they could be removed by the Lords. Above them was the monarch who kept an eye on them. Unfortunately for this system, Tony Blair and his friends have spent a decade removing those checks & balances. Now our leaders will do whatever their rich friends want them to - just like yours!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
While everything you say is true, there's nothing that a criminal can do with a photograph taken from a public place that they cannot do while standing in that public place themselves. And do better, in fact.
This is a complete non-issue. People don't like it because they have a fetish for privacy that hasn't existed for decades, if it ever did at all.