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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.'"
Given the shape of popular british paranoia these days, I would have expected the google car to be identified as an agent of the paedophiles and run out of town for that reason...
I was driving close to the Googleplex the other day and spotted what I thought was one of those infernal google camera cars, so I drove up next to it and stared, holding a bizarre contorted face for as long as possible. Turns out it was just Google security. Sorry security man, I thought I could be famous....
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Please post the google maps pictures of the crowd...I cant wait to see it!
So instead they got media coverage about how they are affluent and easy targets for burglars?
DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
Not sure where British law stands on this topic? I know it is legal for me (in the USA) to set up my tripod on the street outside someones home in an affluent neighborhood and snap away, then post those pictures on the internet. I would think the CCTV-soaked Brits would be even more forgiving.
You'd think the English would be used to having their pictures taken. I happens like 300 times a day in London.
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.
"This is an affluent area. 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."
An affluent area hey? Thanks for the info.
-Burglars.
This isn't the Streisand Effect, you troglodytes. Learn what that is before you go shrieking your confessions to being magnificently retarded.
Don't want to have people seeing your private shit? Don't keep it out in the open, in public view.
Don't want interlopers driving through your community? Make it gated and pay for your own maintenance instead of expecting the local government to take care of it for you.
This is a local street for local people!
yeah, because things visible from public roads are private.....give me a break like seeing street view pictures of houses is going to make you more likely to be burglarized? News Flash anything visible from a public road is not private.... sorry for being redundant but this is basic shit here people
the burglars already know where you live.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I didn't realize that public roads were your private shit.
"I only speak the truth"
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Rule #1 is:
Security through obscurity isn't.
Rule #2 is: Making a huge stink about your private neighborhood against a well-liked company like Google will probably mean you're going to get a lot more attention than if you just let well enough alone.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
That's nothing just wait until I finish my iBurgle application for the iPhone which automatically scans google's database and directs you the nearest rich persons house!
"I only speak the truth"
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Clearly these people are hiding something. After all, why else would they be afraid? If they're not hiding something, there's no reason to be worried about being watched, is there? I suspect they're harboring a pedo... If you don't support the investigation, you support children being raped.
Sarcasm, I'm constantly shocked by how utterly cavalier young people are with their information online.
So a car drives through once and takes still photos, gets chased out of town. But the Gov. puts up video cameras that shoot continuously, its ok? Granted there are loads of protests against the surveillance-state, but part of me feels that this story might be a bit of propaganda to divert attention from the real problem. Now let me put on my tin-foil hat...
When StreetView is outlawed, only outlaws will use StreetView
What you want? Is that how you measure the regulation of public space? Ya know, there's people in this world who don't want womens' faces to be visible in public. Should we accommodate their wants too? The thing about public spaces is that they are public. This means that everyone is allowed to go there and exercise freedom. Freedoms like taking pictures, and putting them on the Internet, if that's what they want to do.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I didn't realize that public roads were your private shit.
Were they really taking pictures of the public road?
Folks across the pond seem to trust only the state with cameras these days.
3 burglaries in 6 weeks. Awesome. Gun control stops crime.
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In other news, Chrysler calls Google and offers them a great deal on some less recognizable cars.
Yes, if you show up on google street view, that's an instant leap to fame and stardom! Seriously, get over yourself. Nobody cares about your house or seeing your family walking around on the street if the google cameras snap a picture as they happen to drive by. Nobody is plugging in the coordinates of your house so they could see what it looks like. You have no privacy out in public. You could end up being photographed by a tourist or a CCTV camera or a red light camera and they don't need to get your permission to do it. What happened to privacy? Nothing, it's in the same place it's always been... in the privacy of your own home. Once google starts taking photos of the layout of your house, then there's something to worry about.
And what about those pesky burglars? They're still there with or without google maps. There's nothing stopping them from planning escape routes the old fashioned way - by staking out the properties of those they plan to rob by driving down the street in their car or walking by. Google street view has not made a burglar out of anyone who wasn't one before, and it's really not making it that much easier for anybody to commit burglaries.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Plus, if you want to case out a street and see the best way to rob, car jack, or even see my neighbors and family members, you can drive legally anywhere the google street view car can, and take your own much more detailed and up to date pictures.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You have no privacy in public. The street in front of your house is *not* your private little playground, it is public property.
They were only taking picture of light that was over the public road.
Cameras don't reach out and take things.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
I hope you die (Sorry if that possibly sounded a little harsh).
Nah, it's totally cool. And an eternity in hell back atya, buddy.
BTW, did you know you can actually edit the shit you write before you post it, in case you go, say, completely over the top?
this is england, i hear there is proposed legislation that would create a government position to wipe citizens asses, they say it's too dangerous to let people do it themselves as they may get paper cuts from the toilet paper. california legislators say this is landmark legislation and are considering introducing it here.
Lucky they didn't pull the poor bloke out of the car and burn him as a witch. Ignorant peasants.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
To burgle with!
That the novelty of having your private shit paraded on Google is wearing out. About friggin time.
Are you talking about your mansion that was photographed from the street by their car, or just an old alt.drugs post from 1991 bearing your real name?
It is not at all clear that Google is breaking no laws.
Try taking a photograph of the Hollywood Sign - it's protected by trademark or copyright law and the folks in Hollywood do go after people.
The latest King Kong flick had a note in the credits that the had licensed the image of the Empire State Building.
Architects sometimes try (and succeed) in protecting their creations.
And Google is in it for the money - they use these photos to gain more click data and to sell more ads. Google is not some innocent taking a few snapshots.
So don't jump too quickly to the conclusion that Google isn't violating some of the property owners rights.
If they intended their little affluent, apparently easy to burglarize, neighborhood to remain secret then that's one big FAIL for them.
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.)
DO you just lack any notion of raelity or practicality?
A car jacking? you do know it's photograph, right? It can't track cars, family members, or anything.
Any criminals are likely to be from your area, and won't drive very far.
Add to that when you case a place you are looking for ways in, ways out, and limited detection at that time. A photograph doesn't do any home burglar anything better then being there.
I don't know if you are ignorant, or just have an ego the size of the moon.
Privacy is, and always has been, what happens behind closed areas not in the open.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Google did nothing wrong. However I am smiling for some reason. Something about even a miss directed desire for privacy tells me perhaps we as a race will still be okay in the future.
George Orwell RIP.
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
The same technology can be used to go inside of buildings, such as shopping malls, government offices such as the Driver's License Bureau, courtrooms, or even in public bathrooms, subways, or one's private homes (such as for selling real estate), or on boats, inside museums, and so on. Possibly with similar micro camera, one could go inside a drainage pipe.
The people attacking the Google car probably could be charged with assault under the Common Law.
Privacy isn't all or nothing, it's a matter of respecting other people's wishes. There are more social rules in public places than there are in private - it's not a free-for-all where you should upset other people to the bleeding edge of what the law says is permissible. These people don't want their houses on Street View, whether you are fine with your house being on Street View is irrelevant.
And they aren't "idiots" - as somebody has tagged the story - they are just normal people. There's a staggering lack of respect for other people's wishes being shown in the comments here.
Don't want to have people seeing your private shit? Don't keep it out in the open, in public view.
Or perhaps we could develop a social contract that balances things private and public so that I don't have to hide my stuff in a bunker in order to insure you don't feel you have a right to put pictures of it on the internet in a massive geo-tagged database you make available for your private commercial gain.
Don't want interlopers driving through your community?
I'm happy to allow tourists to drive through my community. I don't even mind if they take a few pictures, I don't even mind if they pop them up on their vacation blog.
I don't see why that should mean I should be happy to allow someone to systematically photograph every single part of my community visible from a public vantage point, and then upload it to the internet though.
Why can't we reach an understanding where its perfectly ok to take a few private photographs, but completely unacceptable to systematically photograph everyone/everthing and upload it into a for profit geo-tagged database?
They took a stand and 'Called the police.'
That's hardly a 'stand.'
'Taking a stand' would be tarring and feathering their local district attorney equivalent and their MP's until their right to
shoot burglars dead is once again respected by English law.
Burglaries will be sorted out after a few burglars end up dead for their efforts.
Take a stand and kill a crook. Take a stand and slap around your local DA to de facto respect the notion that a man's home is his castle. Take a stand and slap around your politicians until they recognize what nature teaches: That every living thing has a right to defend themselves, their friends, their family, and their home.
Being a crook isn't a legitimate career choice. It should carry a great deal more risk than it currently does in jolly ol' Britain.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I really hope there were pitchforks and torches involved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They say they don't want to be targeted by burglars. But I've seen plenty of movies about small English villiages. I've seen the alarming homicide statistics.
Clearly these people have something hide. If they didn't they wouldn't have been so concerned about the Google camera.
I demand that the home office immeadiately send the Army in to round up the lot of these devil worshiping, pedophile, terrorists.
The Streisand Effect should be banned!
So, rich people who live on public roads, have more privacy rights than others? And apparently, the homes aren't yet on Google maps, however they were robbed anyway, indicating that thieves ALREADY know about that neighborhood. Doesn't make sense to me.
They are idiots, unless Britain has a law that things visible from the public streets aren't permissible to photograph.
Obviously, in the US this would be plainly moronic, since it is, indeed, the case, that in public there is no expectation of privacy.
It has been extremely well established that if your copyrighted (sign, building, whatever) is viewable from a public place, then an image taken from that public place does not infringe. Period.
If the hollywood sign people really are doing that then they would get their asses handed to them if it went to court.
The King Kong movie is probably more questionable, since I'm guessing at some point a computer model was made of the building.
What happened to privacy?
You live on a planet with close to 7 billion other human beings. Your privacy died as soon as there were two of us. If you don't like it, feel free to build a 16 foot wall around the outside of your property but remember - we'll still be able to see you from a satellite!
Frankly I don't see what the big deal is. There are many more people who use/will use Street View to check out neighborhoods for OTHER purposes like - nostalgia, see where a friend lives, look at a neighborhood before buying a house, etc. After all, there is absolutely nothing stopping a person with criminal intent from walking down your street WITH A CAMERA (dramatic music).
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Sorry, it uses Flash and JavaScript. I refuse to use those because they are insecure, closed source, and were never part of the W3C standard.
The web was never meant for this kind of thing and if Google wants me to use it, they should release the source code so I can inspect it first. Then if I determine it is secure, I can compile it an run it on my desktop. The browser is for delivering text containing useful information and text for locating porn. This "web application" delivers neither text nor porn.
I can take pictures of the street with my camera, what is your point? Why do I need their DRM infested flash player to do something anybody can do already?
IANAL, but anything plainly viewable from public property is not considered private.
Agreed. However there should be a distinction between "seeing something from public property" and "systematically capturing a complete record of everything that can be seen from public property and uploading it into a for profit geo tagged database".
Its the same polite distinction we use with the 'have a penny / take a penny jar'. Its perfectly socially acceptable to grab a penny or two to round out the change in a purchase from this spare change. Its completely socially unacceptable to systematically go to each establishment and take all their 'spare change' once a week.
How so? In a civilized world people don't ask other people in public to stop doing things they don't like.. they tolerate other people. If someone asked me to stop doing something I liked in public, I'd kindly point out to them that I am breaking no law. "It's a free country."
How we know is more important than what we know.
Actually it was an old alt.barney.die.die.die post... there's no shame in that!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In that case my house is safe... my entire town hasn't been put onto street view yet.
Am I the only one that read this article and thought "Gee it'd be fun to walk down the street with a flashmob all snapping photos of the houses and posting them all over flicker!"
Possibly, since flickr isn't spelled with an E. I was thinking the same thing though and found your post when I searched for "flick".
They were only taking picture of light that was over the public road. Cameras don't reach out and take things.
By that logic, standing in a bucket truck filming the children changing for bed between the slats in their blinds with a telephoto lens and uploading it to the internet isn't at all an invasion of privacy either.
Protect themselves from strangers with cameras
If you honestly feel that strangers with cameras are a danger, then you should probably have a ten foot wall around your house. And guard dogs. And tinfoil hats.
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.
But not illegal.
What part of 'closed circuit' in CCTV don't you get? Most cameras aren't networked to the outside world at all, they go through private circuits to a recording device (which may or may not be networked to a private network, which may or may not be networked to the internet somehow, but most likely does not have accounts set up for the government to view their CCTV). The Police occasionally come to us asking for clips from certain times of day when vehicles are broken into or kids throw stones at our windows, etc but that's it.
I tried using street view a couple times when there was one available for somewhere I needed to go, but the fish eye distortion made it almost useless. Maybe it was just those two spots.
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.
That's nothing - wait until Version 2.0 comes out and not only will it tell you when the nearby rich person lives, it will show you their personal schedule for when they will be out of town, display the best method of entry into their house, and send all the police out to the opposite side of town!
IANAL, but anything plainly viewable from public property is not considered private.
No you're definately not a lawyer, nor did you apparently think about what you just said for longer than it took to write it.
So if I set up my high powered telescope in the park and use it to post pictures of what goes in inside your house online for my own commerical gain, that's fine with you? Do you really think that's legal?
Laws governing photography are lagging way behind the technology and they won't catch until there are topless photos of some senator's daugther sunbathing all over the internet. That said, there as still laws on the books. Someone simply can't use the excuse "I'm on public property" to photograph anything you want for commercial gain.
Look into regulations for shooting movies in certain cities for example.
Life is too short to proofread.
anyone up for a multi-thousand pound Burglary? first we'll go in and case the homes; taking pictures and posting them in a public location so as to not draw attention to ourselves......
However there should be a distinction between "seeing something from public property" and "systematically capturing a complete record of everything that can be seen from public property and uploading it into a for profit geo tagged database".
Why?
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.
That viewpoint leads to some more sensitive issues, though.
For example, Forward-Looking-Infrared (FLIR). Police can use it from a public place (like a street) to get an idea of what's going on in your home (heat-wise, anyway). IIRC the supreme court has ruled that police cannot use FLIR on your home without a warrant as it would constitute a search.
Much like the visible-spectrum light that Google captures for Street View, the IR light the police can process is "just light". But the gov't holds them to be different (a decision that I support).
I don't believe it is. Close your blinds.
Not really any different from sitting in a high rise with binoculars.
Try taking a photograph of the Hollywood Sign - it's protected by trademark or copyright law and the folks in Hollywood do go after people.
Maybe not so much. Try opening Google Earth and typing "hollywood sign" you will not only see the sign (without trademark attribution) but several amateur photos of it (also without attribution).
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.
Whoa!, lots of details there, Tommy. Sounds like you've been giving this idea more than a fleeting thought.
Even if there are copyrights on the structures, that doesn't prevent taking photos, only publishing them.
This is why the Daily Mail should have the corporate death penalty.
FLR bypasses most measures you've put into place to protect your privacy. Driving a car down a street with a 360 cammera and taking pictures once every couple of feet doesn't.
Cool! What's the URL?
to go over and rip open a bucket of whupass and pour it all over them.
What?
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.
People's rights are all the rage, however one person's rights don't mean dick. People love to ridicule the sole voice of dissent. Nothing new there.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Personally,
I'd rather be slowly burned to death than listen to Barbara Streisand singing me to death.
Personally...
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
I don't know how privacy laws work in England, but in the US the concept of "Reasonable Expectation of Privacy" exists. What I can see of your house from the street is NOT private. It's public. If you don't want people to see your house, you better build a big fence, or some other method of exhibiting a particularly strong interest in visual privacy. Otherwise your front lawn should be free game. This concept provides a distinction between Street View and peeping toms. It's not reasonable to expect that nobody will see your house when it is in plain view, but if you close your blinds, you can reasonably expect that people aren't going to go to extra measures to see inside. If they do, you have a legitimate privacy complaint, because you put up a barrier that prevents casual observation of the inside of your house that had to be circumvented to some degree.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
Yes - they take your picture and steal your soul - or in Britain, they take your property!
..........FULL STOP.
Before we start out with any such debate, I think we need to come up with a reasonable, logical rationale as to why people are worked up about the outsides of their houses being in pictures.
This is StreetView. Until some day as somebody creates a BurglarView mashup with an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, we're talking about somebody who has some specific interest in seeing the neighborhoods they're clicking on. Most likely this means they're in the area or planning on being in the area soon, and this can provide them with valuable information.
"We're affluent and have been robbed" is the downside? Sorry, but that's just on the ridiculous side of lame excuses. Nobody's going to come from around the world to rob you; there's plenty of rich people much closer to them that they can rob. And if it's some dude down the street, they could just as easily walk past themselves. Since they've been robbed three times recently, it almost certainly IS from nearby -- and more importantly, this person or group of people clearly already knows you're worth robbing. And all without the help of StreetView.
I absolutely believe in a right to privacy, and I believe it should be strictly enforced -- but complaining that pictures are taken from a public roadway of the outside of your house, which can be just as easily seen by any random Joe walking by, is hardly something I consider private. Google should have a policy regarding taking down or otherwise obfuscating pictures if they've happened to catch something with their cameras that doesn't belong, just to be on the nice side of things. At the same time, if you're screwing your wife in the window or admiring your Rolex collection in the sunlight then you're obviously not overly concerned with the privacy of those activities to begin with.
Unless somebody can provide a good reason that the outside of a house should be considered private and that taking a picture of that crosses some sort of line, social or legal, I'm not inclined to condemn anybody for doing so. There ARE gated communities for those people who are legitimately so concerned that only people they know and who have business there can get anywhere near their house.
It's irrelevant.
Never is it specified in British privacy laws that you have more or less rights when on public or private property.
It's a common myth that you have more privacy rights in your own home. You can charge someone with tresspass which is a seperate law if they are on private property but you don't have any more privacy rights in your own home than you do in public.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/global_law/publications/institute/docs/privacy_100804.pdf
This is the same in many other countries as well. It's amazing that people debate whether or not the Google street car was taking pictures of public or private property when in fact it doesn't even matter.
Privacy laws don't care about public or private property.
You wouldn't reasonably expect to be seen in that situation. There is NO difference between what Google would see and what any other person driving down the road would see. That's the issue.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I don't agree with the court decision regarding FLIR. It will simply hold back progress. I want my own pair of full-spectrum sunglasses.
At some point in the future, it should become everyone else's responsibility to wear clothes and not put transparent siding on their houses. They need to install RF shielding and IR blocking. Anything else is like walking around nude while living in a glass house and asking people not to look.
It would be better for the court to have declared FLIR invasive for only a specific time period. After 5-10 years, assume everyone interested in privacy has upgraded.
That viewpoint leads to some more sensitive issues, though.
For example, Forward-Looking-Infrared (FLIR). Police can use it from a public place (like a street) to get an idea of what's going on in your home (heat-wise, anyway). IIRC the supreme court has ruled that police cannot use FLIR on your home without a warrant as it would constitute a search.
Much like the visible-spectrum light that Google captures for Street View, the IR light the police can process is "just light". But the gov't holds them to be different (a decision that I support).
Google is not a government agency. The Bill O' Rights does not apply to them.
Then again, The Bill Of Rights is not valid in England anyway.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Because a few vacation photos, over a hundred tourists, equates to the same thing.
Except that it doesn't equate to the same thing at all.
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.
Because I'd like to see where I'm going when I plan my tourist trip.
And you need a complete step-by-step photo walkthru down every residential side street? I can see the value of google street view for finding a business; and given the choice, most of them will opt in to such a system. But why do you need a photo of every residence in the city?
Besides If you are visiting someone, and their house is THAT hard to find, then they can send you a picture.
Because it really isn't harming you.
That's an argument usually put forth by those who don't understand the value of politeness and good manners.
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.
Not that I think Google is doing anything illegal or "wrong", but I am curious why people are so quick to scream bloody murder when governments spy on people yet willingly give mountains of data to a publically traded company. Seeing hordes of people rush to Google's defense here and mock those "stupid" people makes me wonder how many of them cry foul when the government tries to do it. Not to mention the fact that this company wants floating datacenters.
Massive databases full of information. Potential to move datacenter to international waters. Serving the shareholders.... Yeah...TOTALLY an organization to trust with hordes of information to be mined, public or not. Anyone with a shred of credibility in the security realm can tell you about how you can put together lots of public information to put together secret information. Hell, the internet has made a damned sport out of doing this with the latest techno gadgets with people digging through every little piece of public information to come out of a company to try and determine what super secret dodad they are about to release.
Now...to invoke Godwin's Law. I suggest everyone goes and looks up that little company called IBM and their role in the Holocaust. Money is king. Is it really so hard to believe that someone might pay very large sums of money for access to those databases to do "bad stuff"? It isn't like it hasn't happened before.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
No one cares about your the view of the outside of your house. Obviously, if they were so "affluent" than they would have a gate. Frankly the street map of your village is already on google maps so its not like a bunch of pictures of your fancy gates and yards is going make it any easier for criminals.
Besides isn't your Utopian society supposed to be free of crime?
Privacy isn't all or nothing, it's a matter of respecting other people's wishes.
I don't know about the UK, honestly, but in the US and Canada it really isn't. If you're in a public place, which is defined as anyplace you can walk into without being hassled (it most explicitly includes malls, and hotels without someone checking for door keys or similar) then you have no expectation of privacy. You have a valid argument in civil court if you want some of someone's profits which were made from a work including your likeness et cetera, but that's about it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You wouldn't want them taking your soul, would you?
...plus, English law is very different from American law. "Your freedom ends where someone else's nose begins" is an old English concept.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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.
| "It's a free country."
You must have missed that we're talking about the UK.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
But not illegal.
Its pretty sad that 'acceptable behaviour' is defined by 'is it legal?'.
But if history teaches us anything, it teaches us people will be happy to pass a law. The books are full of stupid laws trying to regulate asshat behaviour.
Because a few vacation photos, over a hundred tourists, equates to the same thing.
A few vacation photos, over a hundred tourists, scattered across the internet, equates to "a for profit geo-tagged database?"
Because you already have several non-viloent ways of actually politely requesting they don't.
1. The article doesn't seem to imply that violence was used. 2. Under the circumstances, what procedure should they have used to "politely request" that Google leave them alone?
Because I'd like to see where I'm going when I plan my tourist trip. ... Because the world really isn't about you. Or me.
Your second point ought to nullify your first one. Also, who is it about, if you're contending that it "isn't about" the actual people most directly affected? It's just about Google and their profits, then, or what?
I'm not especially opposed to Google's behavior on this issue, but I also don't understand why everyone is jumping all over these people and calling them idiots just because they don't want to participate.
I am the man with no sig!
The problem with that is that you're basically assuming that the law is something final, set for all time, instead of an ongoing, gradual, negotiated codification of rules that should apply to everybody, developed as the rules are needed, in response to new circumstances.
There's a fair amount of argument and research going on right now trying to refine the notion of privacy to new circumstances posed by information technology. Some points here are Privacy as Contextual Integrity and A Taxonomy of Privacy.
I would distill the fundamentals of these arguments down to the following: the privacy laws that we have today are tailored to the privacy issues of 50 years ago, when we didn't have the big, emerging privacy problem we have today: the dramatically increased ability to put together disparate pieces of "public" data to discover "private" facts.
Are you adequate?
> "Your freedom ends where someone else's nose begins" is an old English concept.
Whereas the new English concept would appear to be "Your freedom ends where your nose ends." Or maybe a bit before.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
What is it that a burglar will see on street view that they cannot see for themselves driving down the road? I love Google street view. I am in the USA at the moment and taking a virtual drive around my home town in Australia the other day made me feel homesick.
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
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?
... you make available for your private commercial gain.
You are implying Google is making money at everyone's expense here, and is the only one benefitting. That's funny, because the only reason what Google is doing has commercial value at all is that *that's what massive numbers of people actually want and find useful*. Apparently the majority of people do ultimately want such information about the entire world easily and readily available, otherwise Google wouldn't make much money at all. People bitch when its their own house being photographed, but I don't hear anybody bitching when they're using it for directions and to help find their way in a foreign neighbourhood etc. What everybody basically wants is the entire world in there except their own little neck of the woods. You can see this doesn't make sense.
Agreed. However there should be a distinction between "seeing something from public property" and "systematically capturing a complete record of everything that can be seen from public property and uploading it into a for profit geo tagged database".
Here is your basic problem. You want life to be fair. It is not, and it never will be. By preventing the average citizen from observing his neighbor you ensure that only cops and criminals will watch their neighbors. Do you not see the problem here? The only valid means of oversight over the common citizen is oversight by the common citizen. That's why we live in communities (a scary word since it's so similar to communist!) and have trial by jury (such as it is, and if we're lucky) and so on.
Its the same polite distinction we use with the 'have a penny / take a penny jar'. Its perfectly socially acceptable to grab a penny or two to round out the change in a purchase from this spare change. Its completely socially unacceptable to systematically go to each establishment and take all their 'spare change' once a week.
Yeah, because society is really going to miss that ten or twenty cents per establishment which could dramatically enrich your life if you are some poor insane homeless bastard who was kicked out of some mental institution during the Reagan administration, or some vet who came back from Iraq and wound up homeless and having to wait months to get medical care from the VA. Oh sure, some surly gutterpunks will raid the things once in a while, but fuck, we're talking about change that wouldn't fit into people's wallets here. Are you really that fucking... Jesus Christ bitch slapping the money changers, I don't even know what to call you. Miserly, I guess.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
the government always has everyone's best interest at heart! More surveillance is good, as long as the government does it, right?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Bloody Google-assisted pervs.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
ya damned kids and your google. We never had google when I was a kid. If you wanted porn you had to peek into the crack in the side of the outhouse.
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
Bull shit!
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.
Guess what. I can get the PLANS to your home and everything else I want by paying a small fee at the city hall or county offices.
It's amazing what I can get about your home from public records.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Um, the Google camera that drove past my house was 3m off the road (notice that it's on a pole on top of a car). So it sees over the fence and right into my daughter's bedroom. A person on the road with a ladder and a camera perving into windows and posting the results on the Internet would have been arrested. Apparently it's OK when done by a multinational corporation.
Why?
Its an abuse of the public.
We've agreed (by virtue of participating in society) to be tolerant when someone takes an inoffensive picture of our property from a public vantage point.
However we never agreed to allow our property to be systematically photographed and geotagged for inclusion in some corporations for profit database, and for it to be indexed and published online. That's an abuse of our tolerance.
Well now, is the imagery "inappropriate" or are you merely exercising control ?
From what I understand, U.S. law allows photography on public property, i.e. streets. If you have a problem with that, you shouldn't be complaining to Google, you need to take it up with city/state legislators.
Of course, if you're arguing that your well-being is dependent on not being able to see the outside of your house, that might be a tough sell. Put up some window-shades and a fence, if you're so concerned.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
For the sake of staying away from the "OMG child porn!" witch hunters, let us pretend it was not a child but a woman instead. Now:
- Is it an invasion of privacy to film her as she changes her chothes from a public street, then upload the video to the internet?
- What if it's just a photographic camera?
- What if the subject in question doesn't upload anything to the internet, but rather keeps them for personal use?
- What if the subject in question doesn't take any photo but is simply content to use the telephoto lens as a telescope of sorts?
- What if the subject doesn't *need* a telephoto lens due to very good eyesight and/or the woman being relatively close?
Where do you draw the line, and *why*?
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
What if you say your house/yard is a piece of art and send a DMCA take down notice?
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
Some garden items seem to be particularly desirable for the stolen-on-demand market. These include hand carved garden ornaments of animals such as lions.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I like how this is happening in ENGLAND of all places. How many CC cameras are there per block in London? Some ridiculous number? Where is the outrage over that???
If I walk down your street, I can see your house. Google just makes it easier to get a feel for what the neighborhood is like, or to see what amenities it has to offer.
I agree with the GP. If you don't want people walking or driving down the street (or seeing the photos those people took) then live in a gated community.
I don't care enough about people taking photos of my home to object, but if I did, I certainly wouldn't be living in a house that's on a public street. The view from that street is public after all.
Follow me
Maybe so, but these protestors remind me so much of the RIAA - they're fighting a technological innovation they cannot put a stop to, no matter how hard they try. The day is coming (and in the not-too-distant future) when ultra-cheap, high-quality cameras and video recorders will be so ubiquitous that everyone will be using them. Everyone will constantly monitor their property, and their neighbors' property. People will routinely walk around with tiny videocameras clipped to their shirts and hats, and record everything 24/7. Every business and every government building will record everyone who sets foot on their property, or walks past on a public street.
In ten years, those same protestors will have a web of cameras and sensors around their respective homes that will put Google Street View to shame. But of course, what is evil for Google will be fine for them, because they will rationalize that they won't abuse it - although inevitably some of them will.
No the invitation to strike is the cheap bastards dont pay for security.
One thing is a constant. People that refer to themselves as Affluent are really cheap and cut corners everywhere so they can afford the BMW 725i in their driveway and the 5800 sq foot 2 bedroom McMansion they have.
Real rich people have security and that typically chases away 90% of the burglars to go looking in the wannabe homes around the rich area. Those typically dont have security and has lots of stuff you can steal that is easy to sell as they are trying to look like the rich people.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
1) People aren't things. It is at least polite to remove photos OF PEOPLE if they object. Things perpetually visible to the public have no such considerations. This is a matter of dignity.
2) Inside vs outside. If you EXPECT to be visible from a public street, that is different than if you are in a house with blinds drawn and do not expect this. If I am taking photos of the inside of your house, that ought to be actionable on other bases.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What if you liked taking a dump in public? I suppose you are just assuming that you wouldn't be breaking the law, but you don't quite write like it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Why? You've only said "because we don't agree to it", but *why* don't you agree with it? what are the reasons for you to claim this is an unacceptable action on Google's part?
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Village of the faceless screaming hicks? Maybe not the same ring as night of the living dead but still.
The thing about British hicks, you know... the type that wears tweed clothes, wellies, flat caps and drives around in moss-green landrovers is their infuriatingly stoic nature. In the USA all you need to do to convince a bunch of hillbillies to break out ye-olde lynching rope is to take the lord's name in vain (or mention Darwin). In Britain, however, even when the hicks carry double barrelled shotguns the worst that can happen to you is being invited to tea and cucumber sandwiches and bored to death by stories about the intricacies pheasant hunting. The un-armed variety usually defaults to talking about bovine disease or complaining about the price of manure. Getting them angry is almost impossible, although if you try hard enough you may succeed in getting an emotional outburst. A stiffening upper lip followed by a slightly high voiced "I say!!!" is a good indicator you are getting somewhere. I'm not sure what Google did to enrage them this time. Just driving around taking photos is not a convincing reason. Perhaps some mean-spirited person tacked a sign to the back of the Google van reading something like "God shave the queen" ???
See, you keep talking about "us", but I personally have no problem with that. Nor do any people I know (not just the techies, all of them).
From what I can see, so far it's just minor isolated incidents, not the "will of the people".
...over stuff like Google Earth and Google Street View. Hell, I'd think people would have a better complaint about Google Earth, as that actually lets people see areas that might not be on a public street.
As it is, I can't understand what the hysteria is about over Google Street View. So, a picture of my house is on the internet. There's a pretty good chance there's an unrelated picture of my house on the internet. Were I to decide to burgle a house that's not on Google Street View, I'd probably just, gasp, drive to it myself and take a look.
Although I do, personally love the "we have money you can't do this to US!" attitude these "affluent" people have.
Unjustified paranoia over this is silly, especially after hearing about all the Government cameras and stuff in the UK.
As an important supporting point, I would add that if you go around taking all the spare change from all the give a penny/take a penny jars once a week, you are going to lose credibility and people will start treating you as a thief. This is reasonable. It would even be reasonable to pass a law against such behavior.
Now, at the same time, what I don't understand is why people feel that it is OK for people to take photos of their houses provided that it is not Google. I personally find Google Street information quite helpful when driving around unfamiliar cities.
Finally I would ask what people would think if Google changed this to be a "submit your own street photos!" system. Certainly over time, one would get a similar result. Would then it become problematic for even tourists to take photos of the neighborhood?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
How does one keep a HOUSE "private" from street or satellite view? How do you keep YOURS from public view?
Oh, yeah - your mom's basement is probably safe.
Where do you draw the line, and *why*?
1) You have to understand that my post about filming kids changing was to illustrate just how ridiculous the assertion that "cameras only catch light that falls in them so they can't possibly invade privacy" was.
2) As to "where I draw the line", I draw it at "what the subject would likely think", because that is the considerate thing to do.
If people simply exercised good manners and common sense, we wouldn't need piles of laws to clumsily try to regulate acceptable behavior and common sense. Yeah... I dream of an impossible utopia. I know.
It is neither illegal, or IMNSHO socially unacceptable. What have you got to hide? If you really object, you can click on the link on Google's Street View and request to have photos of your property removed. They can keep the photos of mine, as it provides more useful information than it facilitates wrongdoings. In fact, the last two times I moved to a new apartment, I did have a look around on Google Street View first. Made me feel more comfortable about moving there.
Follow me
and when your mom walks in on you slapping it sideways you get upset. I understand and empathize with that
You Been there Done that huh?
I don't think outrage is still permitted there unless someone gets shot. My understanding is that it's otherwise limited to mild indignance. Anyone who was actually capable of outrage was put on a leaky boat some time ago. Ironically a huge number of those people ended up making it to a land at least an order of magnitude richer than the land they were kicked off of. Honestly, about the worst things we have here (besides Americans, of course... and German tourists) are poison oak and lyme disease. (Seems about fifty-fifty with Malaria, but it's a lot harder to find a tick than a mosquito if you know what I mean.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wooosh!
Because a few vacation photos, over a hundred tourists, equates to the same thing.
But are they all collectively adding them together to create an aggregate view of your residence? I doubt a house is that entirely interesting to get a hundred tourists to snap a photo of it.
Because you already have several non-viloent ways of actually politely requesting they don't.
Like asking them to turn around and not take pictures...?
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.
Look, just because you didn't agree to something doesn't mean it makes it any less valid. That's a pretty selfish view of the world.
Because I'd like to see where I'm going when I plan my tourist trip.
And a plain map doesn't allow you to do that? You need pictures? Seriously? Of a house Broughton? You're going to go to vacation to a house in Broughton?
Because it really isn't harming you.
Neither is some stranger decapitating someone you don't know but it's not something you'd like to happen regularly is it? Ok, maybe that's a bit of a argumentative fallacy but my point is, just because something is not harming me doesn't make it any less wrong.
Because no one really cares about your shit in your yard.
I do, isn't that enough? I don't want my yard to be immortalized on Google. It might change in the future, or, maybe I haven't cut it in a while due to unforseen circumstances and it's gone a bit wild.. I don't want everyone to see that forever
Because the world really isn't about you. Or me.
Frankly it's perfectly acceptable to me that these people requested Google street view not take pictures of their house. I mean, it's neat and all but I'm not actually going to Broughton - I can get a map and that's fine, I don't need a street view to understand where I'm going.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
I'd kindly point out to them that I am breaking no law.
I suppose you are just assuming that you wouldn't be breaking the law, but you don't quite write like it.
Reading comprehension FAIL.
Let's take a realistic example: whistling.
"Hey, can you stop whistling, it's annoying me."
"Umm.. I like whistling, and we're in public, why don't you just move out of earshot, or, ya know, go home."
How we know is more important than what we know.
From what I can see, so far it's just minor isolated incidents, not the "will of the people".
People need to know and understand the ramifications before they can reject them. People are notoriously dense.
It would certainly scare ME away....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
They were only taking picture of light that was over the public road. Cameras don't reach out and take things.
By that logic, standing in a bucket truck filming the children changing for bed between the slats in their blinds with a telephoto lens and uploading it to the internet isn't at all an invasion of privacy either.
According to the cops it isn't, at least when they want to bust someone for doing something naughty indoors.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Because I'd like to see where I'm going when I plan my tourist trip.
And you need a complete step-by-step photo walkthru down every residential side street?
Maybe not for touring, but Street View was very useful to me recently when I was looking to buy a house in an area far from where I live. With Street view I could get a better feel for the neighborhoods where these houses were located without actually having to be in the city. The overhead satellite view really does not give you the same feel. Using Street View significantly influenced my decisions on which houses to investigate further.
Also, a temporary advantage, but Street View was in many cases the most recent imagery available. The satellite photos available were all from several years ago, so they didn't show any houses built within the last year or two.
Stop reading the Daily Mail. Seriously.
You do have a right of self defence. You don't have the right to kill someone. That's not defence that's murder, and you'd rightly be put away for a long time for it.
You also have the power of arrest, provided you have reasonable suspicion of an indictable offence (Trespassing isn't, btw. that's a civil offence).
1. photographing in a public place is NOT illegal
2. theives don't use google to find victims - they find people who don't secure their homes properly by casing the property
3. if these residents secured their properties properly, they wouldn't have been broken into.
people crying over google street view are just knuckle draggers who don't understand the technology and remind me of monkeys grunting at fire like it's the first time they've seen it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
There's probably no hell, now stop worrying about it. Didn't Christians debate this recently too?
Follow me
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?
In the UK our newspaper boys aren't lazy asses and actually deliver the newspapers instead of throwing them in the general direction of the house, as they seem to in the US.
If you'd used milk bottles as an example you might have had a point (except few areas still have milkmen.. haven't seen one in years).
and instead of taking the photos, encourages (perhaps paying for the privilege) people to submit photos they took. These could be any legally taken photo by a property owner, a freelance photographer, a tourist, etc.
How would this change your response? Can people buy photos of this sort or solicit them for free?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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.
In your case you are the owner of the property that is in the picture, you have a legitimate claim on the right to take the photo. Your neighbors' worry may be real, but their property is not the main subject of the photo. Besides a single image is not going to provide burglars with enough information - as opposed to cataloged, continuous series of images on StreetView.
Google, on the other hand, takes pictures of homes and property in which it has not a gram of ownership or any other legal claim. It's true that public space is relatively free for all, but it's still not OK to set up a telescope on a public sidewalk and look into peoples' windows, and it's not OK to follow someone on public streets for hours and days...
They're not idiots, they're typical "not in my back yarders" meaning that it doesn't matter what it is, new road, mobile phone tower, these people would be all over it because they have nothing else to do in their pathetic lives.
It's kind of like how people move into villages next to Heathrow so they can protest new runways. Sad people.
There isn't any failure, I was teasing the structure of your comment, instead of stating that you were talking about legal actions, you wrote it into your supposed rejoinder, which leaves room for you to be doing something illegal in public and simply asserting that it is legal...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Then you get sued for fraudulantly sending DMCA takedown notices!
One reasonable provision in the DMCA is that it allows such action.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"why would you have them risk their lives?"
That's easy.
Put a EULA on the front of the car that says:
"By standing in front of this car, you agree that whatever happens is your own damned fault!"
Hey, if it's good enough for Microsoft, it's good enough for the little people!
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Yup. My next door neighbor's house appears with its front door open on the Google StreetView. You can bet that burgulars are going to take interest.
Google StreetView is a cool, but bad, idea. Just go there yourself if you're interested in what it looks like, and more importantly, so WE can see what YOU look like, and report any suspicious activity to the police.
I consider any Google StreetView car to be engaging in a "suspicious activity." If I came to your neighborhood and started taking lots of pictures, wouldn't you?
--
Toro
If nobody cares then why are they taking the pictures? Perhaps for popular tourist attractions it makes sense, but what legitimate use would someone have for viewing a residential neighborhood? I don't know whether it should be illegal but I can see why people wouldn't want their private residence plastered on the internet in an easily searched database.
The King Kong movie is probably more questionable, since I'm guessing at some point a computer model was made of the building.
This.
It has been extremely well established that if your copyrighted (sign, building, whatever) is viewable from a public place, then an image taken from that public place does not infringe. Period.
Maybe so, maybe not. Especially see the part about trademark.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It is an entirely legitimate desire not to have your home's photo on Google.
It's also an entirely legitimate desire to want to be able to take photos in public.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Google's equivalent of that picture is rather blurry, so I think they are safe.
Google Streetview of the Hollywood sign
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
But the law, when you get down to it, is a negotiated codification of a bunch of social norms that have been judged important enough to codify, given the circumstances that the society in question has encountered. It is customary to revise the law to forbid new violations of social norms that already existed. Examples:
In this case, clearly GP is of the opinion that we need laws regulating geo-tagged databases. If your answer to that is that we don't have any such laws, well, the answer to that, in turn, should be: "are you even listening?"
Are you adequate?
So what about tourists taking photos on vacation? Do they have the right to take photos of interesting buildings?
Suppose Google Maps solicited private photos rather than taking the photos themselves. Woudl that make a difference? It would certainly make it impossible to drive Google photographers out of town since tourists might be able to make a little extra money photographing streets for Google.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
It has been extremely well established that if your copyrighted (sign, building, whatever) is viewable from a public place, then an image taken from that public place does not infringe. Period.
True; but you can be limited in how you use the photograph. For example, you then use it to advertise a product you need permission to use the copyrighted sign. Just because you have an image that is non-infringing doesn't mean you have the right to use copyrighted material in the photo in any way you see fit.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Would then it become problematic for even tourists to take photos of the neighborhood?
In fact, it already has become so; there are numerous buildings that people are allegedly not even permitted to photograph -- indeed, even for reasons of copyright. In some places buildings are explicitly exempted from copyright protection, e.g. Ireland (unless that's changed...)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
No, name it iWillBeRich.
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
This is what happens when you live in a society where you are a subject of the state rather than a citizen of a free republic.
You are ignorant. British people are citizens, not subjects, and have been for a very long time.
The reason there are so many burglaries in that area (and the UK as a whole) is because the citizens of that once great nation have been deprived of their right to self defence and the right to defend their property.
Japan, which also has strict gun control laws, has a fraction of the number of burglaries per capita compared with the USA. Clearly your explanation that the burglaries are down to the lack of guns is simply not the case.
to resist an intruder is a "crime"
Not true. The case that got all the publicity in the tabloids about this issue? He shot a kid in the back as he was running away. That's not "resisting", that's revenge and murder.
ownership of solid means of self defense, namely a firearm
Why do you think that a firearm is the only means of self defence?
Riiight. Or you're just being a typical nitpicking slashtard. This is why people don't want to talk to you.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Maybe not for touring, but Street View was very useful to me recently when I was looking to buy a house in an area far from where I live.
Hey, that's exactly what I'm using it for right now!
Turns out, people pick very flattering views for their real estate pictures :) Especially apartment buildings...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You also have the power of arrest, provided you have reasonable suspicion of an indictable offence (Trespassing isn't, btw. that's a civil offence).
Good luck on that if you're not armed. I mean, if you actually need to arrest someone. Someone who broke into your house isn't going to behave. A stranger in your house in many circumstances is reasonable suspicion, at least in reasonable countries. You'll ban kitchen knives next.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Who doesn't want to talk to me?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Broughton: A Mob of Effluence.
Does he have any idea what an affluent area is?
That's probably more burglaries than my town has had since last year.
Anyway, is that really a good measure of affluency? What's to stop the burglars coming from a neighboring town?
Follow me
I doubt that the crap possessions they are protecting are worth stealing.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I doubt most people find it socially unacceptable for Google to take pictures for street view.
...the Google APC.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yeah. Just like texting while driving on the roads. Nobody likes it, but we all tolerate it. Right?
In case you couldn't unpack the irony here, the point is that we often judge some novel behaviors bad enough to make laws restricting them. This is the reason why all of the people arguing that what Google's doing is legal are missing the point: what the naysayers are really saying is that it shouldn't be legal, and therefore, that we need to pass laws putting limits to it.
Are you adequate?
I don't think this would hold up in court. If you are on a right-of-way, taking photos of buildings within reasonable limits (for example, some special camera able to see through the glare of windows, and enhance contents inside might not be ok), I think you would have some fairly strong first-amendment rights to take the photos. The fact that police overstep Constitutional limits from time to time doesn't mean that this is permitted.
There have been a few cases in Washington State too which, iirc, have gone to court.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Maybe not for touring, but Street View was very useful to me recently when I was looking to buy a house in an area far from where I live.
I just moved from California to New Mexico and used Google street view for just this reason. I needed to find a house that would allow me to park my trailer in the back yard. While a top down view was good to show the space needed, it doesn't allow you to see if there is a gate big enough to drive through. For that I needed street view.
In my view the advantages out weigh the privacy concerns.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Good for you. But (like most things) this is not as clear cut as you'd like to suggest. I'll present two alternatives:
1) You're a homosexual man kissing your partner in public and a person who is offended by this asks you to stop. You're breaking no law (in any sane place), it's a free country.
2) You're whistling the theme tune to Dallas loudly in a church and a person who is offended asks you to stop. You're breaking no law (in any sane place), it's a free country.
In the first situation you're right, in the second you're an ass. Whether you break a law or not is irrelevant, our social interactions are not governed by law, they're governed by manners.
Get some.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
There are a couple new devices for folks like you and your daughter, who are trying to keep their private lives private. Keep in mind I have no affiliation with the following sites, I'm just trying to help out ;o).
http://www.curtainfactoryoutlet.com/
http://www.thecurtainshop.com/
http://www.windowblinds.com/
http://www.blindsgalore.com/
I've heard they'll even increase the energy efficiency of your home or apartment.
Doesn't seem to happen.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The first step is admitting you have a problem.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So, only your definition of 'good manners', 'acceptable behavior', and 'common sense' are valid? I find both your view, and the villagers in TFA, to defy all three of those concepts. If Google had been trespassing on private property, this would be different...but I cannot condone this 'torch and pitchfork' mob mentality and their actions.
If this had occurred in the USA, they would have been guilty of breaking several(if not more) laws, whereas Google would not. So then, that is what you call 'good manners', 'acceptable behavior', and 'common sense'?
I'm glad you realize that impossible is the operative word, because I'm afraid your utopia would be Hell for me and many others.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
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.
You would stay out of court forever. Public is public. Suck it up.
Um, the Google camera that drove past my house was 3m off the road (notice that it's on a pole on top of a car). So it sees over the fence and right into my daughter's bedroom.
I have yet to see a picture on Street View that showed more than about 6 inches into a window. The camera they use is effectively an instamatic used during bright daylight. They don't use telescoping lenses or special equipment to peer into homes. Unless your daughter's room has more light inside than outside, you have no argument.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
So why can't I take pictures of banks and other businesses that request I don't? Because there is information contained in such images that make it too tempting for illegal activity. Why can't people make similar requests of their property?
We may have a new front runner in the "Incoherent Rant" category.
+1, but as you can see the me-first'ers don't agree. *shrug*
So what about tourists taking photos on vacation? Do they have the right to take photos of interesting buildings?
If the building is privately owned then maybe not. Imagine that you own a house and work in the yard that is visible from the street, and thousands of tourists come and take pictures of you and your house and your family as you do things around the house. I'm sure pretty soon you'd wish that they all go away because they take your privacy away from you.
If one tourist takes one picture for personal use you probably won't notice. But if TV vans show up, and movies are shot with your house as background, and if politicians of all kinds choose the sidewalk in front of your house for their rallies you probably won't like it, especially if you get no consideration from all these for-profit activities.
Suppose Google Maps solicited private photos rather than taking the photos themselves. Woudl that make a difference?
If by "private photos" you mean photos taken by owners of the property then definitely it'd make a huge difference. Every single photo would be voluntarily contributed, and the photographer would take care to exclude unwanted items from the frame.
But if by "private photos" you mean photos taken by tourists that wouldn't make any difference because tourists would be then agents of Google, just as the driver of the Googlemobile is. The tourists would even have less rights to take a photo because it is no longer for private use.
One key difference here is in distribution. There are millions of tourists taking photos all over the world, but we haven't seen or heard about any burglars using that for preparations to a crime. The reason is clear - these photos are all random, taken with artistic purpose or using the property as a mere background (with focus on your family in front of that house, for example.) Most of those photos never leave hands of the photographer. This is exactly not how Google uses its photos.
To offer yet another analogy, if you and your buddy talk in the street you probably don't mind that a random passerby can overhear fragments of your conversation. There are just too many people, and each hears very little, and none of them tell others what they heard, so your conversation - even in public - is relatively secure. However it'd be a different story if Google plants a microphone near you, records everything and plays back to anyone who wants. By using technical means they will break the classical pattern and become essentially a global spy system.
This whole story can be reduced to one simple question: do we, people of town X, want to allow infinite number of strangers to invisibly walk our streets, look into our gardens and see who is where? I don't think there is a simple answer to that, since all classical answers hinge on the fact that until now infinite number of strangers couldn't invisibly walk the streets of any town. In many small US towns, actually, strangers are (or were) not welcome - sooner or later a police officer would approach you and ask what is your business here, and whether you need help with getting out.
Yeah, either I'm a tiresome bore or I am egging on your (internet) rage problem.
The (internet) is because you might just be bored right now, and not really an overreacting frothy yeller.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Speaking as an Australian (and therefore a convict who was run out of Britain years ago), I feel there's a staggering lack of respect for such an ancient and popular profession.
Frankly, if people don't stop discriminating against thieves, robbers, pilferers, bandits, crooks, larcenists, prowlers, plunderers and pirates in general, we're going to see a general strike from the whole industry - and think what that will do during the Economic Downturn!
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Wrong. In Europe, they may have the right to do so in most places, but it is absolutely NOT a right in the US. There is no "freedom of panarama" here. I had several images deleted off of Wikipedia for this same reasons. They were pictures from an art festival in a hick town, but they were of "copyrighted art" (fiberglass sculptures of farm animals) and thus, it is illegal to distribute pictures of them without the artists permission, in writing, as they are automatically copyrighted by the artist, not the photographer. This is supposed to cover any building built since the 1970s (when copyright law changed) and any art still covered under copyright.
I forget the exact details, but a tourist taking a picture of a scupture in Chicago started the whole affair, and yes, he lost in court. And yes, the law isn't enforced very often either.
Just one more fucked up legal situation in the US.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
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?
In theory, I mostly agree.
In practice, no: The War on Drugs.
The problem though in the USA, if you go through with the IR shielding your home/property, you will get your door kicked/rammed in with a swarm of cops following...and they will have a search warrant to find that marijuana grow room you have hidden.
I want my own pair of full-spectrum sunglasses.
Yeah! Me too!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Or perhaps we could develop a social contract that balances things private and public so that I don't have to hide my stuff in a bunker in order to insure you don't feel you have a right to put pictures of it on the internet in a massive geo-tagged database you make available for your private commercial gain.
We already have that balance. It's built into the legal definitions of "public" and "private". Your problem is that you think you ought to have free and unfettered view of public areas from your house, but the the public should be severely limited in the reciprocal. Sounds more like you need a fence than a new social contract.
Why can't we reach an understanding where its perfectly ok to take a few private photographs, but completely unacceptable to systematically photograph everyone/everthing and upload it into a for profit geo-tagged database?
Because you're describing two ends of a continuum, not a characteristic that exists as a binary condition. Banning the latter doesn't stop someone like (say) Wikipedia from collecting such a database (non profit). And it doesn't allow me to sell a panoramic photo from an airplane I took if you decide to be an asshat about your house appearing as fourteen murky pixels in the lower left corner. It also gives every dirtbag corporation a tool to keep for-profit news agencies from filming news spots featuring any part of their property. Whoops! You've just tripped over the first amendment there!
Really, this is the same thing as saying "there ought to be free speech, but not if it's something I and my neighbors object to" and then going on to silence a group of inbred fucktards who want to wear nazi regalia and shout "white power". If the edge case is not protected, then none of it is protected. Living in a free society means some people have the freedom to be dicks. Suck it up and plant a 6' hedge.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Once you break into my home, I have no idea what your intentions are. I reserve the right to utilize lethal force. Of course, in the US, we have some common sense about this. In the UK, you try to protect yourself, and *you* end up in jail. Fark the Brits.
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.
A random collection of photographs of a public space, tagged with vague location info can easily be converted into a 3D model you can virtually walk around. Have you seen Photosynth's Notre Dame Demo?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Does anyone have pictures?
/obvious
February 9th, 2009 8:55pm: Slashdot becomes self-aware.
There idiots if they complain about their provacy disappearing while allowing their country to become that with the highest level of CCTV AND THEN COMPLAIN ABOUT STREET VIEW. At the least they are ignorant or hippocrites.
If people simply exercised good manners and common sense, we wouldn't need piles of laws to clumsily try to regulate acceptable behavior and common sense. Yeah... I dream of an impossible utopia. I know.
Yes. Mostly, because what one considers "common sense" is for another "stupid paranoia". I believe that prohibiting Google from taking photos of their houses does absolutely nothing to prevent burglary and is a stupid and ineffective roadblock in the face of progress. I hold this opinion as "common sense". These villagers believe differently.
And that's precisely why I don't believe "what the subject would likely think" is a good definition for where to draw the line between public and private spaces, sorry. Ohh and btw, if the boy can be seen with a mere telephoto lens, I don't believe he has any right to 'privacy' either.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
I would break out my old copy of C&C generals, but I run linux now.
insure you don't feel you have a right to put pictures of it on the internet
There's no "feel" involved here... I absolutely have the legal right to put pictures of your public stuff all over the Internet. There's not a damned thing you can do about it, either, unless you decide to go the assault route. Which probably wouldn't go very well for you in any event.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Anyone have a large black tarp? Physically censor your own house from streetview. Someone try this for me...
If you took the photos from a public place of things visible from the street then the answer is forever.
I promise to wear blinkers if I ever walk past your house, in case I see something you might not want seen.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
I think you just accidentally made one of the better arguments I've heard for not allowing every moron with a hundred quid and a letter certifying them as 'sane' to have a gun.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
A random collection of photographs of a public space, tagged with vague location info can easily be converted into a 3D model you can virtually walk around. Have you seen Photosynth's Notre Dame Demo?
Its not an invasion of privacy until someone actually collects all the photos and constructs the virtual space from them. But at that point they aren't a collection of photos randomly scattered across the internet anymore.
They've been systematically aggregated, indexed, and stitched together into something else.
Mod: -1 Asshole
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Only in England would someone assume they have special privileges because they are "affluent".
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
I absolutely have the legal right to put pictures of your public stuff all over the Internet. There's not a damned thing you can do about it, either unless you decide to go the assault route....
I'd actually go after you for stalking and/or harassment.
Really? When did that happen? Was it recently? Because I don't recall anything like that happening. Was there some time when a substantial proportion of the British public owned firearms for self-defence against burglars, and at which time the rate of burglary was lower? I fear my knowledge of history fails me at this point, for I can think of no such epoch.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
dude, please don't feed the gun-toting trolls from the US. Good guess on what he reads for information but seriously ... don't feed the trolls!
We have already reached the understanding that it's acceptable to systematically photograph everyone/everthing and upload it into a for profit geo-tagged database, at least in the US. (No idea about the UK.)
Granted, this understanding was reached before it was really feasable to do this, but the understanding is there. It's called the law, and it doesn't prohibit this. And if it's not illegal, it's legal. Moral, fair, etc. -- that's another matter entirely.
Google is being nice and letting people `opt out', but legally it's not obligated to do so (again, in the US) in the vast majority of cases.
Want to change it? Change the law.
Still, these people just told the world `Hey! Come rob us! We must have nice stuff!'
For your information RFCs are NOT standards they are documents that people want comments on, seeing as how they are RFCs (Request for Comments).
Notwithstanding that moving out of earshot might not be an option (for example, on the bus), I think that you and I are describing the endpoints of a continuum of responses here. In my scenario, the whistler always apologizes for bothering the other person and stops. In your scenario, the whistler always asserts his right to whistle in public and continues. Most people probably exhibit a response that falls somewhere in the middle.
There are downsides to both extremes. In my scenario, we're constantly catering to the most sensitive people around us. If even one person objects to something that you're doing, you have to stop. In your scenario, we are forced to choose isolation to avoid the behaviours of others that annoy us.
In reality, I think that it's always appropriate to tell somebody that what they're doing bothers you and that you'd like them to stop. They're not obligated by any law or moral compulsion to do as you ask, but sometimes, I think it would be the optimal choice anyway.
When somebody asks you to stop whistling, to return to that example, they're not trying to tell you that you don't have a right to whistle. They're just saying that they'd be happier in that situation if you weren't whistling. You can rightly argue that you're happier in that situation if you ARE whistling, so where does that leave us? Sure, they're asking you to inconvenience yourself so as not to inconvenience them. But that's the essence of asking for a favour.
Your response suggests that you don't do favours for strangers or that you haven't thought about this interaction in those terms. That's why I think you've mischaracterized civility. I don't think it's more civilized to tolerate behaviour that bothers me, without comment than it is to be able to ask a stranger for a favour, with a modest expectation that he'll consider my point of view and comply.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
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!
Wait ... was google `perving into windows' ?
In any event, read up on the law (at least in the US.) Google can't really publish pictures of you nude in your bedroom touching your special place any more than anybody else.
Of course, that would probably be illegal under stalking laws.
Such typical Slashdot responses. One suggesting that windows should have curtains shut during the day, like that is a reasonable thing. Maybe reasonable in New York, not in a small Australian city. The other response giving some argument about light levels, as if mere argument could magically change a fact (although given US foreign policy of the past five years, maybe Americans do believe that). I'm reminded why I gave up on Slashdot. I might leave it for another few years...
That may be so, but as our ability to prevent behaviours that we dislike diminishes to the point where neither technology or law can save us, then it becomes increasingly important that we develop our ability to empathize with others. The only protection against behaviours we don't like will be asking somebody to stop and hoping that they comply.
Consider, for example, Google's search engine. Generally speaking, Google obeys the instructions given by a site's robots.txt file, right? They're not obligated to, but it's generally considered polite, and they comply. Why is it so much less reasonable for people to ask Google not to take photographs of their house?
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
My point was that anyone can do it. If you are worried about google's street view, you should also be worried about tourists taking random photos. Since anyone could then collect the photos together from say flickr and build their own 3D model of a public space.
It's obviously not as convenient as street view yet, but the state of the art is moving very quickly in this area.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
There's a staggering lack of respect for other people's wishes being shown in the comments here.
And there may well be a staggering lack of respect in the community for those who actually want their house in Google StreetView. Maybe there was unanimity in the neighborhood, probably they didn't have time to take a vote, but we'll never really know... I know I'd like my house to be in StreetView (Actually, I'd really like for the road my house is on to be in Google Maps, or better yet NavTeq so that people other than professional couriers might be able to find it. But I think that would be a prerequisite of being in StreetView). However, if I lived in this neighborhood, I might be a bit hesitant to voice those desires, after watching the angry mob chase Google away.
The really ironic thing is that, if it's anything like the affluent neighborhoods around here, there are probably restrictions that prevent the homeowners from erecting a 12 foot opaque fence on their property line to keep Google (and everyone else) from observing and photographing their private property.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
You do have a right of self defence. You don't have the right to kill someone. As a matter of fact you do. You're allowed to use reasonable force in self-defence, and if that's what it takes, then that can include lethal force. That doesn't mean that you're allowed to rig your house and grounds with booby-traps, or pursue a retreating intruder outside and shoot him in the back as he flees, of course; that's barbaric and you'd rightly be locked away for a long time.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Man I wish they didn't cancel the Google Plane over Sydney ...
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.
The thing you're missing is, you can't get that kind of rich without being a crook, and every one of them are. Either you're naive, and you don't understand the realities of the situation, or you're one of the crooks, and you've normalized what you did to get there. There are no nice rich people.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Its pretty sad that 'acceptable behaviour' is defined by 'is it legal?'.
But it's not. Many legal things are considered unacceptable. And some acceptable things are illegal.
Also consider that `legal' and `illegal' generally don't very from person to person, but `unacceptable' and `acceptable' most certainly do.
You can think of the laws as the lowest common denominator of what society as a whole considers unacceptable enough to actually assign a punishment to doing. Not everybody agrees, but enough do that it's been made against the law.
If you need a high power telescope to see something, it's not plainly viewable.
Yes it is.
Corrosive to many things I carry with me, such as my phone, wallet, laptop.
Dangerous to my health, leading to pneumonia and weakening the immune system against things such as colds and the flu.
Also, no I haven't ever used an umbrella.
You don't really know how burglars case a house, do you? Can you tell what time people show up? Can you work out their routines so you know the best time to rob the place? This does *not* make it any easier for a burglar to rob any house unless they have a bunch of valuable stuff lying in their yard unattended, in which case, it's going to disappear whether its on Google Maps or not.
It's also an entirely legitimate desire to want to be able to take photos in public.
It's also an entirely legitimate desire to not want photos taken of your house, neighbors, and neighborhood to make it *easier* for others to see it and use it for nefarious purposes. Is there a guarantee the photos will be exploited? No. Is there a guarantee the photos will be useful for google users? No. Who should win? I don't know.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
It's not the paper cuts, it's the sparks from the flint in their toilet paper causing ignition. I actually visited London a few decades ago: unless it's changed, that paper is a violation of the Geneva convention.
It's also an entirely legitimate desire to want all of Trump's wealth, that doesn't mean I can go take it.
So I take it you have burglaries all sorted in the US?
Comparatively speaking, Yes.
FBI Crime Statistics
Home Office Crime Report for 2005/2006
Take a look at page 115 of the home office report. Chapter 7.4.
Let's use the Rural numbers, just for fun. They're lower.
Percentage victims once or more
All burglary: 2%
All Vehicle Theft: 4%
All Violence: 2%
Now compare it to the United States FBI report:
2005, violent crime rate: 469.2 per 100,000 people (equivalent to less than or equal to 0.462%, per UK standards)
Burglary: 726.7 per 100,000 (equivalent or = 0.7267 %)
Motor Vehicle Theft: 416.7 per 100,000 ( = 0.4167%)
Notice also that the FBI counts discrete events of crimes, where as the Home Office will only count you once if you get robbed, beat up, or stolen from multiple times per year. In essence, the Home Office method is a clear attempt to reduce crime statistics by any defendable method.
You are at least 4 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime in the UK.
You are at about ten times more likely to have your car stolen in the UK.
You are about three times more likely to have your home robbed in the UK.
I invite you to poke around the official numbers for both the US and the UK and make a counter argument.
My argument is this: Offering violence to criminals reduces their numbers.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Wait a sec, London has CCTV cameras everywhere for Big Brother, ahem Citizen Security, including the affluent areas. And they're working oh so well... Google comes along in a little village to take pictures from the road, which afaik, anyone can do. Now Brits claim privacy evasion. Sheesh, I'd be far more afraid of your govt than of Google. Besides, it appears that you have a developing reputation of being a good target for theives regardless. I'm not certain a thief googles, "easy burglary target rural england".
If citizens had guns, maybe they'd be better defended. After all, criminals will get guns/weapons regardless of whatever stupid law you have to try and control them.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
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.
Please see my other Slashdot comment .
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
In reality, I think that it's always appropriate to tell somebody that what they're doing bothers you and that you'd like them to stop. They're not obligated by any law or moral compulsion to do as you ask, but sometimes, I think it would be the optimal choice anyway.
Yeah, we were talking about mobbing someone and "running them out of town." Clearly, letting someone know that something annoys them is fine. Declaring that they have to stop or you'll use physical violence to stop them is not (although at times it is clearly hilarious).
How we know is more important than what we know.
Kill enough criminals and the crime rate will go down.
And, they tried Tony for murder, convicted, and sentence to life in prison. It is doubtful anyone will protect themselves when the government punishes them for doing so.
In a society where criminals go unpunished and those that attempt to protect themselves are punished, crime will be rampant.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I'm not in favor of what they did, but I disagree with your #2 on the list. As technology improves thieves will use google maps / streetview / MS aerial photography, etc to scout possible locations for criminal activity assuming they don't already. This is a fact of life.
That being said, it still don't give them the right to make the decision for everyone in their neighborhood to not have their houses on google streetview and it doesn't give them the right to stop google from doing what they are legally allowed to do on public streets.
Additionally the thieves would probably get more from google satellite view than street view because from those they can see into someone's backyard instead of just what they can normally see from the street.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Google, and people like them, driving around in cars photographing private citizens and collecting information on their personal lives for publication are obviously not well liked.
I share their outrage.
100's of sets of tourist photos randomly scattered across the internet
Have you seen Photosynth? Takes those random photographs and constructs locations in 3D- all photographs are made public on it too. Much more thorough than Google earth/maps.
(http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html)
My webcomic
They were only taking picture of light that was over the public road. Cameras don't reach out and take things.
By that logic, standing in a bucket truck filming the children changing for bed between the slats in their blinds with a telephoto lens and uploading it to the internet isn't at all an invasion of privacy either.
No, you're torturing that logic to concoct an extreme case. You have to apply the general logic used by the courts. Basically, you can't use technological means that significantly exceed the capabilities of a normal person wandering down the sidewalk. Telephoto lenses, boom trucks, parabolic mikes, and infrared cameras fail the test.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
And they will refrain from ever using Street View themselves, right.
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.
no-one cares about cctv cameras cos they don't see shit. The only person who needs to worry is Mr Fuzzy Blob of 12 Blurry Mess Lane, who now gets blamed for every unsolved crime in the country.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I think you've confused what you want to be true with what actually is.
The view of your property from a public vantage (invasive technology aside) is in the public domain. Google is merely cataloging the public domain worldwide, and making it available to everyone. There is nothing wrong or unacceptable about this - and your personal tolerance has no bearing on the subject.
As a borderline tinfoil hat, I'm as paranoid about the end result of all that Google is doing as anyone (the facial scan database makes me go cold) - but I have to admit that they aren't doing anything improper here.
And for the record, "for profit" =/= "for evil": there are plenty of for profit enterprises that provide useful public services - this is one of them.
Stupidity gets ridiculed.
It seems that every other day we get another Orwellian story about England and their newest ability to watch their citizens with cameras or step on their rights by database miss uses, and THIS is what they take a stand over? Google streetview?
yeah. ridicule deserved.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Driving isn't a right, its a privilege. Freedom to do something completely not illegal, nor harmful, in a public place is a right. They're completely different things.
Not if I encrypt my house and they have to decrypt it to see it!! Pure genius!!!
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
In the US, you have a right to take pictures of anything you can see from a public street. I suspect it is similar in the UK or else Google wouldn't be doing Street View there.
On the other hand, surrounding other people's cars and interfering with their passage through public streets may constitute a crime.
But that is precisely what is happening.
Private roads.
Fenced and gated communities.
Guard dogs in the home and armed patrols on the streets.
The geek can be damn slow to sense when he's crossed a line that was dangerous even to approach.
I think we are going to see much more of this sort of thing - and sooner or later someone is going get hurt.
That's laughable. Good luck getting your local prosecutor's office to agree with you, especially in a case where a company is doing what Google's doing. In other words, you're not special, you're not being singled out, and you have no protection under the law against your public property being photographed. Deal with it.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Y'know, if I had a house, and it ended up on Google, I'd tell everyone I knew "Hey! My house is on Google! Check it out!"
Seriously, who cares? If you didn't want people to be able to see your house, maybe you should have put it underground or something.
I am disgusted the mods have no brains and have ranked your post as +5 Interesting. Hardly. This attitude, and the backers who find this interesting, show how devoid /. is and what a liberal haven it's become.
"I fail to see how living in an "affluent area" allows you some extra privacy rights others do not have."
Because you are stupid and angry and looked at this as privacy rights, instead of rights in general.
What extra "privacy" rights were granted by their actions? None. What extra "rights" were ignored? None, they protested, as is a right, if the G20 emergency meeting is any indication.
Consider it this way, when people pass laws to prevent people from sleeping under a bridge, it applies to everyone equally. However, it impacts the poor/indigent/homeless, as they are the only ones sleeping under the bridge. Certain actions, certain situations impact a segment of the population more than others.
Usually, it's the poor. Here, it's the affluent and quite clear. No one really wants to rob a poor area. It's not "good business" for the criminals. Poor areas are robbed mainly out of convenience (less security, crimes of opportunity, criminals are typically lazy). Prized targets are affluent areas. Affluent areas take more planning, which Google would assist in. Affluent areas are also areas that tend to end up having hostage situations from this sort of crimes, where the robbers stay too long or go after the hot rich wife and/or daughter.
"But hey, I guess rich people really feel like they're entitled to special treatment."
So you're a class warfare ass.
What special treatment or right was the affluent area given? The poor could have equally done what this affluent area did, correct? They just have no need.
If you have been fair, decent, and equal in your treatment, you would have simply considered this as people who protected their neighborhood. End of story. You're just pissed because it happens to be an affluent area. You ignore the other people who have raised concerns about what Google is doing.
And if you extend the information gathering to non-Google activities, such as the utterly stupid US GIS systems where counties use GIS to put name, address, and property worth, even basic blueprints online, for "property tax" transparency, you would see the complaints are not only coming from the affluent.
"You'd think having the money would be enough."
Yeah, because having money...does what exactly? It does nothing. Money allowed them to have a nice home in a nice neighborhood. I don't consider this unreasonable.
Think about what you are advocating...your insistence that their right to protest be taken away...their right to protect their community from being a target...their right to protect a corporation from gaining ad money at the same time as making them a target. If you agree that the rich should not have anything more than the poor, then you are decidedly screwing the poor too if you are against the affluent here.
In any case, either way, doesn't change the fact that you are an ass.
I think you're being a little unfair here. I've known a few people who have taken very careful measures to ensure their house was safe against burglars but still wound up having it broken into. Keep in mind, too, that not everyone can afford alarms, bars on every window, and so forth.
The problem with burglary is the burglar. This argument is the same ridiculous one used in sexual assault cases where the defense suggests that the woman was "asking for it." I won't let that fly.
He who has no
It's amusing that you assume your thought processes mirror what the ignorant "dense" public would think, if only they were knowing and understanding...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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.
your logic is flawed. although google has done the thieves' leg work, there was nothing stopping one of the thieves to go and take pictures himself. the residents could not have stopped anyone from taking pictures.
its a bit like saying "selling guns is bad beacause the gunmakers have done all the legwork for the murderer."
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
That's why I began my argument by noting that in a more civil society, they could ask Google to stop and have a reasonable expectation that Google would consider their point of view and comply. What we're actually seeing is an uncivil society. The people didn't as nicely because they didn't have any reasonable expectation that Google would comply (shame on Google) and then they resorted to threatening behaviour to drive off Google's employee (shame on them.)
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
This is a good illustration of why defining anything "in view" as public is a dangerous slope (thanks, vux). It's not much of a stretch, then, to suggest that because a burglar was able to spot something valuable in your house (like a television) by glancing through the window, it's really your fault he stole it. After all, it was in "public view," right?
I realize that many Slashdotters don't see this as a problem--it's Google, after all, and they don't do evil--but remember, our rights are being stripped away bit by bit as they have for decades. Eventually, private property will effectively only be that which is confined to the inner workings of your skull, and I'm sure it won't be long until that is defiled!
Let's look at it another way: Imagine the support we'd be hearing for the villagers if this had been a "Microsoft StreetView" project. ;)
He who has no
You would likely get some police questioning though.
More rampant than the US, which has the highest incarceration rates and high rates of civilian gun ownership? The hypothesis that would-be victims "having a go" at criminals reduces crime rates is demonstrably false. It's simplistic, populistic, and wrong.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
I'm standing on a public street. Don't look at me! Yeah. That's reasonable.
At which point you can say, "What I'm doing is completely legal" and you'd be on your way. Of course, the police could arrest you anyway, but most police departments doing like dealing with false arrest prosecutions, nor the resulting $high_dollar_amount lawsuits.
Up here in the cold part of the continent we call that IR shielding "thermal insulation", and I was under the impression that in the hot part of the country it was useful in keeping the house cool during the summer. I doubt very much it would be considered probable cause.
It is truly amazing how often we keep coming back to the same old argument about "don't take pictures of (insert item here)". There is no expectation of privacy in a public area. When I respond to the scene of a fatal accident, it irritates me to no end when the TV news crews have to set up their cameras and take pictures of the scene, of the wrecked cars, of us doing extrication, whatever. And since they can't film us removing the bodies from the car (we put up a tarp), they take pictures of the guys holding the tarp. That being said, I would never infringe on someone's right to take a picture of a building, road, etc that is in the public view. Want to keep pictures from getting taken? Either form a homeowner's association and turn the area into private property (and don't expect the government to come plow the roads in the winter), or suck it up and ignore it. Besides, if they live in such an affluent community, I'm pretty sure the criminals already know there's some high-dollar stuff in those houses.
So what about tourists taking photos on vacation? Do they have the right to take photos of interesting buildings?
IMO the real problem here is a matter of scale and availability: any one person can take a photo and put it up on the internet, but Google is taking thousands of photos and putting them up in one easily-accessible location that is indexed and searchable. Those are two very different things. Just like taking a photo on a public street is very different in scope than running cameras 24/7 on every street corner. Because of that difference, they differ in their potential to invade someone's privacy or safety.
If I walk down your street, I can see your house.
Yes, and I can see you. If you pay way too much attention to things I can call police and have you investigated. This is not possible with Street View.
Google just makes it easier to get a feel for what the neighborhood is like, or to see what amenities it has to offer.
This has two problems. First, there is no appeal. If the neighborhood was photographed during some major construction (which took all of three days but caused a lot of dirt everywhere) it drops the resale value of the property. This is not the case with a personal visit because then you see things in real time, and you can always ask.
The second problem is with "what amenities it has to offer." Residential neighborhoods offer nothing to strangers, and do not want strangers around to begin with. If Google limits itself to public and commercial zones there is no problem. But what "amenities" a private house could offer? By definition a private residence is private.
If you don't want people walking or driving down the street (or seeing the photos those people took) then live in a gated community.
The point of this thread is simple - how much abuse the public street can take until people rebel. We see that in one town they already rebelled. What you propose is abuse of public space, and your recipe of further hiding behind the walls is counterproductive and expensive, requiring huge amounts of labor only because a few people have means and ability to abuse the commons. Their behavior is not against the letter of the law, but it is against morals of people, and that's why the posse was able to kick Google out.
if I did, I certainly wouldn't be living in a house that's on a public street.
I personally live on a lot where the house is not visible from the street. However I'd be the last person to blame people who live in residential neighborhoods. It is not possible physically to avoid packing houses together (with 0.1 acre per house) because the city has certain size restrictions. Again the proposal I hear is to accomodate abusers and spend more money to compensate, instead of simply riding the abusers out of town on a rail.
The problem though in the USA, if you go through with the IR shielding your home/property, you will get your door kicked/rammed in with a swarm of cops following...and they will have a search warrant to find that marijuana grow room you have hidden.
Then, when they find nothing but a pasty, paranoid nerd sitting at a computer with, at most, a couple downloaded pictures of Natalie Portman, you take them to court and sue the crap out of them.
Profit!
Of course, their *is* a small but non-trivial risk to consider that one or more of the cops in the "swarm" will decide to stomp the crap out of you, mace you, taser you, or shoot you just because they're having a bad day or feel they need to discourage others from making their IR-snooping technique worthless and decide to make an example out of you for the benefit of the other perps...err...citizens.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The point is that the thieves are now using *computers* to help performing theft! Destroy all computers in this village and ban further possession or use of them! Now! Think of the affluents!
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Actually, just about everything gets ridiculed. Getting deemed "stupid" is a function of history.
HA! You forgot about their Royal Doulton collection with hand painted periwinkles.
The problem is that this is just as true of far less controversial attacks on privacy. You can be pretty damn sure that if somebody collected the medical records of millions of Americans and sold copies of them freely, that would have a hell of a lot of commercial value.
What would happen in that situation is that some set of people would make money at the expense of others. Basically, those who stand to profit from discriminating against the unhealthy.
Are you adequate?
The trouble is as a society we let this twisted idea that if you create something you get to decide how it is used, how derivatives of the work are used etc. fester. That kind of restriction is not beneficial either to society or to the vast majority of individuals.
Put more simply people being banned from taking their pic in front of the Hollywood sign for fun and profit may be the way the law works but it's bone headed and as these "rights" are extended to everything in our public environment it's going to get harder and harder to have fun or make money, with disastrous consequences for society including an increase "real" crime.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Hey, will you also release a version for the Android phones? After all, those are even easier to integrate with Google stuff!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
And this BS about 'being worried this would attract burglers'
Having your home invaded is quite a traumatic thing. I know - I couldn't sleep properly for many months knowing someone could easily gain access to my property.
Everyone has a reasonable right to protection of their property. If forcing criminals to actually physically visit and observe to make their plans slightly reduces the risk of break-in then the actions taken here are not unreasonable.
Instead the more mobilised youth can browse online for potentially vulnerable targets and travel there, all without risk of being observed by locals for "acting suspiciously".
All of my relatives' houses that I was able to view in Street View were taken at times they were away at work (no cars in the drive, etc). So, the subject of the photos are inanimate objects (house, basketball hoop, mailbox, etc). They do not think, therefore they are freely subjectable to photographing.
There, problem solved.
Said the peeping Tom looking for justification.
Rights? I think you mean silly laws protecting imaginary property, not rights.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
simply blurred their houses. Then the burglars wouldn't have known what to do!
zl ubhfr
There you go :-)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Buckets of them ?
...I obey the laws of physics....
I don't believe the google streetview cars are equipped with zoom lenses that search for windows to peer inside. They're cars that drives and takes relatively low quality, panoramic pictures constantly. It does this on public roads (except for 1 incident I've heard of). it is no different than someone walking down the street.
ou can't get that kind of rich without being a crook, and every one of them are.
Care to tell us who JK Rowling stole from? How about David Beckham? George Lucas has done OK, who did he rip off?
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
I'm standing on a public street. Don't look at me! Yeah. That's reasonable.
What is reasonable is to give people a certain level of privacy without them requiring to be in a private neighborhood. Telling them to move to one is like telling a user who complains of a feature missing in the Linux kernel to write it themselves -- it isn't always feasible. But that doesn't make the request any less legitimate.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Ok, so suppose instead Google offered, say, free photo hosting and as part of the terms and conditions, reserved the rights to use all these photos for their google streets app?
Do you have a problem with Flickr's photo-to-map capabilities?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Flickr I think does map-to-photo correlation. It might even be searchable. Do you have a problem with this? Where do you think the line should be drawn?
Also I don;t think this case involved cameras running 24 hours per day on every street corner.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If tagging weren't broken I'd tag this story "pitchforks" :D
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
IANAL, but anything plainly viewable from public property is not considered private. ...if I set up my high powered telescope...
bzzzt. Telescope does not meet the definition of plainly viewable.
Look into regulations for shooting movies in certain cities for example.
bzzzt. Strike two. The lion's share of film permit regulations are about parking and the blocking of traffic, placement and use of lighting, and general disruption of ordinary folk's lives. Very little of the regs have anything to do with the actual shooting of film, and it's widely acknowledged by legal authorities that what regulations some cities have on filming itself wouldn't pass constitutional muster if they were challenged in court. If you don't need eight trucks full of rigging and four score of lazy overpaid techs, you can film whatever the fuck you want without a permit. The reason no one ever challenges this stuff is that paying for a permit gets the film made, while fighting it in court gets you nothing but a sense of satisfaction at the unemployment office.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I'd have less problem with photos submitted by such tourists because you can be assured that those photos will be all completely random - taken mostly from the same vantage point (and missing many other), taken in various lighting conditions, and most importantly they will be taken with a conventional camera (resulting in a 2D frame) as opposed to Googlemobile's spherical view, captured by 6 (IIRC) cameras.
Google's fault here is in its methodical approach - every street is surveyed, a 3D picture taken every 10 yards, and so on. They were able to construct a very serious technical database this way. I do not believe a collection of tourists' photos will ever reach that level of quality (and that level of concern) simply because tourists will never be that methodical. There are probably millions of photos of Eiffel Tower, but probably not a single tourist had desire to photograph every metal beam of the tower from all angles. Google did an equivalent of that.
>Real rich people have security and that typically chases away 90% of the burglars
Hell, real rich people live in houses you can't see from the street! I think the number one indicator that these are just upper middle class social climbers is the fact that streetview even shows anything.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The article said it's an "affluent" area; this is code for an area full of snobs who think that having an expensive place gives them rights that normal people don't have.
Like the "right" to use physical force to PREVENT google from passing down a public road while conducting a legal activity of public photography.
I would hope that in the long run, Google wouldn't exclude that whole area from their service, just b/c of a few jerks.
And that they would return to complete their photography later, either in an unmarked vehicle, or with the assistance of a an official escort (with authority to arrest anyone attempting to physically obstruct Google's safe passage down the street).
if it's so affluent get an alarm system that calls the cops (or bobbies, or whatever) when your house is broken into. options: 1) alarm system 2) big, mean dog 3) shot gun 4) neighborhood watch 5) a butler (like alfred from batman) that will make you tea and call the cops if burglars show up. .....
2407367) chase google car out of the neighborhood becuase it's their fault you didn't do options 1-2407366.
He ripped off my childhood!
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
I kind of understand your point, but for the sake of argument- if it's okay for me to walk down your street and look at your house, why is it not okay for google to allow me to virtually walk down your street and look at your house?
Yes, they can object. They just can't force you to respect their objection.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Did you try physically mailing them a letter, preferably one they have to sign for?
I wonder.. are you in Europe or a country that seriously cares about privacy?
I would imagine it would be much harder to have them pull down images if you live the US, as they have pretty much nothing to fear in the US.
Whereas, in Europe, where the government treats privacy as a real priority, there's a very real possibility, the local government could be convinced to legislate Google streetview out of existence by simply banning it.
Esp. When residents complained to their legislators they asked Google to take down the pictures, but Google refused
At least in california the coal has turned to diamonds, no threat of combustion.
And you would be the first one getting your ass run over in self defense, or the first one thrown in prison for arson.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
f the building is privately owned then maybe not. Imagine that you own a house and work in the yard that is visible from the street, and thousands of tourists come and take pictures of you and your house and your family as you do things around the house. I'm sure pretty soon you'd wish that they all go away because they take your privacy away from you.
If one tourist takes one picture for personal use you probably won't notice. But if TV vans show up, and movies are shot with your house as background, and if politicians of all kinds choose the sidewalk in front of your house for their rallies you probably won't like it, especially if you get no consideration from all these for-profit activities.
If you got a flat with a private but highly visible balcony in a tourist hotspot there will be thousands of tourists that come and take a picture of anything interesting you might do on it and it's perfectly natural. If you don't want the public to view, build a fence, close the curtains, wear a burqa. It's different with people using rooftops and telephoto lenses and hiding in the bushes to catch pictures where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy but if you know that others are or could easily observe what you're doing then don't blame people that do or take pictures of it. Just because noone from the public ever bothered to come by your town and photograph what's in plain sight doesn't give you a reasonable expectation that noone ever will. Don't like it? Create a private community with private roads on private property. They're blocking a car from driving down a public road taking pictures from public property of what's publicly visible and quite frankly should be arrested because they have no right ot block any member of the public from doing so.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And let's outlaw gravity as well.
it is no different than someone walking down the street
A full-auto rifle is the same as semi-auto rifle with the only difference that you don't have to pull the trigger for each shot. Therefore there is no point in banning full-auto weapons. I wish you luck in selling this idea to the CA government :-)
The difference of scale that Google offers quite compensates for the low resolution of images. It removes a layer of privacy that until now was maintained by the need for an observer to physically travel somewhere, walk some streets, be seen and possibly also photographed by residents. No human observer can walk streets of thousands of towns; but Google makes this possible. If, until now, you'd want to know what houses are near 2846 Fortesque Ave, Hempstead, NY, you'd have to go there or to hire someone to do it for you, which are both not that easy if your interest is casual. Today you can see those houses on Google, estimate their value, count cars parked nearby and estimate their value also, and so on. I don't know how it helps you if you are an honest citizen; but for a criminal such functions may be of some use (though I saw some comments made by people "in the know" who say it isn't so.)
In other words, if we refer to the tragedy of commons, if new technology allows some people to do more with a public resource the society either loses the resource (loses privacy) or removes the resource from public use (homeowners erect fences). Neither option is an improvement to the entire society, but definitely some people will gain from such developments.
That's like being angry about having sex in a car, and then getting angry when the cops try to arrest you, even though you think it's a violation of your sense of privacy.
Although you are legally granted privacy, it doesn't extend to things you can see from public streets, or other public areas. Expecting rights that you aren't explicitly granted just because you want them is foolish and stupid, even if your neighbor shares your sentiment.
This is ignoring the fact that the reasons given for driving google out is stupid as well. Nobody's going to rob your house just because it was posted on google maps. Thinking otherwise is is more than worthy of ire.
Are you aware of software to build sophisticated 3-d models from user-submitted photographs?
CNN demonstrated some of this during the presidential inauguration. It is capable of some pretty surprising stuff......
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
They go after people for taking non-informative pictures of miscellaneous microwave antennas and a big repeater array? Un-fucking-likely.
There's no access to those areas, but only because that's where the city of LA has a number of fire, police, and agency radio repeaters. There's an emergency communications bunker up there, but it's not the governor's, it's the city's--- and it's hardly secret.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I don't know how it helps you if you are an honest citizen; but for a criminal such functions may be of some use (though I saw some comments made by people "in the know" who say it isn't so.)
Some examples for how it helps ME as an honest citizen:
1) When I am going somewhere I am not familiar with, I can do a preview of the route on Google Street. Then I can more easily note landmarks, etc. what key intersections look like, etc.
2) If my wife calls me and says she is lost, if I can get Google Street up, I can get a fair sense of what she is seeing once I have an intersection. Much, much better than guiding someone around over the phone using a map.
I will leave the points about virtual tourism to others and focus exclusively on PRACTICAL value.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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.
I'm not affluent at all, but I was happy as a pig in shit when the Google van drove straight past my street without turning down it. (The street is a small cul-de-sc and is a bit hard for some people to turn around in.)
What legwork? Wouldn't it be faster, not to mention a lot more reliable, for burglars to just drive/walk around those upscale neighborhoods in question?
This is, of course, thinking that people are inherently looking at YOUR house for YOU. In the big picture, however, nobody really cares. Sure, there are likely people that will see your house, but to them, your house will be nothing more than another house against the background.
It's nice that you care about privacy, but at the same time, you have to take into account that these pictures are being taken on a massive scale. Your house is one of millions to be archived, and though anyone can see them, your house isn't any more interesting than any other house in the big scheme of things.
And again, this is all done from a position that ANYBODY can see from. If you're doing something you don't want other people to see whenever they want, you shouldn't be doing it in view of the public. To be honest, if it's bad enough, you should really be more concerned about the millions of citizens wandering around with camera phones than the google-mobile that will show up maybe once every 4 or 5 years.
Bullshit.You are either intentionally being a troll or are just ignorant. Privacy is not a matter of respecting people's wishes. The right to privacy in any country would be dictated by the laws of that country. If the constitution of UK says that photographing from a street is illegal then the google crew should be arrested, else, the villagers should STFU. If they want and value their privacy, then why don't they come up with the money to make it a gated community huh? Social rules are nice to talk about over wine and caviar, but when push comes to shove, the only rules that really matter are those which are defined by the law, not what someone thinks is their definition of privacy. What if I say that my expectation of privacy is that google should not photograph *anything* in my city. Would that work? Why the hell not? Who gets to define what is a _reasonable_ expectation of privacy? Those village idiots? You? Me?. The answer is, none of the above. The only definition of privacy is as enshrined in the law of that country, the rest is just morons trying to push their world-view onto other people. That sort of mental-masturbation is the cause of most of the world's problems.
Yes, we do have an understanding enshrined in the law - but it's not what most people think it is. Just because someone is in your house without unknown intentions does not give you the right to use deadly force indiscriminately.
In the US, if you exceed the legal boundaries in what force you are allowed to use to defend yourself (as above, much tighter than many people think), *you* end up in jail.
You raise a whole bunch of serious questions here. One of most important ones is this: what is the source of the law? I'd say the source of the law in a democracy is people. Now use this assertion to parse this: "they have no right ot block any member of the public from doing so" - it appears that *they* have every right to block any member from doing so, and if they want they can make a law (local to their town) that expressly forbids certain things. Most towns have a large set of such laws already, and even homeowners' associations have their own laws.
With regard to the balcony, Google did two things - they improved the technology so that a 3D view can be captured, and they then used this technology to capture billions of views. Let's introduce this into your balcony scenario. You plan to buy a house where someone standing in a certain spot in the street can see your balcony (and you can see that individual if s/he is there.) Fine, you accepted these conditions and bought the house knowing that it's easy to spot an observer, and hardly anyone is ever there. Now someone widened the street so much that there are thousands of people who are there all the time and they all can see your balcony and you can't know who is looking at any given time. This changes the deal that you had when you bought the house - your use of the balcony is now more restricted, to the point that you can't use it at all (without wearing a burqa :-) You now see that the value of your purchase is dropping because certain facilities that you originally had are no longer working. It would be natural for you to argue that the street should not be widened because you'd lose some enjoyment of your house. Any arguments that you need to buy a shield for your balcony would sound silly because it's *them* who are doing the changing, and you only want to keep things as they are. This extra expense could be not affordable, and besides who wants to live in a bunker? And another catch with these fences, walls and screens is that the same laws of the town may *forbid* you from building those walls - and many places do forbid them. Now what?
Furthermore satellite photos are often detailed enough I can count the people walking down the street.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
your bunker? Try in your house.... or behind your fence.... or, really, anywhere not visible from the PUBLIC street.
Hell, you could drape a sheet over your house and people can do shit to see what's behind it.
It's the same thing as exposing yourself in public. If you do it where someone can see you - even if it's in your own yard - you can expect to be arrested, because ANYONE can legally see you.
Also, I don't know why your problem seems to be with the scale. You're not that important - your house will be right up there with the billions of other houses visible on google. If anything, you're protected by the relative anonymity and by the crowd of other, equally boring images surrounding you.
Yes, we do have an understanding enshrined in the law - but it's not what most people think it is. Just because someone is in your house without unknown intentions does not give you the right to use deadly force indiscriminately.
Your opinion. I am more than happy to argue that I was well within my right to a jury of 12 of my peers.
In the US, if you exceed the legal boundaries in what force you are allowed to use to defend yourself (as above, much tighter than many people think), *you* end up in jail.
I'm OK with this outcome if it means my family is safe. I'm not going to try to debate legal boundaries when someone has broken into my house in the middle of the night. Don't want to be dead? Don't break into someone's home. It's that fucking simple.
Flickr photos are posted by individuals and are not a comprehensive database of every street. Street View is a systematically-created database with one specific intent, and data calibrated for that specific purpose. Honestly, I do not know where the line should be drawn, but I think determining the differences between these situations is the beginning of figuring that out.
It's pretty obvious that this kind of proliferation of data is inevitable. The real question is, how should the law intervene to protect when necessary? Are companies like Google honestly doing their best to protect people (removal requests), or are they just giving a token effort and not following through? I don't think a blanket statement of "it's public, just deal with it" is either helpful nor representative of the impact of these services.
I wasn't saying Google is running surveillance. The 24/7 example is a different aspect of the same problem. We already know how popular surveillance cameras are in the UK. Who knows how long it will take to figure out an honest answer to how much CCTV is being abused.
Yes, I know of some such packages, but it takes good source photos to build a complete 3D model, and it also takes considerable effort - far more than it takes to snap a frame while driving a Googlemobile down the road. Anyone interested enough to do this 3D work on your house is probably capable enough to come and inspect it from inside, and that labor alone is a sufficient[*] deterrent.
[*] "Sufficient" here means just a level of compromise between the townfolk who don't want to be exposed to the world and the people's right to walk around and look. This compromise says "yes, if you are that curious you are free to come and look, but don't be surprised if we will have a good look at you also." Coming is not easy, but clicking on Google is. People are saying "yes, you may see our houses, but you have to work for it just by coming here in person." It's their town, after all, and if they want they are perfectly entitled to build a wall around it, but they don't want to go that far without first trying to reach a simpler solution - "you don't do X and we won't do Y". Negotiating a deal is a civilized approach; doing things unilaterally (building a wall or driving in and photographing everything) is a military approach.
They jumped all over these people and called them idiots because... umm... they are.
Perceived personal rights don't trump actual public rights. Just because Google's a corporation doesn't mean they miss out on rights that everyone else gets, especially involving the use of public roads, and ESPECIALLY without legislation specifically revoking this right.
The revocation of others' rights to aid you is the same route that led to slavery, war, and countless other atrocities. It's nice that you have a preference, but now you remember that the world does not, in fact, revolve around you.
Many people posting here are taking a black and white view of this issue. The basic argument seems to be that anything visible from a public street can't be considered private, and is therefore open game.
However, there are differing levels of privacy. Your front yard is private, you expect people to see it, and you put forth extra effort to keep it nice, yet it is still private property, and you can chase kids off of it if you wish. Your back yard is more private than your front, and many people would rather not have anybody seeing it. The inside of your home is the most private area of all.
The feel of privacy also extends to the immediate area, such as your neighborhood. I imagine this more pronounced in dense areas, like Japan or Great Britain. For example, while the alley your apartment is located on is not strictly private, it is still somewhat private, and you are likely to notice anyone who is not a neighbor. On the other hand, a department store is totally public, and you will not even notice that same person if you saw him there.
George Lucas has done OK, who did he rip off?
The movie-going public?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I don't see why someone should follow your special rules because you've arbitrarily deemed it to be polite.
They're not "his special" rules; they're actually fairly common and well-understood. (Or at least, were at one time. Maybe there's a generational gap here? I don't consider myself an old fogy at 31, but...)
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.
One aspect of politeness is voluntarily refraining from an act which disturbs others, even if you don't agree that it should disturb them (or even understand why it does). Thus, "because I don't want it" is ipso facto a valid reason for stating that an act is impolite.
As to why the OP doesn't like it, I can't answer that myself, of course. But in general, social rules exist to help society function -- that is, to help people come together as a cohesive unit for the good of all. Now, the Internet may be encouraging a new set of social rules which (like Street View) give openness and visibility a higher priority; but even if you subscribe to such a "new world order", that doesn't make it any less impolite to violate others' pre-established social rules. And if you simply didn't know about them, then the polite response is to say either "I'm sorry, I didn't know and won't do that again" or "let's discuss whether those rules are appropriate", not to blithely ignore them and continue with your own ways.
Round 2 will be interesting. Will the GoogleMobile:
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
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.
I can make only a small comment here. Nobody argues that StreetView is not great for public and commercial property. It definitely is. However there is very little value in having StreetView of *residential* neighborhoods.
If your wife is lost she is not likely to say that she is in front of the house with a basketball ring above the garage door. She will tell you which intersection she is at, and then you find the intersection on a plain map (not a StreetView) and then you tell her which turns to take. If you want to be thorough you may switch to the satellite view and tell her which lanes to take if there is some complex traffic ahead. You won't need StreetView for guidance.
If it is you who is investigating how to get somewhere you are in the same boat. You want to know major roads that lead to where you want to go. If you tell me that you need to *see* a home in a residential street I'd think you are joking. StreetView does not even tell you exactly what house number you are looking at, it's all "approximately". If you go to someone you just ask for directions after you turn into the residential maze, and every homeowner will recite them by heart. We are talking about going 100 feet on one tiny street, turning right and doing another 50 feet, stop in front of number 3456. And if the number is hard to see the owner will tell you other signs. No StreetView will help you here, unless you got your driving license yesterday and need to study ahead of time where all the stop signs are ;-)
I said it earlier in the week and I'll say it again...
Can't we all just agree to pretend Britain doesn't exist.
I mean geez its not like Google touched the queen or something!
How many unidentified cars drive past your house a day? How many of these get an infinitely better idea of how to break into a house than a picture? I can kind of understand the concern, except that it's based in ignorance and a complete lack of thought put into the issue.
Truth is, a picture is a really bad way to decide on which house to break into. There aren't many visual clues as to when a person is or isn't home, what kind of security system they may be using, whether they regularly lock their doors, etc.
In the end, the concern over the issue far outweighs the benefit. It's like the people are protesting a free upgrade from 56k to dsl or cable because it keeps them connected to the internet all the time, which increases the chance that a virus could get onto their computer. Not only is it not a legitimate concern, but it's depriving them of a free service, except in this case, they're screwing everyone else out of a small part of that service as well.
If you have valuables on your garden in plain view, you should be protecting them in some way anyway.
They will get stolen eventually, it's just a matter of time.
"That's great, Carl. But, where'd you get the fifty bucks?"
"Took it from my mother's wallet."
"Good job."
...as people who protected their neighborhood...
"Protecting their neighborhood" by restricting the use of public roads by certain private citizens who are doing nothing illegal, but - for whatever reasons - they (the neighborhood folk) decided they just don't like. Mob rule FTW!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
And because 9/11 scared people, America should just throw away the Constitution. We're safer that way.
Umm.... I'm pretty sure you'll only be getting a very pretty view of their floor if you try that one.
Nice try, though.
Don't want to have people seeing your private shit? Don't keep it out in the open, in public view.
Don't want interlopers driving through your community? Make it gated and pay for your own maintenance instead of expecting the local government to take care of it for you.
Exactly. And the dude quoted is the biggest retard:
If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike
Try replacing 'houses' with 'pictures' and 'strike' with 'rape' to get an idea of how idiotic that line of thinking sounds. If our pictures are all over Google, it's an invitation for more criminals to rape.
There's no place like
True, but those can see what's going on behind closed doors. Normal cameras see the same thing everyone else sees from the street.
You're ignoring the point. This is not an invasion of privacy. Everything is out there in public view.
If I post pictures of myself on facebook, Those are in public view, and I can't bitch about privacy.
If I park my car in the driveway, it is in public view, and I can't bitch about privacy.
If shit is in public, its in public whether or not someone photographs it or not. This is all about the media deliberately stirring up fear in the most ignorant people (no doubt these villagers read the Daily Mail or the Express)
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
That's laughable. Good luck getting your local prosecutor's office to agree with you,
Really, if someone made a point of photographing all my stuff and putting pictures of it online, moreoever while while taunting me about it: "you can't do shit", etc ... it would hardly be laughable. It would be bona fide harrassment/stalking.
especially in a case where a company is doing what Google's doing. In other words, you're not special, you're not being singled out
So its stalking and harassment if you just followed me around taking pictures of me and my stuff... but if you find a way of using technology to do it to a whole bunch of people then everything is just peachy? That's a rather fascinating position. I don't follow the logic.
Well, one place to start would be intent.
If you're trying to look in through someone's blinds, there's a pretty clear intent there, and that's probably to see someone nekkid.
If you're google, however, it's so that others can see what the a street looks like from ground level, rather than however many hundred feet up, so that they don't have to travel absurd distances to look at a neighborhood they're planning to live in, or see their friend's house, or whatever other reason someone may have for using streetview.
Although a line may have to be drawn at some point in the future, for now, there really isn't any question as to what side of the line this is on. There's no ill intent, it's for the good of the public, and it takes all photos from a viewpoint accessible to anyone in the public at any time (a car).
Sigh. Google would invade your privacy if it could, and a lot of people let them search their computer. If Google can find any info about your secrets on the Internet, it will help anyone find it.
Google is just a sign of the weakening of privacy protection though. Technology makes it harder and harder for people to hide or obscure their actions, appearance, and thoughts. Maybe people will end up spending the majority of their day inside private campuses, but this might force people to act and think in very conformist ways.
It is fair for Google to see and post what anyone can see in public. Even if it is unpopular, it is only a matter of time before someone, Google or not, will post enormous detail on everyone's public actions. And even if no one posts this publicly, there will be those who will privately gather this information, at surprisingly affordable cost. The outrage is all in vain.
The solace is that in such a world, there is likely enough technology to help people achieve their desires without resorting to anything shameful or competitive. No one becomes exceptional, yet everyone would be exceptional compared to the people of today.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
that is the considerate thing to do.
It's nice that you're considerate, but, at the same time, you can't run a government like that. If you did, the most uptight citizens would dictate what was legal with no respect to the majority.
In such a state, profanity, artistic nudity, even many opinions about religion, the government, and so on would be illegal.
Your idea is noble in theory, but in practice, it's foolish. Any country held up to that ideal would quickly be labeled fascist or a nanny state.
Your house is one of millions to be archived, and though anyone can see them, your house isn't any more interesting than any other house in the big scheme of things.
This is not true from your point of view because you don't care how many other homes are photographed, you only care about yours. Here is another analogy, good or bad - you decide. A large Internet company has a plan to photograph every human on the planet, with their name and other information. Advocates of this plan say: "Your face is one of millions to be archived, and though anyone can see them, your face isn't any more interesting than any other face in the big scheme of things." You, however, may say that you don't care how many *other* bad things they plan to do, you only want to make sure this doesn't happen to you. You say that because the reverse query - "what face belongs to John Doe who lives on Main St #12345" has more value than the forward query that the company declares to be harmless ("what is the name of this guy?") For example, such a database could be used by some evil HR for pre-screening job applicants (if they aren't white enough the resume gets trashed.) Someone else already commented that ability to see neighborhoods may be used, along with the applicant's address, to gauge what could be expected from someone. If an applicant lives in a place full of gangs he is probably one of them (or so they think); if an applicant lives in an expensive location then probably he is well educated and had good jobs before (or so they think...) The point is that this kind of information gives more ammunition to people who are likely to abuse the information.
At this point in the discussion I tend to argue that residential neighborhoods should be dropped from StreetView just because there is so little value in having their pictures, and there is potential for abuse and other forms of displeasure. This will also cut costs, and allows Google to improve StreetView coverage of public and commercial buildings (which are in higher demand that some abstract house on a residential street.)
I didn't say they needed to move to a private neighborhood. I did imply that while in public, they should accept the fact that they're IN PUBLIC.
Very few people live their lives in an entirely private manner. I don't. And I'm pretty big on personal privacy (heck - I don't even use supermarket "club cards"). The people who do tend to live extraordinary lives (and not always in a good way).
I understand how people would feel kind of weirded out by Street View. I'm a little weirded out when strangers snap my photograph in public (not that this happens often - but it has happened at arts festivals and the occasional RenFair). But that's a far cry from thinking it is reasonable for me to impose my will on others who, after all, have done nothing to harm me.
The explosion of surveillance is due to people wanting less crime, it is not due to people wanting less privacy. The fact that a bunch of rich people have stood up for their privacy is good. Lets hope the poor people can do it too. Unfortunately, poor people are probably more focussed on getting money, rather than caring about whether their life is private. The rich people have the time, and money, to care about other things.
Poor people would normally tend to care more about when they can get their next meal, rather than whether their house is on the Internet.
I find it funny that Westerners are so focussed on freedoms and rights: and expecting non-Western countries to have the same things. But it makes sense. Westerners are rich. Remember you only have as many rights as society gives you. Fight for more rights? Good for you. Happy with your lot? That's good too.
It's not just rich people that feel entitled to special treatment. They're just more capable of ensuring special treatment. Good for them. There's also a lot of rich people that fight for better treatment of poorer people. That's kind, not a given, be grateful for them.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
Let's cover this one more time. It's not the government's job to protect your public property from being photographed. It's simply not illegal. If your stuff is outside your residence or place of business, it's fair game. Now, I can't physically intrude on your private property, nor would any reasonable person have a desire to. That's a completely different proposition. It's also a bad idea to specifically target any one person on a continuous basis; that would indeed be considered stalking in many jurisdictions (there are some exceptions, in cases where the person in question is a public official or a similarly famous individual).
Rolling past every house in your city and photographing everything visible from the street is a perfectly legal activity, no matter how much you appear to wish it weren't. Again, neither you nor any of your neighbors are special, and you aren't entitled to any sort of special treatment under the law with respect to anything visible from the street. Don't want something photographed? Don't stick it on your lawn. You don't like the law? Work to change it. While I don't support your views, I do support a democratic legislative process.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
No kidding. Britain's response to Google's Street View has been crazy.
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Since anyone could then collect the photos together from say flickr and build their own 3D model of a public space
A famous high profile public space maybe.
A normal persons home in the suburbs - not so much.
You just encrypted your house, not his house. That is if I'm understanding pronouns correctly.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
However we never agreed to allow our property to be systematically photographed and geotagged for inclusion in some corporations for profit database, and for it to be indexed and published online. That's an abuse of our tolerance.
Huh? I agreed to it. Or, rather, I agree to it. I find the service useful and amusing, as do many others.
Not only is it fun to look go down random roads in places I've never been to, but it's useful for looking at places I intend to travel to or live. For instance, when looking at colleges, streetview helped me get a significantly better idea of the size, relative wealth, and amenities offered in a city than the satellite view.
It's nice that you think that google photographing your house from the street is an invasion of privacy, but unless you can do something about it, tough beans. There's a street evangelist that visits my College on a regular basis and yells out the word of god to everyone standing nearby. Although I find his actions annoying, and I'd prefer it if he weren't there (especially as he always seems to hang out by the bus stop I'm currently waiting at) I respect his right to freedom of speech, as well as the fact that many other people probably approve of what he's doing.
We all have to make sacrifices for the well being of others. This is yours.
As a person without a car, I find photos of residential areas extremely useful when flat hunting. When someone is advertising their house for rent, they usually only post pictures that make the house look good. I was so happy when google did my town, because instead of "driving past" (which real estate agents here always tell you to do before they actually show you the house) I can just look it up on street view! It gives you an idea of the quality of the neighbourhood, position of the house relative to the sun (hilly town, so you don't want to get stuck with a house that gets no sun), and anything else you can find out by driving past the house.
in Europe, where the government treats privacy
Europe's not a single country with a single government, you do know that, right?
That's why the word plainly was included.
You'll note that a high powered telescope are not attached to most people's faces.
Also, on a related note, police are bound by pretty much those rules exactly. That's why you can get arrested for sex in the back seat of your car, but not in your house. If it's accessible to the public, it's searchable without warrant, although the exact limitations do vary every now and then.
I see no reason why it would be significantly different for the public.
Privacy is not a binary issue, it's not black and white. You can have more privacy and you can have less privacy, and there is also a subject of your exposure. Here is a simple example. You and your barber talk politics and you express some strong feelings about something. A client in the next chair - a stranger to you - hears every word. Do you care? Not likely - your speech is protected, and though you may express some stupid ideas (in your own opinion, after the fact) the only person who really heard you talking stupid is the barber, and he is your friend. The other guy doesn't count - chances that your paths will cross is microscopic, and even if that happens he is likely to forget. So you spoke in a public location (a barber shop that is open to anyone who walks in) and you were heard by others, but you still consider the conversation to be fairly private.
Now imagine that someone planted a microphone in that public place, and the entire rant of yours was broadcast on radio, along with your name and address. Legally you were speaking in a public place, so no laws are broken - anyone could walk in and hear your rant, after all. But after you return home you suddenly feel the heat because your best client called and mumbled something about cancelling the project, then your friends called and talked weird until you realized they heard your speech at the barber's, then Secret Service visits you and asks if you are really that much against the President, and so on...
If I park my car in the driveway, it is in public view, and I can't bitch about privacy
True; but you sleep well because you know that only your neighbors are likely to see that your new Ferrari is parked in your driveway. If, however, that is announced to the entire planet, including thousands of car thiefs in your area, I'm sure you'd be not sleeping at all.
Most CCTV cameras in the UK are owned by private businesses actually.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
What is this - the bad analogy day? Did you invite Google management for a barbecue in your backyard and they just happened to bring cameras? Google takes a photo of your house and publishes it online along with the address and driving directions. Google does this without asking or telling you. I remember reading not so long ago a story in the news about a couple of enterprising burglars who used StreetView to see which homes in the neighborhood of their choice did not have those home security signs on their front lawns. Sure, that in itself was not a huge deal, but it did save them a lot of driving. I wonder if your view of this issue would have changed if your house was cleaned out by these two guys.
Stay at a better hotel. We have Charmin just like everybody else. (and even staying at EasyHotel in London, which can be $15/night, they didn't try to pull cheap toilet paper on us. Where the fuck were you staying?)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
That article is about as serious as a the yearly articles we get about daylight savings causing hell for schools and how we need to not use DST because people can die.
This is Britain, we have petty articles and long-winded discussions on everything - doesn't mean it becomes law.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Mine cross references Google's street view database with homes in areas that make the news with key words "Affluent" and "Burglaries".
Thats bouquet thank you very much.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If you need a high power telescope to see something, it's not plainly viewable.
That's funny, I'd love to see where that's defined in LAW. Link please.
Somehow you think there's a major difference between driving slowly with a with a bunch of high-resolution digital cameras and staying still with one. I'd love to see the court ruling that said this.
What is really comes down to is that if a community feels that you're being an ass, the local police find something to charge you with. The argument being made here is like making the argument that just beacuse taking one "free" newspaper is legal, driving around and taking ALL the free newpapers in the city is legal.
Just because it's considered generally acceptable to take one picture from a car for your own use, does not make it acceptable to take as many pictures as you want of a specific target for commerical use.
Life is too short to proofread.
There are none on my block.
You'll note that a high powered telescope are not attached to most people's faces.
The thing you don't seem to get is that we're not talking about one person's eyes.
We're talking about a dozen or so high-resolution cameras streaming many thousands of images to persistent storage.
The rig they're driving around has been carefully designed to pick up MUCH more data than a "person's face" would.
TFA is about a computerized data collection system, not some guy walking around looking at stuff. The post I was responding to was defending this, not someone using "their face".
Life is too short to proofread.
In my eyes there is a big difference between having your house on the public street as opposed to having your house on internet. There are only so much people coming through my street. There are billions of people on the internet.
I applaud these people. It is not Google who may or may not decide to publish a 3rd party's property on the internet (or anywhere, for that matter), that decision is for the property's owner to make.
Only if you use the tracing paper in public toilets. However, all the public toilets in London have been closed down now, so you don't see that any more.
The local called the police according to the article, but there's no mention of them actually turning up. Presumably they just laughed at him. Disappointing, given that the villagers were engaging in behaviour that gets protesters arrested at Faslane on a semi-regular basis.
> "Your freedom ends where someone else's nose begins" is an old English concept.
Whereas the new English concept would appear to be "Your freedom ends where your nose ends." Or maybe a bit before.
Or rather (seeing new English' actions throughout the world): "Your freedom ends where we say it does."
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
Given that Street View definitely raises privacy concerns right or wrong, I don't understand why the average slashdotter supports Google Street View but takes offense on nearly every other privacy issue, be it deep packet inspection, electronic monitoring, facial recognition, rfid passports or whatever. Yes, I understand that the law so far is on Google's side, but it is to a degree on most of the other issues as well.
Google created Street View because they thought it could make them money and technology made it practical to do now. Since they provide no way to opt out, they really don't care what the average person thinks. As data gathering and mining techniques improve, we'll no doubt see more invasive examples but this tool puts us a little further down the road where every aspect of our private life is stored, indexed and searchable online.
The thing that concerns me most is that while at the same time we have a government actively trying to erode our personal rights, we have profit motivated conglomerates sliding into the newly created space. Add to that most of the current laws on the books as well as those on public right-of-way were never written to accommodate the use of modern technology and well see most of our "rights" gone before we ever even knew they went. Google's purpose is to gather information and sell it. That whole do no evil thing ? Yeah, I think it's bullshit.
Are you sure? I was under the impression that this was the point of Microsoft Photosynth.
And considering how effective that is at pulling in pictures you didn't expect it would, I wouldn't be overly surprised if it was able to move to the inside of your house as well.
I am waiting for Google to cover Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan. It won't be a few upset villagers taking a stand.
Her lips were softer than a duck's bill, but her quacks
You may not believe this but the answer is YES. To film people publicly you have to film them openly, they have to be aware that they are filmed, and if they object to being filmed you cannot publish the recording. Notice that for them to have the option of objecting they have to be aware, so filming people secretly even in public, is a violation of privacy.
They are idiots. They got uppity about their obscure little village appearing on Google Street View (where it would be no less obscure), but were quite happy to give an interview to the Times about their 'affluent area'.
You never know. Maybe burglars will be scared off once images of the angry mob appear on Street View.
From my experience most Americans can't take our spicy tika masalas let alone the vindaloo. I would make an exception for residents of New Mexico, you really can get a decently hot chilli there but what Texans call hot is really just approaching medium.
I love the way the 'posher' parts of the UK's largest motorway service station like to call themselves by their estate name.... please don't be fooled, this isn't some tiny village nestled in the middle of rolling British countryside, it's an estate in Milton Keynes.
That's such a silly argument.
When child pornography is outlawed, only outlaws will use/have child pornography.
When murder is outlawed, only outlaws will murder.
When robbery is outlawed, only outlaws will rob people.
When rape is outlawed, only outlaws will have rape.
When THC is outlawed, only outlaws will have fun.
Not exactly. Ownership of a firearm isn't a crime in the UK. Thousands of people own guns. Ownership of an unlicensed firearm is though - and getting a license isn't trivial.
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.
Excuse me?
Have you seen a place where Google Street View doesn't reach? Just tourist photos uploaded by various individuals to a couple of popular services.
Give it some time and it will surpass StreetView in number and quality.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Stabbed, you mean. We're also still allowed to be outraged at child abuse, bankers' pensions, and any celebrity who says something that sounds racist.
You got a high-ranking insightful... how does the saying go? Fool me five times, shame on you. Fool me six times, shame on me? Please... a large number of people have enjoyed his movies. Maybe the Slashdot crowd holds movies to a higher standard, but "the movie-going public" seem to enjoy Star Wars movies very closely to how they were released.
http://www.sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php
Apart from a couple of places it looks like there is no restriction on taking photos from a public street as long as you are not causing an obstruction.
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.
Funny... my house has been on Google street view for several years now, and the burglaries at my house went up a drastic 0%.
If you want to take my whole city into account, the crime rate actually went down over the past few years. Hey, I know! Maybe that's due to Google Street View! The more houses there are in GSV, the easier it is for the burglars to see the shotguns hanging from people's mantles.
What, you don't have one? But this is America. Everyone's got one. Right? Right?? Okay, maybe it's not the shotgun. Maybe it's just that your house being on GSV and the local crime rate have no correlation whatsoever. I'm just taking a shot in the dark here, though, so I could be wrong.
It doesn't look like it's even much of a village, it's a suburb of Milton Keynes FFS !
Google Street View photos are not taken every day. I'd be surprised if they are taken every year. They do not focus on t/a. Bedroom windows are not tagged with any information.
#2 is spot on. A burglar is more interested in the movement of people in and out of the house, and where the valuables are likely to be. This is hard to get from streetview, all they could get is whether there is a little blue box with a flashing light on. That's pretty obvious if you've already been to the area, which you will have to in order find out when people leave their houses. This is especially true as in the UK, as not everybody drives, and it's impossible to tell just by seeing if their cars are on the driveway or not. Burglars don't like breaking into people's houses when they're in.
#3 is disputable. Burglaries happen, it's an easy way for some small-time criminal to get make quick money, and probably existed since the dawn of civilisation. Doesn't make it right though. Policing has to go back to the basics I think. There should be more coppers on the beat, not lounging around in their cars munching on a doughnut.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
I think you just accidentally made one of the better arguments I've heard for not allowing every moron with a hundred quid and a letter certifying them as 'sane' to have a gun.
That's precisely the problem in the UK. It's worryingly easy to own a gun. In a country where over half the knife crime is where someone walked up to a random passer-by and stabbed them, *just because they can*, the last thing we need is people owning more guns...
It's a matter of scale. Lets say I'm your neighbour, taking a photo of my kids in front of both our houses. No problem, right, even if I can see in your windows. I even put it on the internet.
so what's the difference between that, and me putting a video camera up in my car pointed at your house, taking video of you every time you leave the house, who comes over to visit, whenever you go into the garden, what we can see through the windows? How about I post this realtime feed on the internet? How about I have one mounted in my car, and follow you everywhere you drive, recording and broadcasting everywhere you go and who you meet there?
I'm sure you wouldn't feel the slightest bit uncomfortable - after all, it's all in public view, right?
Take when a whole load of usenet archives were put up on google and made searchable. Angst ridden teenage questions, that at the time were public to a small group of people and only easily available for a fairly short time, suddenly became public and easily findable years after the event, from the power of tech that didn't even exist at the time the posts were made.
There's a difference between public to people who happen to be there at the time, and really really public for everyone to see at no effort and easily findable for all time.
In one way streetview is a good thing. It really brings home to people how current technology has revolutionised the surveillance society, and how much our daily lives are indeed recorded, catalogued and trivially easily available at will to those who choose to look.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
This is what happens when you live in a society where you are a subject of the state rather than a citizen of a free republic.
The reason there are so many burglaries in that area (and the UK as a whole) is because the citizens of that once great nation have been deprived of their right to self defence and the right to defend their property.
Burglars and other petty criminals have free reign because to resist an intruder is a "crime" and ownership of solid means of self defense, namely a firearm, is also a "crime."
If the citizens of that neighborhood truly want to see fewer crimes committed against them, then chasing Google away won't help. They need to begin working and fighting to make the UK a free country again instead of a leftist nanny state where the rights of honest citizens are denied.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_(GA)#Gun_law
Simple, we don't have as many Bears as you. We'd have to import the arms. There is a credit crunch you know...
"From what I understand, U.S. law allows photography on public property, i.e. streets. If you have a problem with that, you shouldn't be complaining to Google, you need to take it up with city/state legislators."
RTFA? - the article is about Broughton, Buckinghamshire, in the *UK*. Much as our glorious leaders fawn and worship the grand USA, they've not managed to get us to be the 51st State yet... believe it or not we have this quaint olde thing called our own laws, US laws don't apply here*. English law is generally what is supposed to be in effect in Buckinghamshire (cue comedy responses ;-) ) - though probably you're allowed to take photos on public land most of the time, unless aforementioned householders are rich in which case you get chased orf their land (peasant).
*Unless its "the war on terror" in which case US law applies, you guys get to torture people here, boil them down for their fat (or whatever "rendition" means, I was never sure about that one), etc, on the grounds that your laws trump ours because you're American.
The idea that burglars will be helped by Google's StreetView is absurd, to say the least.
The person from the interview says that they already had three incidents recently.
Burglars need a lot more information than a picture can offer them.
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.
those that attempt to protect themselves
...by becoming criminals themselves? Their own bloody fault.
Good luck on that if you're not armed. I mean, if you actually need to arrest someone
UK police generally do a good job. Of arresting people while not being armed, i mean.
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.
Your argument breaks down like this:
1) Google does legwork for burglers.
2) Burglers use Google StreetView to case houses
therefore
3) Keeping a house from appearing on GoogleStreet View makes it safer from burglers
The argument may be valid... but it is unsound because the premises are false
Here's another example of a valid, yet unsound argument:
Google is a giant paper ferret.
All ferrets are privately owned companies.
Therefore Google is a privately owned company.
Perfectly valid... but because the premises are false, it's logically unsound.
But what makes your premises false, you may ask? That'd be the complete absense of any evidence that burglers have some advantage casing houses with StreetView.
The Admin and the Engineer
There is also the rather significant issue that 90% of crime is committed by junkies who are just looking for their next hit.
Look on Google Streetview for potential properties to hit? Come off it, most of them can barely operate a TV, they certainly aren't going to go to the trouble of looking on something like that.
The remainder - those carried out by professional burglars, the kind who break in and steal all the antiques rather than the telly - the existence or otherwise of Google will make more or less no difference whatsoever.
In Soviet Russia, other news is a joke.
Might be more real to the mind :D
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Change your laws to reflect this; if you work before claiming benefits, consider your taxes input for an insurance, if you strike it rich after you've claimed benefits, then it's time to compensate. In other words: you should have stopped her at the border and made her pay a small contribution.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
the Google camera that drove past my house was 3m off the road (notice that it's on a pole on top of a car). So it sees over the fence and right into my daughter's bedroom. A person on the road with a ladder and a camera perving into windows and posting the results on the Internet would have been arrested.
Your neighbours' bedrooms are also at that height. Are they invading your privacy? Also, looking at streetview, the windows of my house can certainly not be seen through. The inside of rooms apear dark in the daytime (when all streetview pictures are taken), even with the lights on. Not quite the same as a creep with a zoom lens taking photos at night. Anyway, why do you think we have net curtains?
Notwithstanding recent changes to "think of the terrur wrists!", UK law doesn't prevent someone from taking a photograph of anything that's visible from a public place.
What's different here is the technology has changed. In the past, it'd take a long time to put all the photos together into a coherent streetview-type application. But today, Google are automatically stitching together photographs being taken as they're driving along, are able to capture an entire street in one big panoramic photo and make it available to anyone who wants to see it very quickly.
I'm not so sure, it's quite hard to stab people with guns, so stabbity death crime might go down?
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Would someone check each photo by eyeball-scan, or could I just send them the goatse pic as a photo of my neighbour's property?
And if there's someone doing that job, how much do you have to pay him for all the goatse and tubgirl pics he'll get? Will google add free psychotherapy to their job perks?
And on a more serious note, would they have to drive here anyway to check if my house really looks like the Windsor castle, like in that picture I'd send them? Maybe I just want a bit of extra "creative puffering" to sell that house. (Hey, it's not worse than most tech companies' marketing;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Fortunately, however, there was a jury of 12 people who decided by a 10:2 majority that Tony Martin was a criminal just like the teenager that he shot out of a desire for vengeance, not protection. So we have a society where criminals go punished, and where the right to protect yourself with reasonable force still exists. If there has been a case where people acting in self defence have been convicted of murder or GBH, it certainly hasn't had a high profile in the press.
Of course, Tony Martin's conviction was reduced to manslaughter on appeal by a judge (the jury had also had the option of convicting for manslaughter), on account of his paranoid personality disorder.
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."
I asked my Father once why people used to have big hedges, but they don't nowadays. He said that when he was a kid in the 50s, net curtains were not available as the technology for fine nylon mesh had only recently been invented and was very expensive. Everyone had a 6 foot hedge so that they could leave the curtains open for light and have privacy from the street. Once net curtains came along, the hedges came down. You're always free to grow a new one if it really bothers you :)
George Lucas has done OK, who did he rip off?
Akira Kurosawa.
I'd rather be dealing with burglars who didn't have guns themselves personally. Even if it meant I didn't have one myself. It's simply a lot harder to kill someone without guns.
Great you've a gun. So does everyone else. This is why you're three times more likely to be murdered in the US and twice as likely for a woman to be raped ("I'd better not scream or fight back, he could have a gun!").
If this had happened on some council estate in London, the police would have turned up and kicked the sh1t out of the locals. Because it was an 'affluent area', the vigilante scum got away with their mob rule antics.
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.
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.
(* many of which, I assume, already exist)
The point is, this is one genie that can't be put back in the bottle, Google or no Google. I'm sure David Brin had something to say about all this.
I just did a search for property sales in the Broughton area. I'd hardly call it affluent. It seems very middle-middle class to me. My neighbourhood is more expensive than all but the highest priced Broughton properties, and my neighbourhood is very, very middle class. My next door neighbour runs a local (1 shop only) carpet and tile shop, the neightbor in the other side is a senior manager (not a director) in a fruit distribution business. Down the road three or four houses, a neighbour is a builder. a few more houses down, the guy owns the local taxi business. No investment bankers, high court judges, consultant surgeons or cabinet level politicians == not affluent.
These folks are Hyacinth Bucket's friends !
I personally agree with the OP and don't think it's over the top at all. I also hope you die. I mean I'd hate if you didn't and turned into some kind of zombie trying to eat my brains.
Anybody else driving down the street isn't continuously taking photos all around and publishing them in an organized manner on a very well publicized website, which would allow all other anybody else's to see the same things without needing to drive down that street.
In the UK the law grants a 'reasonable expectation of privacy'
There are established boundaries:
ok: photo of a house
not ok: photo of a house that looks into the interior through the windows (tabloids would have a field day if that was legal).
ok: taking a picture of someone
not ok: taking a picture of someone and then publishing it in a non-public interest fashion in a way that can identify them. For example I can take a picture of someone who's fat but I can't then use that picture in a Slim-Fast advertising campaign with the slogan "Don't be like fattie here" without their permission. Google is a commercial organisation that doesn't operate for public interest.
ok: taking pictures of someone at Tescos.
not ok: taking pictures of someone at an STD clinic.
These are the three main established areas where Google street view conflicts with UK privacy laws. As the images produced are publically available for commercial reasons, there are more restrictions compared to what a private individual or CCTV system could do.
The reason seems to be that while CCTV of everything is good, allowing the public access to that kind of surveillance is bad. The reasons why it is bad are based on fear, stupidity and Daily Mail headlines, but are kind of hard to actually nail down.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I like this:
Get published in national newspaper that you live in an affluent area.
Attempt to prevent Google street view publicising that you live in an affluent area.
Good work, numbskull!
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
If unacceptable behaviour is not defined by what is illegal, how exactly would you define it?
It would be nice to think that people would obey the unwritten rules of society, but not everyone agrees on those rules and besides which since Thaterchism there has been no such thing as society in the UK.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And they aren't "idiots" - as somebody has tagged the story - they are just normal people. There's a staggering lack of respect for other people's wishes being shown in the comments here.
It would be an interesting experiment to repost the same story but mention government owned CCTV cameras instead of Google owned street view ones.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
And I thought the ring sting was from the Phall Curry I had last night.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flamebait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
The only thing they banded together and do was to make someone fear for their safety. I can't figure out why the driver didn't call the police.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Obviously, Americans are coming to the UK and stealing all their guns.
Your "deal" to buy the house was not with the municipality or more generally with anyone who uses the road. The previous owner had no way to guarantee the view, and if you believed he did, that's a problem between you and him. No one else owes you a thing. If you want to stop people passing by your home, buy the land and make it private, if you can find a few million to offer the government.
One aspect of politeness is voluntarily refraining from an act which disturbs others, even if you don't agree that it should disturb them (or even understand why it does).
No - politeness is agreeing to keep it out of their face, to not 'rub it in' - but in actuality it would be just as rude to expect someone not to carry out an act just because you disagree with it. I'm sorry that certain people find my actions and the actions of others 'rude' or improper and if we can come to a compromise then all the better - but 'just not doing it' isn't a compromise.
How about following your own set of rules and politely respecting my wishes?
We have Charmin just like everybody else.
According to an article I read (on the Register I think) the British Charmin is different to the stuff you can get in the States. When it was originally released in the UK it had the same strength and consistency as the US stuff, but it turns out that Brits and Yanks wipe their arses in different ways. Over there they scrunch it up before wiping, while over here people fold it flat. Turns out doing it the British way resulted in "penetration" - shitty hands in other words. So the manufacturer had to make it stronger for the Brits.
the cops (or bobbies, or whatever)
Real people don't call them "bobbies". They're coppers, plod, filth, pigs, old Bill and on those rare occasions you actually need their help, the police.
So what about tourists taking photos on vacation? Do they have the right to take photos of interesting buildings?
Would it be acceptable to record live footage of your front door 24/7? And then publish it as a browsable online database of anyone entering and exiting?
Further into the future: Combine with facial recognition. Combine with holiday swimwear pictures. Combine with mobile phones snapping pictures of everything, everywhere. All public information, sorted on address.
"Public" information becomes very private when it is cross-linked with other public information and easily accessible for anyone.
There is a conflict brewing, not sure what the resolution will be. Technology tends to trump any attempt to suppress it.
I lost my sig.
it's a suburb of Milton Keynes
No wonder they have so many burglaries then. I worked on the outskirts of Milton Keynes for several years (at Cranfield) and was amazed at the number of chavs and skagheads I saw whenever I ventured into the centre of doughnut city.
Yes, you do have the right to photograph from a public place, BUT what Google is doing with the photographs it takes demonstrates a problem with that right. The concept of being able to take pictures from a public place was not conceived with the knowledge that someone, let alone a company, would drive up and down every street with the intention of photographing every house an posting the images on the internet for the world to see.
The residents were absolutely correct in making Google leave. 'Street View' basically provides a virtual shopping mall for criminals looking to scout out new targets.
Crooks can gather *ALOT* of valuable information from such photographs:
1: Location.
2: Neighboring buildings.
3: Surrounding environment.
4: A rough building floorplan.
5: Points of entry.
6: Points of exit.
7: Possible escape routes away from the scene.
8: Economic status of the resident.
9: Vantage points where neighbors might detect them.
10: Pets (Number, type, and locations).
11: Observation points where the criminal can observe residents activity.
12: Hiding spots.
13: Obstacles to entry.
14: Obstacles to escape.
15: What kind of valuables might be present.
16: Likelihood of passers-by who might see them.
Any criminal can use this information to *GREATLY* increase their chances of a successful robbery.
Unfortunately, civil rights nutjobs will defend their right to photograph in public, but will crucify law abiding people if they shoot a criminal while he is trying to rob a house.
Laws like this make life easier for criminals, and harder for the rest of use who choose to defend ourselves from crime.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Actually, the "well-known" claim that there is a CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK, used by the media to put the fear of an omnipotent God into folks, (and believe me, there is plenty of outrage to be found if you read the "right" papers *cough*Daily Mail*cough*) is based on some very dodgy estimates, gathered by researchers from two streets in Putney:
Channel 4 Factcheck
There may or may not be a lot of cameras. No official figures exist to say how many. However, there is good reason to believe that the usual figure quoted in not the correct one, either way.
What luck for rulers that men do not think. - Adolf Hitler
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.
Don't know where he was staying but sounds like he hod some of that "John Wayne" toilet paper we used to get in school because it's Rough, Tough and it takes no shit :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
That's the difference between European and American cultural attitudes towards privacy. Europeans tend to be more trusting of government and less trusting of corporations, whilst Americans are generally more trusting of corporations, less trusting of government.
That's why in countries like Britain, whilst many people don't mind CCTV cameras, they also have far stronger data protection laws then we do etc.
That's the difference between European and American cultural attitudes towards privacy. Europeans tend to be more trusting of government and less trusting of corporations, whilst Americans are generally more trusting of corporations, less trusting of government.
to prevent the village from further being discovered, i for one insist their ISP and the surrounding ISP's be removed from all routing tables. this will prevent malicious cookies from the google beta email from tracking them.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Does giving a cash gift to the UK government count ?
Squirrel!
Diamond burns just fine: it's a bit harder to ignite, is all.
You make a good point, but it is still a little silly. I guess you would prosecute a bus that drove past as well. Google did not set up a camera pearing into your daughters bedroom, they drove past it, and it is unlikely the photo they took would have anything but a reflected window in it.
Britain does not have the American ideal where individualism is given free reign to run over public and private sensibility. If the neighborhood does not wish itself to be publicly displayed, (and unlike the United States they DO have more commonly neighborhoods instead of just streets) than the wishes of the community should be honored and the Googlecar should not return.
It isn't? Somebody better tell Sarkozy!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Gotta do what I can to stimulate the US economy... *grin*
But they're a corprashian! We hates corprashians!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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?
And if she hadn't she'd be still claiming state benefits and stealing from you?
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I agree that U.S. citizens often(foolishly) take their rights for granted and don't recognize that other Western societies may have different policies
"Remember you only have as many rights as society gives you."
Wrong. Therin lies the difference between the philosophical basis of other Western societies and the principles that the U.S. was founded upoon. We, The People have certain INALIENABLE rights ($deity given). Government(society) doesn't "give" us anything. That which is given can be taken away. Our rights are inherent, and we give the government certain well defined powers.
Forgive our obsession with freedom and rights. Many of us are angry and frustrated by the erosion of our liberties and the illegal government power grabs that have happened since 9-11.
Wrong. Public highways belong to the nation. No bunch of inbred morons has any right to override that, any more than a bunch of rednecks like you can reverse the abolition of slavery in your town,
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>>>These people don't want their houses on Street View, whether you are fine with your house being on Street View is irrelevant.
Too bad.
That's like when the cops didn't want me to videotape their road closure downtown or random drunk driving stop in the countryside. It's a public area, and I have every right to capture what I see with my eye onto a more permanent format like photo or video. If you don't want to be seen:
- Move your activities behind closed doors.
- Surround your property with large bushes.
- Buy 10 acres of land and live in a forest so your house can't be seen.
As long as the person holding the camera is not trespassing on private property, they can film whatever their eye can see. And the villagers of this idiot town have NO RIGHT to block a government-owned street way. They are in violation of the law and every one of them should spend a night in jail for their crime.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Rowling, along with Scholastic Press (her American publisher) and Warner Bros. (holders of the series' film rights), pre-empted Stouffer in 2002 with a suit of their own seeking a declaratory judgment that they had not infringed on any of Stouffer's works. The court found in their favour, stating that "no reasonable juror could find a likelihood of confusion as to the source of the two parties' works". During the course of the trial, it was proven "by clear and convincing evidence, that Stouffer has perpetrated a fraud on the Court through her submission of fraudulent documents as well as through her untruthful testimony", including changing pages years after the fact to retroactively insert the word "muggle". Her case was dismissed with prejudice and she was fined $50,000 for her "pattern of intentional bad faith conduct" in relation to her employment of fraudulent submissions, along with being ordered to pay a portion of the plaintiffs' legal fees. Stouffer appealed the decision in 2004, but in 2005 the appeals court upheld the ruling. She states on her website that she is planning to republish her books and is entertaining the possibility of another lawsuit against Warner Bros., J. K. Rowling and Scholastic Press.
They were idiots, they may be normal people. That's OK, normal people can be idiots too. But they were idiots.
It's really easy to call people idiots while having the benefit of hindsight, not to mention reading all the comments that have already been made on the topic.
Put yourself in their shoes: burglaries are a big problem in their neighborhood; a car with a big camera drives by "casing" your neighborhood. What do you do?
You probably wouldn't do anything, most people are apathetic about their own futures. I applaud the person who noticed the car, drew a quick conclusion, and decided to take action. That's leadership.
>>>Slashdot is and what a liberal haven it's become.
You have to be joking. Most slashdotters are libertarian in nature (small government supporters). But even libertarians acknowledge that if something is in public view, and can be see by the human eye, there's nothing wrong with remembering what you see (either via camera, or via your human brain).
>>>Think about what you are advocating...your insistence that their right to protest be taken away...
You have a right to protest, but you don't have a right to block a public street. That's a crime and every one of those persons should be jailed for one night. If they wanted to protest they should have held a gigantic sign in front of their home that read "google sucks pussy" or something similar. Do it legally.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Which is why you need guns. If you can't count on the police to help you, then you have to choice but to defend yourself. That's a basic human right and closely-tied to the ownership of your body (protect your property from criminals) and the right to life.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>Americans are generally more trusting of corporations, less trusting of government.
That's because the corporations don't have the power to (a) steal money directly from my wallet or (b) send me to jail if I refuse to pay or (c) use an involuntary military draft to make me die in some shithole in Vietnam or Iraq. Corporations also offer choice. Hate GM? Buy from one of the dozens of other car makers instead. Hate the government school because it's falling-apart and doesn't teach anything? Tough.
Yes corporations are bad, but not as bad as the Uncle Sam Monopoly that uses threats/force against the People.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>The thing you're missing is, you can't get that kind of rich without being a crook
Shove it. I got "rich" from working my ass off in college, earning three fucking degrees, working my ass off at work, and most importantly saving every penny I earn until I had a million dollars. So shove your "you must be a crook" attitude up your shit-filled ass.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
but it turns out that Brits and Yanks wipe their arses in different ways.
Looks like a new Slashdot poll will be in the works.
I pick, "Cow-bidet Neal"
/badpiratejoke
Just out of curiosity, did you wear a little black burgler mask when you robbed a house? I was wondering if it was a union thing, or just a popular fad among the sticky fingered.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I'm still hoping for a flashmob with digicams.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Try taking a photograph of the Hollywood Sign - it's protected by trademark or copyright law and the folks in Hollywood do go after people.
And yet, you still have every right to take a picture of it. I have several, from my last trip to Griffith Park, and no minigun-armed trademark gestapo ordered me to delete them (or pay royalties). You can't, however, use it without permission in a purely for-profit work - But before you take even that as an absolute, some uses, even profitable ones, may get a pass on the grounds of their documentary nature. I would personally (IANAL) say if anyone would qualify for such a fair use exemption, Google would due to the nature of their collection.
And apparently, Google's lawyers agree with me, since they have quite a few pictures (I see at least 40 without even working at it) of exactly that sign.
Personally, I fail to see the big deal here... A lot of people have freaked out about Google driving through, all just pissing in the wind. Street-view just fills the gap for another 10 years until we have sub-centimeter resolution satellite images available to the public. What then? Erect a giant tent over your whole town, similar to what the Soviets did during the cold war to hide their missile movements?
I have a problem with the privacy implications of having my every move in public (potentially) tracked by security cameras. Google driving by my house? Not so much.
Get on your Segways/recumbent bikes/cars and do multiple drive by photo shootings of the neighborhood and upload them to Google maps. In fact use a smart phone that way it can be uploaded on the fly Bwmahahahahah!
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Great you've a gun. So does everyone else. This is why you're three times more likely to be murdered in the US and twice as likely for a woman to be raped ("I'd better not scream or fight back, he could have a gun!").
Oh, is THAT why? Fuck, you are a genius! People have been debating that one for years, but you know the answer? How come you've been keeping it a secret?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem is that you're allowed to use "reasonable force". But if you're half asleep at 4 a.m. and worried about your children you're going to have a different definition of reasonable to a juror sitting safely in a courtroom with the benefit of hindsight.
Also, you don't know at the time if the burglar is only after property or likes a bit of rape as a bonus. Do you susggest waiting until afterwards before choosing the appropraite response level?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think you just accidentally made one of the better arguments I've heard for not allowing every moron with a hundred quid and a letter certifying them as 'sane' to have a gun.
Oh the irony. It was the British who convinced the early Americans that the right to bear arms was necessary.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
We Brits have made some amazing advances in quilting technology since you came. Come on back and marvel at the soft, almost sensual feel of our modern toilet paper.
It also helps if you don't crap in public toilets, and fork out for a decent hotel.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
And when these people are left alone by the law we know that we can do the same thing for people of the wrong race, or religion, or sexual-orintation, or political affiliation, or income-level try to drive into our neighborhood... just harrass them and block their legal right-of-way until they leave.
Your criminals are not punished. If they were, you would have less crime. He should have been given a reward for killing a dangerous animal, and the other animal should have been killed as well.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
No, they are rich asshats that believe picutres being on a website will cause other people to rob their houses. Sorry, but if you're allowed to drive down that street without permission, I fail to see why you should not be allowed to take picutures of what you can see for yourself.
'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.'
No, income disparity (whether just or not I won't debate) is an invitation for criminals to strike. The criminals are already there, before Google arrived. Making Google the boogeyman won't solve anything.
And are criminals really using GoogleMaps to case houses? I suppose anything's possible.
sic
Based on the tiny little bit I now about this case, he would probably have been tried and convicted in the US, too. Doubt he'd get life, though.
As far as I know, you can use deadly force to protect yourself and others, but not to protect your property.
However, US law in general seems to understand (as someone else in this topic said) that an uninvited stranger in your home at night constitutes a threat to your safety and that of your family, and you can defend yourself from that threat in a reasonable way.
What does not constitute a threat is an uninvited stranger, armed or unarmed, fleeing your property.
According to Wikipedia, Tony Martin was released "after serving a total of three years of his five year sentence,[3] the maximum period for which he could be held following good behaviour." The British apparently have a different definition of "life in prison" than the term implies.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Vigilantism sucks. Way to act less civilized than many 3rd World countries.
True; but you sleep well because you know that only your neighbors are likely to see that your new Ferrari is parked in your driveway. If, however, that is announced to the entire planet, including thousands of car thiefs in your area, I'm sure you'd be not sleeping at all.
Or, I could realized that as my ferrari is being displayed in public view, and is likely to be seen by someone who wishes to steal it, regardless of whether or not an old image on the internet may or may not contain it.
While your example of a conversation may not be black and white, this is. As you say, you can have a private conversation in public. You cannot, however, have a private display in public. If it's out there, it's out there.
This is Britain, we have petty articles and long-winded discussions on everything - doesn't mean it becomes law.
You already have a law requiring people transporting such knives to prove that they're a chef. What if you're trying to become one, and you just bought a knife and you're taking it someplace to do some cooking? Wank wank. Mark my fucking words, banning guns was a huge mistake. However, what's more telling than the attempt to ban guns is that it succeeded. Brits are ahead of Americans in the "doing as they are told" category. America was founded by people too much of a revolutionary pain in the ass to keep in England, and it shows; too bad we're slipping into complete complacency over here, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's not the way it works.
What would you say, if I camped in front of your house and followed you around with my cam as soo as you leave house, posting everything you do in public to the internet?
Well, this is somewhere between this s[c|z]enario and being on a picture someone made from the Eiffel Tower for its private collection.
I do not really mind Google filming the street I live in, but I still oppose this stuff as, for me, it's another step into loosing all respect to privacy.
If you can afford some things that are worth stealing (big TV, laptop, etc), you can probably afford at least some of the above. Most people gamble on it being cheaper to bet against not being robbed though.
And as the neighborhood is described as "affluent", I think that the people in this case could probably afford some decent security.
Are you seriously claiming you need ownership of everything in a picture, to take that picture?
Not only is that a bizarre standpoint, it's not remotely mirrored by the actual LAWs. Everything in view of public property IS public property to view. Period.
If you don't want a telescope looking into your window, you need to close your blinds. Or live on a private residence with a forest between you and the nearest public property.
All this "OMG BOOGLARS" talk is nonsense too. Pictures of the fronts of houses is "all the legwork to prepare for a robbery"?? I'm no booglar my self, but I'm pretty sure "casing a joint" involves checking all the way around a residence for entry points, exit points, looking in windows to see if there's anything worth stealing, and so on. People drive down public roads seeing the fronts of houses all day every day.
Exactly. They're more than welcome to block private citizens from the roads --- IF AND ONLY IF they purchase all of the property and roads therein from the government and make it a gated community. Plenty of rich people do this - heck, even not-so-rich people do this.
How could this be modded as interesting instead of funny?
if somebody is taking pictures of your house, you walk down to the road, ask them to stop, and they do.
Tell that to Britney Spears and note her reaction.
Hm, where I come from it's considered rude to block public roads. It's also illegal, actually.
People driving down public roads looking at or taking pictures of houses is completely normal and commonplace. (eg. when looking at houses for sale)
Regardless, politeness is essentially a favor. It's doing something extraordinary to be kind to someone else. There's nothing mandatory about it. However, enforcing politeness by mob rule is rude.
What you see on Google is **PUBLIC VIEW**. It is not prohibited to take pictures of private property from a **PUBLIC PLACE**, say, like from the street.
Those hooligans who pitchforkmobbed the Google beetle (doesn't looks like a van to me) should be charged with obstruction of a public throughfare.
What is reasonable is to give people a certain level of privacy without them requiring to be in a private neighborhood.
No, that's not reasonable. "People should be able to expect privacy... in public"? I disagree entirely with that.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
There are already cameras that save geocode information, along with apps that map these pictures from the internet to their real world location. And believe me, these pictures are and will be taken from private property, OF private property.
There is no good reason to ban google from taking pictures of streets. Having publicly accessible pictures of publicly accessible views is not a big deal. It's not even a small deal. It's just plain silly.
Why is it that we are all concerned with privacy until it's Google stealing it? Sure you can take pictures from public areas but shouldn't Google have to seek permission BEFORE it takes pictures of MY house -- not the other way around. This is the same as spam, junk mail, any of that crap. Why do I have to go out of my way to keep my privacy? It might be "legal" but that doesn't make it right. I don't think Google StreetView is a good idea and considering the number of privacy nuts it seems pretty hypocritical to bash them. Though maybe their course of action wasn't the best. If Microsoft had gone on photographing peoples homes and making a huge archive online we'd have gotten our pitchforks and torches a long time ago. (Going for +5 troll...)
We Brits have made some amazing advances in quilting technology since you came.
Doesn't surprise me at all. You folks invented textile machinery to begin with - I'm glad to see an historic science being applied to this close, personal area that affects us all! Perhaps British tp will become the new standard of luxury and imported for exorbitant prices, leading to an economic revolution in the UK.
The tp industry may end up in the crapper, but it's a better economic model then the one our President's pushing now . . .
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
I wonder if we should respect the wishes of a person exercising their rights as a citizen on public property that their taxes pay for? Or is that way too crazy of a thought?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
And they aren't "idiots" - as somebody has tagged the story - they are just normal people.
There's a difference?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Plenty of public loos in London (No, I am not talking about the ones where you have to spend money to go).
Dont have a clue what you are talking about.
Have a nice day!
Why should one person pay more for an identical service rendered than another person?
Perhaps because you're not getting identical services. People who live in affluent areas typically have better schools, better hospitals, better police & fire protection, etc., etc. ad infinitum. Coming straight out the womb, having done nothing for society, someone born into affluence already has an enormous leg-up on the "rest" of us.
The way I see it you have three options. Either become one of those people, stop giving them money, or shut the hell up.
Or option 4 (available to those of us who enjoy the benefits of living in a society as opposed to the wilds of nature) you can simply change the laws. And tell the rich assholes who were only able to get rich off the backs of the culture and society they leeched from to "shut the hell up" when they complain about it.
Streetview is a convenient tool for burglars to scope out neighborhoods, since Google has already done all the legwork for them.
[Citation Really Needed]
There is absolutely nothing wrong with stopping the googlemobil.
Really? So in what countries can a person be denied access to public property while doing nothing illegal?
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?
Because you can't stop people from driving on a public street and taking pictures.
In many communities it is actually Google that is breaking local law by engaging in unlawful surveillance.
Nope. No surveillance. Not in any one area or at any group of people. Once again there is no law against me driving down a public street and taking a picture.
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.
My guess is until someone makes a law against it.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Would serve them right. Wanna see my shit, well look at this!
"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?
Yes, absolutely. Why not?
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?
If you are that paranoid, the burden of that paranoia should fall on you, not on everyone else in society. If you don't want a 10 foot wall in front of your house, maybe you should just chill out.
What Google is doing isn't wrong, but it isn't nice either.
What these villagers did isn't nice either.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That's why over here, we like to keep our guns. And it isn't just rural...in cities, a freakin pizza can get delivered quicker than the cops showing up.
The police by and large, are NOT there to protect you from crime, but to investigate and hopefully catch and prosecute the criminals AFTER the act.
It is up to you to defend yourself 99.99% of the time.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You need guns to protect yourself from Google?
We also have a law on banning "extreme sex", not that it's ever been used. It's just publicity stunts used by politicians.
This comment amuses me. Unlike most people, I have lived abroad, been to plenty of countries too, not with standing: Poland, Germany, Sweden, France, Denmark, USA etc.
In all my travels, the most controlled (police state) society I ever saw with check point spots and insane security practices was when I was in the USA - some of the post 9/11 security crap I saw in the states was plain ludicrous. I agree that the UK may have a lot of petty regulations, but the concept that they "doing as they are told" maybe right in the sense that there is very few deaths in relation to firearms (42 deaths last year), and far less murders as a whole on a statistical percentage when compared against the States (possibly due to knives not having such a dire effect.
Unlike the USA however, we don't have as much of a issue with corrupt politicians and scandals, the government isn't exactly omnipotent and many of us in the UK realize that which is why the government is heavily regulated too, in order to prevent abuse along most of the chain - which is partly what leads to some of these inane regulations we get over some ludicrous things.
That said, abuse of the system does occur, covering it up is a crime. If you've ever been caught dealing in such practices, underhanded tactics, your political career is over, period. There is no second chances, there is no remaining in the government like so many US politicians some how manage to pull off. It's obvious why many Americans fear their government and why they assume other governments cannot be trusted in the slightest.
I think compliance to law is not a bad thing, but in my opinion, you have misunderstood the problems in the UK by relating it to American issues.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Hm, where I come from it's considered rude to block public roads.
The same is true where I come from. (If you'll note, I never defended the specific actions referred to in the article.) That, however, does not excuse Google's rudeness.
People driving down public roads looking at or taking pictures of houses is completely normal and commonplace. (eg. when looking at houses for sale)
However (as many others have pointed out), what is not commonplace is posting those for the world to see, especially when taken methodically across a wide area as Street View does. Also note that people looking at houses for sale typically take pictures of... wait for it... the houses that are for sale, which is generally not only permitted but even encouraged by the owner or realtor.
I'm reminded of people kvetching that they'll never get the money they paid into Social Security back. The point is, of course, that they'll only get it back if they're horribly unfortunate. Social Security isn't a pension program, it's more like insurance against being disabled, widowed, or left poor and old. (Those Lucky Duckies!)
Similarly, members of the upper classes here must believe that taxes are, as you say, "fees for services rendered", that the only reason you're not barely scraping by is because you're a better person, and you deserve what you have. It's a comforting myth, even though it's based on ideas which range from flawed to laughably false.
Didn't we learn in the 1920s that the wealthy aren't superhuman masters of the universe? Aren't we learning that again now? To read a paean to the ridiculous idea that if I'm worth x on some measure of human quality, then Bill Gates must be worth 1000000x, to read yet another bit of gilded-age sophistry... well, it's kind of breathtaking.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You would be the Paparazzi. Haven't noticed to many of them with huge criminal records. There are some of course, but those are the ones that make the foolish mistake of trespassing or otherwise breaking the law to get their shots.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
A note to all budding burglers: there is a village full of people who have so much good stuff worth having that they were willing to chase Google out of town to stop it being seen, and it is presumably so brazenly displayed that it can be seen and assessed from the street. Some good easy pickings there...
Rowling, like any other wealthy person, benefited from society. Clearly, there's the infrastructure to produce and distribute the books, and a literate population capable of reading them... but I can't believe that you're forgetting that the wealth of the Harry Potter empire is founded entirely on the government-supported and -enforced convenient fiction of intellectual property.
In any case, the argument isn't that wealthy people shouldn't be wealthy; the argument is that they shouldn't be insanely, ludicrously, "nobody even bothers to understand numbers that big" wealthy. People haven't gotten three orders of magnitude smarter, more productive, or better in the last twenty years, but they've certainly managed to accrete wealth that seems to say that they have.
If wealth continues to rise upwards, your society ends up looking like a small group of "gated communities", containing the prisoners of addiction, surrounded by teeming shanty-town hordes of the prisoners of envy. I wouldn't want to live in such a society, as a member of either group.
So, that is why it's bad that a disproportionate share of the nation's wealth goes to a tiny slice of the very privileged. It sucks for most people, and in the end, it sucks for everyone.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Because a few vacation photos, over a hundred tourists, equates to the same thing.
Except that it doesn't equate to the same thing at all.
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.
At least not until the internets become sentient, and do it themselves...
So, you want to rob the British? There's an app for that.
I don't know about the UK, honestly, but in the US and Canada it really isn't. If you're in a public place, which is defined as anyplace you can walk into without being hassled (it most explicitly includes malls, and hotels without someone checking for door keys or similar) then you have no expectation of privacy. You have a valid argument in civil court if you want some of someone's profits which were made from a work including your likeness et cetera, but that's about it.
I'm afraid you're completely wrong: http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbc.ca%2Ftechnology%2Fstory%2F2007%2F09%2F25%2Ftech-google-streetview.html&ei=RB3WSZeWG5_wswOGvM2iCg&usg=AFQjCNHKFb-rsuFUnHdexCYPe7rQNczGpw&sig2=qsPaVW8u6vFEm46Boh9-Bw
JK Rowling followed the rules set by your society for someone who was poor at the time.
If anyone stole from you, it was your government.
Sure, she left when she was rich. If the government wants to prevent that, to attach strings to the public dole money, then they need to modify the program accordingly. Until then, "followed the rules but did something I don't like" is a pretty strange definition of "stole from me".
People looking for houses for sale take pictures thoughout neighborhoods. And of houses they like that ARENT for sale. Although, these days my wife sends me links to house pictures on Google Street View.
Posting pictures of public (and private) places on the internet is extremely common place. In 5 years most cameras will be storing geocode information with pictures too (a lot of cellphone camers and regular cameras already do this).
Even if you manage to ban Google Street view, you can search the geocode location and find the neighbors' kids' pictures of your backyard (with their friends in the foreground), as well as your front yard, the side of your house, probably the inside of your house...and so on.
A lot more worrisome than google driving down public roads, don't you think?
But even libertarians acknowledge that if something is in public view, and can be see by the human eye, there's nothing wrong with remembering what you see (either via camera, or via your human brain).
</quote>
Not defending them, but like Google and Microsoft blurring out military installations, by giving Street View, you give the criminals an extra tool to remain unseen until they strike. Used to be they'd have to canvas a neighborhood before making their strike, and giving the police several incidents to catch them beforehand. Now you eliminate that. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
<quote>
You have a right to protest, but you don't have a right to block a public street. That's a crime and every one of those persons should be jailed for one night. If they wanted to protest they should have held a gigantic sign in front of their home that read "google sucks pussy" or something similar. Do it legally.
</quote>
Do it legally. I can whole-heartedly agree with that. What if the driver panicked and flattened someone? What then? Think, morons! [not the poster, the protestors].
G'day
"In 2001, Rowling purchased a luxurious nineteenth-century estate house, Killiechassie House, on the banks of the River Tay, near Aberfeldy, in Perth and Kinross, Scotland.[94] Rowling also owns a home in Merchiston, Edinburgh, and a £4.5 million ($9 million) Georgian house in Kensington, West London,[95] on a street with 24-hour security.[96]"
"In addition, the 2008 Sunday Times Rich List named Rowling the 144th richest person in Britain.[5]"
"In March 2008, Rowling revealed in interview that she had returned to writing in Edinburgh cafés"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jk_rowling#Personal_life
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?
Do you not pay property tax in your part of the world? 2 identical houses in different parts of the city pay substantially different taxes for services rendered. We all get police, fire, school etc but I don't pay the same as someone that lives in a substantially more populous area because they need money to run the city and have less people paying taxes, so whether you believe we should all pay the same for the same service, its simply not reality.
I wonder if this angry mob was caught on CCTV?
I doubt it; CCTV is common in the big cities but almost unheard of anywhere else - unless you count speed cameras, but they only take pictures of cars that trip their speed detectors.
The chances that these people were caught on CCTV is effectively zero.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Really? You find it staggering? It made you stagger? I find your oversensitivity staggering.
The last time that happened to me, I was in the WRONG part of Los Angeles. When they saw that I was mashing the throttle instead of the brake, they jumped the fuck out of my path and saved me the trouble of opening up with the Browning Auto-5 that I had in my other hand. Twits.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Care to tell us who JK Rowling stole from?
Actually I remember someone pointed out that the similarities of plot arc Harry Potter and Naruto.
Orochimaru... Vandervolt... The 3rd Hokage... Dumbledorf! It all made sense!
And Naruto is vaguely based off real Japanese mythos...
And notice how both Naruto the comic and Harry Potter came out both in 1997!
And then I realized that there is a strong possibility that HK Rowling stole from the Naruto creators!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"Why should one person pay more for an identical service rendered than another person? "
Taxes are used to keep society and civilization moving along.
In all practicality, that means not everyone will pay the same.
Comparing it to an oil change is simple creating a strawman.
They didn't keep Google out, the intimidated someone going about there legal business. That's the crime.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Posting pictures of public (and private) places on the internet is extremely common place. In 5 years most cameras will be storing geocode information with pictures too (a lot of cellphone camers and regular cameras already do this). [...] A lot more worrisome than google driving down public roads, don't you think?
Indeed, a most worrisome trend. Hopefully people will begin having serious discussions on the merits and demerits of this sort of technology, rather than its proponents merely slapping it in others' faces without so much as a by-your-leave.
A million dollars isn't rich. I wonder if you have the copyright to the work you are selling in cafepress...
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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.
And whats to stop them from driving down the street your house is on and doing the same thing? What if they know the area and don't need to check it out? You are talking about a problem of discrimination that is not solved by not allowing Google to take pictures of residential streets for Streetview.
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.
If you want to conceal the side of your property facing a public street, then get a fence. Your neighborhood could also organize to make the street privately maintained and gated. You have given no justifiable reason to restrict another entity's rights.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
2) If my wife calls me and says she is lost, if I can get Google Street up, I can get a fair sense of what she is seeing once I have an intersection. Much, much better than guiding someone around over the phone using a map.
Mod this shit up, yo!
Streetview is especially useful when you're in a big city other than your own - rows and rows of skyscrapers and highrises can all blend in and obscure the actual street and location you're looking for, but Streetview allows you to look around and pick a landmark as an identifier. When I first saw it demoed on mobile devices, I was like "Why the fuck would I want to see (what is essentially) a Power Point presentation of city blocks on my phone?", but one set of wonky directions from my GPS provided an opportunity for Streetview to prove its usefulness.
I can't speak to the usefulness of the service to criminals, but I can definitely find legitimate purpose in it.
"You and your third dimension."
so you're saying that burglars case prospective targets by photographing only the fronts of houses in low resolution? I know the vast majority of burglars are idiots but ones intelligent enough to case a house would likely scope out every access point/security feature of the house. Google may "publicize" houses in wealthy neighborhoods but guaranteed people who are looking for them have already spotted them.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
on the plus side, she has put more money into your economy then she took out.
But yes, that is a slimy thing to do; bail on the people that helped you when you don't need them anymore.
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There's just something a bit odd in the juxtaposition of "swish" and "menacingly" in the same sentence...
I don't think there's any useful information a robber can garner from Streetview that wouldn't be immediately available from a drive-by.
What time was the photo taken in Streetview? The robber has no clue. So there's no way to use it to tell if the occupants are at home on a Wednesday morning vs a Saturday morning(A robber can reasonably assume that people are more likely to be at work in the morning and at home at night).
If they drive past the house and look at the driveway, they know what day it is, what time of day it is, and whether or not you're home(by the car in the driveway). Considerably more useful than streetview. They don't need to sit around and lurk to gain more information than they could with streetview. They can drive past like any other car in the neighborhood.
Streetview isn't snapshotting your trenches, barbed wire, and turret emplacements. It's windows, doors, and perhaps a fence that they'd see as soon as they pull up. They don't need to devise some master-plan with a crack team of 11 professionals. They run over, hop the fence if there is one, and kick the back-door in(the door NOT visible from streetview). Or kick the side door. Or kick the front door. Or smash a ground-level window. They can't tell which will work best from streetview, they need to actually be there smashing at things till it works. (Smashing through gets them in and out faster than suspiciously hovering over a lock attempting to pick it).
I really don't see how Streetview assists a burglar in any way.
You're correct. If the drive had a few guns, he could have shot a few people and then gone about his business.
You did mean the driver, right? he was the one going about his legal business and then attacked by these people.
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No kidding. This ridiculous stand-off gave them more notoriety – and bad public image – than Google Street View ever could have. Every thief in the region is going to hear about them now, and in particular, how especially rich they feel like they are.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
because I actually like being able to tour parts of the country, and world for that matter, that I haven't been to. Before applying to a graduate school in Miami I looked around the campus in street view because it is pretty expensive to fly down just for a tour.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
hm, could have swore I replied to the parent comment.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Its amazing how fast a mob disperses when you "defend your personal space" up one side of their brand new Mercedes and down the other.
How would you compensate for the tilt in the camera, though?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Counter-example: There are public streets in my city from which, if you are noticed taking pictures in a certain direction, it will result in calling 911 and immediately contacting the JTTF.
If the responding officers determined that you had innocuous motives, I suppose they'd probably merely confiscate your film and let you go.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Q. What do you think of English toilet paper?
A. Pretty rough, on the whole.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
They're fractions of pennies, nobody will miss them.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
"Hate the government school because it's falling-apart and doesn't teach anything? Tough."
Yeah, tough. I mean it's not like you can get involved in the government~
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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.
Actually, there are people working on that.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
"Flats" they called it! I remember it from school - it's like trying to wipe yer arse on a page from the colour supplement, and talk about zero friction, if you wipe too fast it can spread a shit streak right up to yer shoulder blades!
Thankfully you don't tend to see that stuff about much anymore - not only was it 100% shit resistant but I suspect as the stuff was plastic coated it probably didn't degrade to fast at the sewage farm! Actually, they probably fished the sheets out, hosed 'em down and folded 'em back up for re-sale!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
But is IS OK to take pictures of public things and post them on the internet, regardless of the size of the company that's doing it.
Streetview is not going to be an aid to burglary. Burglaries are almost always people near by, and the will drive or walk down a street to choose a target. A static picture taken weeks ago is of no help at all to someone the burgles.
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All houses are tagarts and nothing is Burglar proof, just a little more resistant. Securing hourses really doesn't stop someone from breaking in, it just creates peace of mind and validates insurance claims.
If the building is privately owned then maybe not. Imagine that you own a house and work in the yard that is visible from the street, and thousands of tourists come and take pictures of you and your house and your family as you do things around the house. I'm sure pretty soon you'd wish that they all go away because they take your privacy away from you.
The fact that you are uncomfortable coming to terms with the fact that your privacy when outdoors in your front lawn is only an illusion is irrelevant.
And in my case, I would open up a stand and sell coffee and chips.
"...probably won't like it, ..."
irrelevant. It doesn't take away their right to use the public road.
"but we haven't seen or heard about any burglars using that for preparations to a crime. "
Static pictures weeks, if not years old, are of no use to burglars, and have nothing to do with the location a burglar chooses.
"To offer yet another analogy,..."
by analogy, you clearly mean strawman. A picture is one quick moment in time, a audio recording is not.
"do we, people of town X, want to allow infinite number of strangers to invisibly walk our streets, look into our gardens and see who is where?"
WRONG. this is more correct:
do we, people of town X, want to allow infinite number of strangers to invisibly walk our streets, look into our gardens and see who is where at DURING THE EXACT SAME 1/25th of a second?
You do know that streetview is a FUCKING PHOTOGRAPH AND NOT A CONSTANT RUNNING VIDEO, RIGHT?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No the will not use streetview because the data isn't recent enough..as in NOW.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
yes, but it is not your right to stop others from doing so.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We ahve a social contract, they are called curtains.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"One aspect of politeness is voluntarily refraining from an act which disturbs others..."
and that has lead us to a world were people can claim anything is offensive and get people in trouble.
No, just becasue someone doesn't like it isn't good enough anymore.
You needs a good reason, and these people didn't provide one.
I would argue what they are doing is harmful to them, in the long run. That would be a different conversation.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It is amazingly helpful for house-shopping, especially if you're moving from somewhere far away and your time in the target city is limited.
And if the government were to repeal all criminal law, we'd have no criminals at all. But that would hardly be a good idea.
You are legally entitled to defend yourself, but this must be done proportionately. Shooting a fleeing kid in the back is not proportionate self-defence. Revenge is not proportional self-defense. Where is the intelligence in now allowing vastly disproportionate responses to perceived attempts at crime? Well if you honestly can't see it, I'm not going to be able to point it out to you.
Where is the line drawn? You seem to be implying that PARTIAL information is okay but complete information is not. At what point does partial turn into complete, for your purposes? And why the difference? Is a massive photo correlation project that is 1% complete better or worse than one that is 10% complete? Now how about 99%? 80%? 50%?
The line is nearly impossible to define accurately (resolution should be included in any good definition, as should time since the picture was taken), let alone compare against when dealing with massive user-generated databases (like Flickr, not Google).
I'm sorry you don't feel that the answer is helpful, but I myself cannot see any other acceptable answer, as "I don't like that, I know it's legal but quit it" is unacceptable to me, for what should be obvious reasons. I also think it is unacceptably restricting to disallow photos of people's houses from public viewpoints.
Should it honestly be illegal to stitch a bunch of legally taken photos together? I know algorithms have been made illegal in the past, but that is a trend I would seriously like to curtail.
I honestly believe that the only real answer to this question is "don't do things in public that you would like to keep private". That seems to be a good rule to live by in general.
OK, a car with a monster camera on the roof is hardly "covert", but still. Want to research the best getaway route? Need to find somewhere to be able to park a car so you can swap motors?
I'm not sure about this whole Google Views thing. I went and found my house and the muppets decided not to obscure my car's licence plate so I asked them politely to remove my house, and they have done so - so good on 'em. I just think they should have asked first! Much in the same way as you should ask people in the street before you photograph them!
I rather like the idea of the "Google Sucks Balls" poster idea though!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
As one locksmith told me: "Locks are there to keep your peace of mind. It's an illusion. And there is nothing a person can't get into without a little determination. The alarms are there to inform someone of an illegal entry, post factum, and nothing else. "
I live in a gated community yet somehow my house is still on Street View...
And you need a complete step-by-step photo walkthru down every residential side street?
You've obviously never driven in England.
Unlike the US where things were planned out from the start, and the rest of Europe that got roto-tilled in two major wars, England's urban roadways are still pretty much designed like someone tossed a bunch of sticks into the air and used the resulting jumble as a map plan.
Rural roadways are even worse, and the older towns still tend to be quite bendy-twisty. If you're a resident, you call it "charm", but if you're a visitor or a delivery person, you call it bloody infuriating.
[End Of Line]
Nor is it your "right" to stop others from taking photographs.
See how this is circular?
Personally, I don't think that people who live on a public street have a reasonable expectation that their house not be photographed - especially at low resolution. Inside their house, they have a reasonable expectation of privacy - and someone made a good point that the Google camera is high enough to see over fences and such, so that may be a very good point... but simply having the front of your house photographed should not be an issue.
Do you have a right to disagree? Certainly! That's what the democratic process is about. Mobs of people surrounding the camera car for doing something perfectly legal, on the other hand, is vigilantism and should not be considered acceptable, IMHO.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I would argue against your assertion that StreetView in residential areas is of little value. I have been shopping for a house for the past few months and when its available, StreetView is a great tool for viewing the neighborhood. It lets you get a feel for whether or not a property is worth viewing in person, much more so than the Real Estate agents perfectly angled/cropped pictures of the house.
That's funny, I'd love to see where that's defined in LAW. Link please.
I think I've figured out your problem, at least in regard to this issue. You haven't realized that `what is acceptable' and `what is legal' are two very different things. Acceptable varies from person to person. Legal (which could be seen as `things not deemed so unacceptable as to be prohibited by law') may vary from place to place to some degree, but it generally not up to individuals (except for judges who make rulings based on the law, of course.)
My statement was not about law, it was more about what `plainly visible' meant.
In any event, the law with regards to photography has been pretty well worked out in the actual laws and in the court rulings that followed. Read up on it (at least that's accurate for the US, anyways, I'm not talking about other countries, and yes I realized the incident mentioned in /. was in the UK.) You are certainly welcome to believe that the law hasn't caught up to technology, and there's truth to that, but either way, if it's not illegal, it's not illegal -- no matter what *you* think.
Now, you may be right that if the police want to charge you, they'll find *something*, but that still doesn't make something that's not illegal illegal.
Somehow you think there's a major difference between driving slowly with a with a bunch of high-resolution digital cameras and staying still with one. I'd love to see the court ruling that said this.
You figured that all out about me based simply on the idea that if you need a telescope to see it it's not plainly visible? Impressive. In any event, what is legal has generally been worked out by the law and court cases is this --
If you want to find the law/court cases that led up to this, fee free -- I don't feel the need.
The argument being made here is like making the argument that just beacuse taking one "free" newspaper is legal, driving around and taking ALL the free newpapers in the city is legal.
Bad analogy, for several reasons. One, you've described something that's probably legal (certainly, it would be difficult to charge somebody with theft of something that was given away, though it's possible that there are specific laws in certain areas that cover this very scenario, perhaps dealing more with denying the use of the paper to others rather than theft?) Two, you're not taking anything but pictures. A better analogy would be to go around taking pictures of all the free newspaper kiosks.
Just because it's considered generally acceptable to take one picture from a car for your own use, does not make it acceptable to take as many pictures as you want of a specific target for commerical use.
Again, the law regarding photography is well worked out. You may not think something is *acceptable*, but for now, what google is doing is *legal*, and it's not just because google is a big company.
Taxes are effectively fees for services rendered. Why should one person pay more for an identical service rendered than another person?
Because the community you live in (be it a village, county, province or nation-state) isn't a business. For all intents and purposes it is a co-operative. Since the dawn of civilization, co-operatives have generally arranged themselves around a model of "pay (or contribute) what you can afford." The modern nation state has formalized this in the form of a sliding scale of taxes, but the same rules that have been around for 20,000 years still ring basically true.
Taxes are effectively fees for services rendered.
Taxes are effectively armed robbery at the coercion of state. If you disagree, stop paying your taxes. You will eventually be met by armed agents of the state.
Bring back Sirius Punk!
No, it still doesn't make any sense. Going out in public dressed in a way that shows off the titties means that someone else may damn well be looking the whole time. Too bad. The black gown is the only reasonable solution, because if you expect me to avert my eyes, you're gonna have to commit some violence to make it happen, and that is very quickly going to get out of hand.
I hope you get it now, but I know you don't.
If everyone used Flickr and geotagged their photos, or if someone built a search engine to look over Flickr and all similar services by geotagging, would you object to that? At some point, wouldn't the Flickr solution turn out to be FAR MORE of a privacy invasion than Google Street?
Or is it just that they aren't so systematic about this? Bazar is OK, cathederal is not? Crowdsourcing is good, company doing it themselves is not?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Yes. Well put. Of course they don't have to drive by now, so there's one less opportunity for people (locals) to see an "odd" car and someone taking pictures, or spending an inordinantly long time examining the building and gardens.
OK ... Page's Lane, Haringey (near Crouch End) in London, picked at random I might add. Up the road a bit (near No 35 apparently) is a nice looking blue car (Reg RX55(or 6?) WH? - now aren't they supposed to obscure those?) parked at the side of the street. Notice the woodlands over the low fence as somewhere nice to be able to hide before, and potentially escape after.
A couple of houses up ... No41 ... looks like an alarm box on the house (has IPS or 1PS on it - I wonder if it's http://www.ips-security.co.uk/?) - the house next door has one too, but it's obscured by plants, though I'd bet it'd be recognisable to someone who was "interested" in burglar alarms. This house also has a loft conversion and some handy pipes for climbing up to what looks like a toilet window with an extractor built into the glass - I dunno? Is that easier to break? Next door (on the corner of a cul-de-sac, so don't drive off that way!) Oh yes, corner plot means easier to get into the back garden, also with a loft conversion, and they have Sky (satellite dish on the wall!). Oh look. One of those nice little new Fiats. Opposite corner of cul-de-sac, hey look, there's a window open (two actually!) just near a drain pipe. I wonder if they always leave it open. Another window open at the back (near where the post box is if anyone's following). Next houses - aha, more burglar alarms (Capstan Security as it 'appens), and an un-named one on the next house. Last house has one too ...can't quite read it but again, if you were in this business you'd recognise the logo fo' shizzle!
OK ... I'm bored now, but no one knows I've been snooping. I might decide this was worth a drive by at certain times to see who's about, or even decide it's a shit hole and look elsewhere, but I've not had to move and no one knows!
Anyway, I'm just a bit uncomfortable with it all.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
I'm sorry you don't feel that the answer is helpful, but I myself cannot see any other acceptable answer, as "I don't like that, I know it's legal but quit it" is unacceptable to me, for what should be obvious reasons
I disagree with that statement. Certainly there are many legal things where we can organize resistance. Certainly if one says "I know the MPAA's insistance on stronger DRM is legal, but I don't like it, so I think we should boycott them and stop seeing movies" is quite reasonable.
What I have a problem with is mob rule here though. There are plenty of ways of handling disagreements about what is tasteful or acceptable as a matter of social contract which don't involve mob rule.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Isn't that where TP usually ends up anyway?
(I'll be here all week. Try the veal.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
However we never agreed to allow our property to be systematically photographed and geotagged for inclusion in some corporations for profit database, and for it to be indexed and published online.
You sound like a DRM lawyer. You have written: "systematically photographed and geotagged for inclusion in some corporations for profit database" about 14 times in this one thread. Are these rules specific for a reason?
But let's say you get a law passed that has those exact words, since that means something to you...
What if I randomly photographed houses instead of systematically capturing them?
What if I am not a corporation, but instead a privately owned company?
What if I don't charge people for the pictures?
What if I don't put them in a database, but just provide links to all the pictures I took for your neighborhood in a folder with your city name?
Can't you just accept that your house is public?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It isn't.
There's four places I can go to take care of this. There's the Curtain hut, that's on third.
There's Curtains-R-Us, that's on third too. You got Close-your-slats.
Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the curtain complex on third.
I was being tongue in cheek. Shame on me for not using an ~
I can draw a difference between someone watching and someone taking a snap shot as they drive by.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, I find it disturbing that people don't listen to reason. That they fail to listen to someone explain the benefits. I find it disturbing that its considered polite to halt progress because somebody is ignorant about the situation.
AS a member of the public I don't ahve a [problem with this, and neither does most of the public.
So clearly it isn't an abuse.
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How about we restrict Google Street from "Affluent neighborhoods" so burglers don;t know where to go?
Of course in this case they can find areas where Google Street View is not available and that would narrow their searches considerably, right?
Sort of like bluring Google Satellite around "high value" terrorist targets as it makes a search for such targets a great deal simpler!
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Life is always fair.
Newton showed us that...of course, fair doesn't mean it goes your way.
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Hey ... you know you could almost certainly apply that to all the Security Theatre you have to go through to board a 'plane these days, the difference being that the Security Theatre Operatives wouldn't be so free with the information as your locksmith chap!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
If you had paid as much for your living arrangements then you would bloody well expect some perks, too.
Well of course they do. That's what money is for, you silly bugger!
You think they acquire all that money just so they can jump up and down on it like Scrooge McDuck? Get a clue.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
Yep. You'd think "affluent" people would have availed themselves of the opportunity to learn some old chinese wisdom, considering it's been available and respected for ~2500 years now:
"...If you do not value rare treasures, you will stop others from stealing. ...
Get rid of cleverness and abandon profit, and thieves and gangsters will not exist..."
So far, they've succeed in having articles published saying that their town is an affluent area with lots of stuff worth stealing. Good job, rich dudes.
England, apparently. The Police prevented the protestors from leaving the City during the G20 march a day or so ago. No one was allowed to leave for several hours. Now I don't know about you, but that would certainly frost my shorts, and I can see how that would annoy some of the hotheads into scuffles with the cops. How are the cops allowed to detain hundreds/thousands of innocent people for 5 or 6 hours without anyone thinking it's a bad thing?
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
All of which is crap. You're correct, but it is wrong.
However, if you haven't registered your house, there isn't much you can do about it. IN the US. Notice people still take pictures of celebrities homes.
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Don't want interlopers driving through your community? Make it gated and pay for your own maintenance instead of expecting the local government to take care of it for you.
I'm not sure if there's such a thing as gated communities in the UK, or even if such a thing is allowed. Anyone...?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
If you enjoy living in a society with more dangerous criminals on the street because there is no other means for them to get out of their situation, then be my guest and bitch and moan about a progressive tax system. Yes, some people don't know how to spend their money. But I'd rather have them spend government money poorly, then poorly spending the money they got from me after they beat the shit out of me and put a gun to my face.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Maybe they live in another city. Maybe they judge that the cost of performing that check is not worth it. Maybe it doesn't even occur to them to check out the neighborhood except for the fact that Google makes it trivial for them to do so, without leaving their chairs.
Yes, I am aware that it is counterintuitive to a lot of people that what Google should be restricted* from doing in the large scale is something that anybody is allowed to do in a small scale. Nobody's arguing that it should be forbidden to take a photo of somebody's house. The argument is that systematically taking a full-coverage photo set of every street and every house amounts to systematic surveillance of the whole population, and that putting that geo-tagged database online amounts to indiscriminate disclosure of facts about others.
*And when I say "restricted," I don't necessarily mean "prohibited." I am perfectly willing to consider relatively narrow restrictions that protect people's privacy.
I never claimed that restricting Street View would solve the problem. My claim is that its existence aggravates problems we already have, in countless, unexpected ways.
Or, as an alternative, my neighborhood could organize to change the laws to forbid Google from freely disseminating the results of their systematic surveillance of our community. Basically, I don't think Google has the right to do that, and that the law, which was written before this problem came into being, needs to change to reflect this (just like the law has needed to change for new problems like upskirt photography and texting while driving).
Are you adequate?
And My Good Sir vs I demand satisfaction.
I was going for the stereotype of somewhat effete but vicious and nationalistic upper class English types, like in a Mel Gibson film.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I don't think it's illegal anywhere to use the sidewalk as a public restroom, but you might get ticketed for public exposure.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
You have written: "systematically photographed and geotagged for inclusion in some corporations for profit database" about 14 times in this one thread. Are these rules specific for a reason?
No. They serve to illustrate the opposite end of the continuum from 'random vacation photos'.
What if I ... [ intermediate weasel point on the continuum ]
Good question. I illustrated the far end of the continuum. Its not really surprising that issues might arise before one reaches it.
Can't you just accept that your house is public?
Can't you just accept that simply because something is public, that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it?
You can drive on a public road but you can't pitch a tent on one.
You can take a picture of a tree in a public park at will, but you can't film a blockbuster movie there without all kinds of permits.
You can pick blueberries off the bushes in a public park for a snack, but you can't open a jam business harvesting those same bushes.
Why do you find it so unacceptable that there should be a reasonable limit on what you can do with images of private property you can see from public property. Nobody is trying to saying you aren't allowed to look. Nobody is even saying you can't take photos. What people are saying is that perhaps you shouldn't be allowed to harvest them on a massive systematic scale... In precisely the same way you are allowed to eat blueberries as you wander through the park, but at the same time you aren't allowed to hire a berry picking team to systematically harvest them to make jam.
I happen to be shopping for a house. I find possible matches via a realty site, and then find the house on google maps. I find it really handy to see an actual photo of the house. I can see the neighborhood, the nearby houses, and the general layout of the street and land. I find this really helpful, because often it saves me from driving out and wasting my time.
...security by obscurity doesn't work :-/
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Brilliant. You should have logged in; it's a shame you get no credit for this...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
In the UK, you won't have the right to use lethal force, because that would be murder.
We have the concept of "reasonable force": shooting somebody in the back as he's running away is not reasonable force, and it's not "protecting yourself".
Oh, how convenient: a theory about God that doesn't involve looking through a telescope.
>>>I'm not sure how I feel about that.
I know exactly how I feel about it - I don't care. Knocking over a house isn't that difficult that it requires studying google images to plan it. It's ridiculously easy - Wear a uniform. Show up in the middle of the day. Walk towards the electrical meter as if you are checking it. Smash window in rear door; walk in; grab diamonds in woman's bedroom. Walk out.
Done.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The govt has a great deal of inertia. It takes a lot of people sacrificing a lot of time to actually change course once the arc has been plotted.
Take education: The US is in the top ten spenders per child, but not a top ten educator by any means. There have been programs that have shown a decrease in cost AND an increase in performance on the part of students. (Some voucher programs.)
To be able to institute a voucher program you will need to overcome the teacher's unions and the voters that are too ignorant to know what they are voting about.
The cost of govt is always more onerous than that of a corporation... if only we could agree on what the govt should be doing.
You can, in fact, pitch a tent in the middle of the road. That is, if you are not ticketed or arrested for j-walking or constructing a building in a public space.
If I'm not mistaken, most plant life in a "public" park is protected by federal law and most parkland is not "public", but protected land owned by the government so it would be stealing. Also, I don't believe it is illegal to take pictures of a tree, or film it for a documentary. The reason you have to get a permit is for public safety and control. The director wouldn't want some random person walking through the scene and in order to keep that from happening, they have to cordon off a section of the park.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
>>>You did mean the driver, right? he was the one going about his legal business and then attacked by these people.
He wasn't actually attacked, so no there isn't justification to start shooting. If I had been him, since I'm not in any hurry, I would have simply called the police and reported an illegal blockage of a public street. After about an hour the police would have removed the blockade, and I would have been let through to continue my drive.
Guns are only necessary when time is limited - like if someone's about to stab you. You don't have time to wait for the cops, so you use a weapon to defend yourself from imminent death.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And that makes you better than everyone else who stuggles to survive how, exactly?
The fact is, human work is human work, and money is nothing but token for that work. Excluding a few immature people who still have to realise the economic pressures they're under, most people work pretty hard. For the same hours, we should all earn the same. If you earn much more than someone else for an hours' work, then yes, you're stealing it, even if you don't realise that. That's exactly why the world is in financial melt-down right now: because people have been imagining that they've made money, when in fact, they've made shit up.
>>>>>"Hate the government school because it's falling-apart and doesn't teach anything? Tough."
>>Yeah, tough. I mean it's not like you can get involved in the government~
Yeah it's not like politicians can listen to their constituents- I've been trying to stop this "Don't flunk students because it hurts their feelings" nonsense for over ten years, and it's not done any good. Politicians don't listen. Why should they? Even if the "customer" is unhappy, they still have a monopoly on the money.
This is why corporations usually are better. As I said in my example, if you don't like GM you can buy from dozens of other car makers. Imagine if we had the same power at the school level - instead of wasting ten years of my life being ignored by my politicians, I could have just switched to a better school. It's a Pro-Choice solution.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So what about tourists taking photos on vacation? Do they have the right to take photos of interesting buildings?
Depends on the Building in question. For instance, night time photos of the Eiffel Tower are under copyright. From Wikipedia:
Images of the tower have long been in the public domain; however, in 2003 SNTE (Société nouvelle d'exploitation de la tour Eiffel) installed a new lighting display on the tower. The effect was to put any night-time image of the tower and its lighting display under copyright. As a result, it was no longer legal to publish contemporary photographs of the tower at night without permission in some countries.
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
But that only affects publication in some countries that include copyright protections for buildings.
It doesn't stop a tourist from the US from taking such pictures and publishing them, distributing them worldwide, for example.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
>>>A million dollars isn't rich.
I agree, but according to the Democrats anyone who earns more than $80,000 a year is "rich" and therefore should be taxed at a much higher rate. I fit into that category. If you disagree with their assessment, take it up with them.
>>>I wonder if you have the copyright to the work you are selling in cafepress
I don't normally like to insult people, but I'm sorry - this is an incredibly stupid remark. First off, it's not "my" work. It's J.Michael Straczynski's work and second, yes he most certainly has the copyright on his OWN creations and can sell them for profit.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>And that makes you better than everyone else who stuggles to survive how, exactly?
Strawman argument. I never said that. I was refuting the false claim by the previous poster that "you can't get that kind of rich without being a crook". Learn how to read the messages and follow the conversation.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The fact that you are uncomfortable coming to terms with the fact that your privacy when outdoors in your front lawn is only an illusion is irrelevant.
I have ALWAYS assumed that there is no privacy in one's front lawn. One's fenced (with an 8ft fence) back yard is a different matter though.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The story had left out that google was using telescopes and following people. No wonder they were chased out.
>>>For the same hours, we should all earn the same.
Bullshit. Someone who dropped-out in 8th grade and flips burgers all day does NOT deserve to be paid the same amount as someone with ~20 years of education and does surgeries to save lives. The second person deserves more pay simply because he spent 2.5 times more time in school gaining more knowledge. Also because if he screws-up, someone dies so it's a higher responsibility job. And finally because he has a skill that's extremely rare. (Which is ultimately what sets wages - rarity of talent.)
Yes I know I used extreme examples, but your assertion that everyone should get equal pay is also extreme. It's simply not logical.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Can you provide me an address of such a building? It would be interesting to see if it is already up on Google Street.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What takes more time? Driving around a neighborhood or virtually cruising it on Google Street?
My experience doing virtual walkthroughs of routes I was going to drive is that it always takes at least 5x longer to go through the same info on Google Street. Really, if you are going to spend an hour casing out a neighborhood, you are going to do it by car, not by Google Street.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
it's the sparks from the flint in their toilet paper
I take it you have buns of steel, then?
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
Shove it. I got "rich" from working my ass off in college, earning three fucking degrees, working my ass off at work, and most importantly saving every penny I earn until I had a million dollars. So shove your "you must be a crook" attitude up your shit-filled ass.
Don't sugarcoat it, man.
Light the blue touch-paper and retire immediately.
I'll have to visit this neighborhood with my crowbar and ski mask. By making a scene they drew the attention of the media, which has plastered this all over for any criminal to see. So I suspect their crime rate will go up more than if they had been quiet.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
In perspective, the power-grabs of Bush Administration pale in comparison with those by some of the earlier war-time Presidents, such as Roosevelt, on whose watch a few American citizens were not just locked up on a brig without trial, but simply killed — by a foreign (British) agency. This was, actually, before the US even entered the war and while relations with Germany were still legal — even if hated by the Brits. And yet, that same FDR — who lied to Americans and Congress to gauge the country towards war (that nearly 80% of Americans opposed at the time) — is judged by the History as a Nazi-defeating hero and his abuses of power (such as the infamous detainment of tens of thousands Japanese-Americans — conditions in their "war relocation camps" were worse, than those of Guantanamo, where only a several hundred people were ever housed).
Further back into time, an even greater hero — Abe Lincoln — has not only resorted to military force to keep Confederates inside the US (against their will), but gone so far as to suspend Habeas Corpus, and not just to "enemy combatants"(as Bush did), but to the supposed fellow Americans, who happened to disagree with him. And then he allowed his military to get away with the kind of atrocities against civilians (such as in Athens, Alabama), that would shock even the Marines, who fought in Haditha and Falluja...
But, I guess, all this is outside the Public School curriculum, which is written by people, who can not imagine an evil greater, than G.W. Bush...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Well, we can do this to Google. Why can't we do this to the Government?
"In the end, the concern over the issue far outweighs the benefit."
And what is the benefit? And who is to decide whether or not it exceeds my right to a secure environment at home? This greater good shit doesn't fly with me, because the public is not being consulted. Did Google ASK to image the residences? Did they ask opinions? No. They just fucking do it.
What it does is provide the ability to "case the joint" without the usual pitfalls of doing so.
In our neighborhood, if someone that doesn't live here comes by and begins looking at everyone's houses, they are noticed. If they seem suspicious, they are noticed.
Having the ability to view every residence from afar completely removes this risk of being noticed. Simply being noticed is often the only thing that prevents them from burglarizing a residence. That opportunity to notice a thief before the crime takes place is often the ONLY defense against burglaries.
But I guess you think that YOUR right to view anything you please is more important then the security of someones residence.
I think you're missing the broader concern here. WHERE DOES IT STOP? Where does the public's right to know end, and my privacy begin? The line IS being blurred here, and all in the name of making money for some corporation.
I wonder if the residences of Google employees will be viewable as well? I'm quite interested in viewing them. So much so, that I do not care what they think about it. But really, I just want to see what kind of flowers they are growing...
Okay, I wish I would get a blowjob every day. I also wish I would get a million dollar a year salary. Why aren't people respecting my wishes?
These people's wishes are unreasonable. I'm all for privacy, but the fact of the matter is that the taxes that go to construct and maintain those roads and sidewalks are paid for by *everyone* (unless I'm missing something here, and they are fully funded by the people in this so-called "respectable" community). If they don't like people driving around taking pictures, they can fence off their private property, pay for their own roads and sidewalks, and *then* we can have a discussion about their "wishes". There does need to be a balance between public and private; for example, if someone were coming up to their houses and taking photographs through their windows, that would be a true invasion of privacy. Taking photographs from public roads is not an "invasion of privacy", unless it involves a high powered lens.
I hope the Streisand effect goes into overdrive on these selfish idiots (and yes, they are idiots) and they see a sharp rise in burglaries.
Nathan's blog
I thoroughly agree that people should have the right to take photos in public places.
But Google is NOT a person. They are an advertising company. The photos in question are being taken for commercial purposes (don't kid yourself by saying that maps is free), and commercial photography can and should be regulated to ensure that it is done in a way that is safe, sane, and not exploitative.
Commercial photography typically requires a film permit, which allows local authorities to review your plans and ensure that public safety and convenience are not going to be affected. You must also obtain photo releases from anyone your photograph, whether they are in a public place or not, if you decide to use their likeness in the finished work.
We like to give Google a pass on this stuff because maps and street view are so damn useful, but they really need to obtain permits and releases like any other commercial photographer.
This is England. Papers do not get delivered to sit in your driveway. We have weather here; a paper on a driveway ceases to be a readable publication and becomes litter in a matter of seconds.
What sort of delivery service throws your goods on the ground anyway?
Plus of course most British homes don't have a driveway (although houses of affluent people generally do).
Hate the government school because it's falling-apart and doesn't teach anything? Tough.
That one's easy to deal with.
Homeschool. It's what my parents did, and I'm quite grateful they did. Instead of spending twelve years of my life in an institutionalized Lord of the Flies, I got a good education. Just as important (or maybe more so), I developed incredibly close relationships with my family.
Private school would probably be better, too. Not as good as homeschooling, imo, but still probably an improvement over US public schools.
Obviously, if you yourself are a school student, it might be hard to get homeschooled, but it might still be possible. By the time I reached high school, I was pretty much self-educating, while my parents spent most of their effort on my younger siblings. If a kid is old enough to decide he wants to be homeschooled, he's probably old enough to teach himself, and most parents would probably be willing to help him with it when necessary.
You have *tons* of choice in whether or not you use the insanity which is the American public school or not. Don't pretend otherwise.
Granted, you'll still have to help pay for the system, but you don't have to be in it.
"Oh, I like geeks way better than I like humans." - Mari Sarris
What's reasonable is people not wishing to have photographic records of their private moments and private properties posted on Google without their permission. What is the purpose of Street View? Is the purpose to have a photo of every front door and every backyard posted on the Internet? No, the goal - according to Google anyway - is to provide driving directions. Now, who in the world needs to see a photo of me sunbathing on my deck to get from point "A" to point "B"? Street View is unnecessarily detailed for the stated purpose. Thus, Google is either throwing money to the wind collecting useless information, or it has reasons other than those it made public. Take your pick.
Okay, so someone somewhere gets upset anytime someone else pees standing up. I guess I should stop peeing standing up, right? If someone gets bent out of shape from someone else's actions, and those actions do not cause any harm, then that's the upset person's problem. People can't control other people's feelings, therefore no one should be responsible for other people's feelings. We can argue over "harm" if you like, but I'm assuming since you've already jumped to "politeness" (a subjective word if there ever was one), you can't prove any harm in this case. I certainly see no harm here.
Nathan's blog
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."
And of course, my HOA won't allow that, so it isn't an option.
What's reasonable is people not wishing to have photographic records of their private moments and private properties posted on Google without their permission. What is the purpose of Street View?
I'm all for that. But property that's viewable from public streets isn't THAT private. And you're mistaken if you think your moment is private when you have it out in public.
Is the purpose to have a photo of every front door and every backyard posted on the Internet?
Do they have a picture of your backyard? They don't have a picture of mine. They do, though, have a picture of my front door. And they have a picture of my roof. If you squint at the satellite photo - you might be able to pick out my deck.
No, the goal - according to Google anyway - is to provide driving directions. Now, who in the world needs to see a photo of me sunbathing on my deck to get from point "A" to point "B"? Street View is unnecessarily detailed for the stated purpose. Thus, Google is either throwing money to the wind collecting useless information, or it has reasons other than those it made public. Take your pick.
I'll go with "wants to have detailed information." Which is perfectly fine. Right up to the point that they're actually invading my privacy - not just pricking my perceived privacy bubble (which is going on here).
How does Streetview help with directions? I've been going out to meet friends at a restaurant before. I pop up the address in Streetview. Come to find out, the location is a strip mall on a busy intersection. I couldn't read the sign but I could identify what the strip-mall (and it's sign) looked like. I knew to get over and jump in to the mall parkinglot without driving past, looking for a restaurant that's hard to see from the road. I've also given directions and a screenshot of my house to friends via streetview ("it looks like this, except it has a blue car in the driveway - oh and move the view down the street a bit and you'll see how the intersection works and the crazy mailbox I told you about").
And, just for giggles, I also checked out my old neighborhood I used to live in. The old house looks very similar. Trees are bigger. But I couldn't see in to the backyard to see if the fishpond I put in is still there. I certainly have no idea if the current owners sunbath back there.
Whoosh.
Most burglaries are more opportunistic than anything else with little planning. Streetview wouldn't help that much other than broadly locating wealthy areas and possibly eliminating houses with alarms. A driveby can do the same
Having police actually do something about burglary would be a better improvement which is one good reason why they need to lose some of their workload, running after phantom terrorists and users of mild narcotics.
See my journal, I write things there
The standard the court was enforcing is a "reasonable expectation of privacy". It seems likely that a reasonable person would expect the non-windowed parts of the walls of their home to provide privacy from people on the street.
It's not any different than requiring a warrant to use a laser microphone from across the street -- even though the police aren't actually entering your property they are violating your reasonable expectation of privacy, and therefore need a warrant.
It would not be a good time if we told the police "anything you can do from the street, using any technology you want, is a valid method for collecting evidence without a warrant" -- I for one cannot afford to wrap my entire house in material that blocks all EM radiation across the entire spectrum, or to provide 100% isolation from all vibrations.
So, you want to rob the British? There's an app for that.
Then they shouldn't have bought houses that were on, how can I say, a street, should they?
Having seen on the lunchtime news what a bunch of arriviste tossers they are, hopefully they won't be owning their houses much longer. Bunch of tuppence-ha'penny millionaires the lot of 'em.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You live in an arse of South Carolina? Isn't that a tautology?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They obstructed the Queen's highway. Not a bunch of yuppie tossbags' highway, the Queen's.
Off with their heads I say.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But if you and one other username on the Internet get together we'll be certain to have a good representation of "socially acceptable"; two generally-aligned singular opinions are absolute proof that a third, non-aligned opinion is not representative of society at large.
You actually can film a movie in the park without any permits. It's just that in a typical movie you'd like to do things like block off part of the park, or leave equipment there overnight, or put up tents/etc. -- permits from the city allow you to do those things, which are not generally permissible.
I know we're supposed to hate the evil corporations and pretend that anything that makes money is somehow harmful to society, but honestly it's ridiculous differentiation to make in most cases -- if you can do it by yourself, or could do it with a group of friends, why should there be different rules for people who are organized for an economic purpose rather than a social one, so long as their actions are the same? What if you invited only your friends from work -- should we make rules against "social" gatherings when all the participants work for the same company?
One aspect of politeness is voluntarily refraining from an act which disturbs others, even if you don't agree that it should disturb them (or even understand why it does). Thus, "because I don't want it" is ipso facto a valid reason for stating that an act is impolite.
Not entirely. It is quit possible to be polite and still do things that are entirely unwanted. The devil himself knows not the mind of man.
However, really, I think there should be a simple line drawn on this sort of thing. If it is accepted that a person can go down the street, then the person can go down the street photographing the process. For example, if I want to do a video documentary, I can do so with me walking down the street just as I could walk down the street normally. There is no reason why this can't be done in residential neighborhoods too.
OTOH, if I can't sit in my car on the side of the road and watch your front door for patterns of activity (stalking laws might be relevant), then I can't set up a camera to do the same thing.
Hence I would propose a standard that we "treat cameras as people" for this sort of thing.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I think a minor part of it is the British mentality to tear down anyone/thing successful but more importantly these are older people and old people are generally miserable moaners. Plus they're wealthy so they're going think they're god's gift to humanity and get better treatment.
Google maps won't make a difference. As they already pointed out they've been hit a few times for theft. It's a wealthy area and local thugs will already know this. You'll only have to walk through the area and see all the nice cars.
Now they've been hit a few times *and* mentioned it on national TV that they're an easy target they're going to keep getting hit by criminals and quite frankly I'm glad.
If everyone used Flickr and geotagged their photos, or if someone built a search engine to look over Flickr and all similar services by geotagging
These examples require complete cooperation from everyone involved (including every Flickr user choosing to make their photos publicly searchable AND requiring them all to own equipment capable of geotagging). Street View skips straight over all that and gives you a database of photos that is not only searchable, but consistent in quality and orientation. So there is still a difference in availability of data and quality.
I imagine if there was a centralized database of user-made photos as immediately searchable and comprehensive as Street View (which is probably inevitable at this point), you'd start getting complaints from people unwillingly showing up in others' vacation photos. The same problem will crop up again. Once the data is centralized and made easily available, it becomes possible to directly target an individual represented somewhere in that data. That is when the complaints start rolling in, and I believe there's a legitimate concern there.
I don't think the solution is to abolish these services entirely, but I also think the attitude of "it's the future just get over it" is just as inept. There needs to be some serious re-thinking of privacy laws and our definition of privacy. Like I mention in my other comment in this thread.
The line is nearly impossible to define accurately
So is the concept of "obscenity". Its legal definition is relevant to local attitudes. Many legal lines aren't explicitly drawn, and with good reason.
Should it honestly be illegal to stitch a bunch of legally taken photos together?
I never said it should be made illegal. I think there needs to be a more serious consideration of how this affects people's safety, and ways to keep that in check. Google claims to accept takedown requests, but in reality many of those requests are ignored. They also claim to have very accurate face/license-plate recognition, but in reality it doesn't seem to be nearly as accurate as they claim.
The closer you get to public surveillance, the easier it gets to abuse that information. In court, any information can be used against you, even if it should have the opposite effect. To me "don't do things in public that you would like to keep private" is right up there with the argument "law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear". Knowing fully that you're in a public space doesn't change the fact that this kind of information can be abused.
I'd like to see the law in the US at least try to examine the ramifications of that a little further before going the route the UK did with things like CCTV. It wouldn't surprise me if the outburst in TFA had more to do with the overall increase of surveillance in the UK, and not necessarily Google in particular. This is a drastic blow to most people's attitudes about privacy and what it means to be in a public space, and it does allow for very real invasion. If we don't take a closer look at the problem, then we will have no idea just how much it is being taken advantage of.
I disagree with that statement. Certainly there are many legal things where we can organize resistance.
I disagree with that statement, too. Most of what the US banks did that caused the economic crisis was perfectly legal. There's a reason the law isn't fixed. Especially when it comes to advancing technology, existing law can be terrible at providing the necessary protections.
But property that's viewable from public streets isn't THAT private.
It is a common misconception that privacy laws don't apply to places and people viewable from a public location. You also seem to confuse Google's satellite imagery with their Street View service.
I don't think the solution is to abolish these services entirely, but I also think the attitude of "it's the future just get over it" is just as inept. There needs to be some serious re-thinking of privacy laws and our definition of privacy. Like I mention in my other comment in this thread.
Agreed with this. However, I don't think that Google Street is even close to the line on this one. I propose a couple of simple rules:
1) Public photo databases shouldn't post in-focus pictures of PEOPLE without adequate privacy precautions.
2) Cameras should be treated as people for the sake of what is appropriate data collection. It is OK for Google to record the scenary as they drive down the street even in a residential neighborhood, but it is not OK for someone to park a car and focus a web cam on my front door to record all entrences and exists of people (that would be a close parallel of stalking). If it is reasonable for a person to do, it is reasonable for a person to record.
BTW, I don't agree with many supermarkets and think it is perfectly reasonable to allow taking photos in a supermarket too (usually this requires permission, and supermarkets are concerned about competition using photos unfairly, but really, it isn't like I can't sketch displays, bring competing co-workers in to SHOW them the displays, etc. So I conclude such restrictions, though certainly within reasonable power of the business owner, are STUPID).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
It's not a building, it's a railyard, and it doesn't. I checked.
For another example, you could try here... a valid driver's license is required to get onto the base, but there are "no photography" signs posted at various locations.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I fail to understand how providing pictures of residential areas has a legitimate use.
love is just extroverted narcissism
It is a common misconception that privacy laws don't apply to places and people viewable from a public location. You also seem to confuse Google's satellite imagery with their Street View service.
Actually - I'm not confusing the two. I understand they're different aspects provided via their mapping service. However, that's the only way I can think that Google has an image of my backyard. I'm curious as to how Google is getting an image of the poster sunning on their deck without a satellite.
As for the misconception that privacy laws don't apply - the devil's in the details. Using a telephoto lense to photograph someone in their bedroom tends to run afoul of privacy laws. Photographing someone's front door is very unlikely to be. I'd question whether someone's yard, with a clear view of a public street, would be reasonably considered "private". I'd advise putting up a fence. Of course - this is in the US. UK laws are likely very different.
And that's better than my other house, which had a quarter mile long gravel driveway which the postal service and UPS refused to come up. UPS just threw my packages (in a big plastic bag) into the neighbor's yard and never bothered to tell me they were there.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You know how when you can just jump to anywhere in the world and with street view feel like your there instantly, it gives you that mild god-like feeling of omnipotence? "I can be anywhere in an instant and observe!"
People don't want a bunch of invisible gods looking at them all the time.
My HOA prohibits any hardscape higher than 18" in front of my house.
Which gets into a whole 'nother area of infringed rights.
Sure. Then you find his house on StreetView and go stand in front of it and whistle all night long. I see how that works.
Well, I really do agree with the spirit of what you're saying (I should have made that more clear), but my problem is that I have a hard time finding the line that should be drawn. You mention obscenity, but looking at that area of law it seems obvious to me that we should strive to avoid such wishy-washy definitions, as they are far more trouble than they are worth. Remember, we're talking about restricting a person's right to take pictures from a public place, vague definitions are particularly dangerous here, as the potential for abuse is enormous (especially now that seemingly everyone (except me) has a camera on them at all times).
I fully agree that we should be wary of big brother type data collection and cross-reference, but I think curtailing the ability to record events in public places is worse. Keep in mind that government abuses are brought to stronger light if the act is video and/or audio recorded, rather than just a piece of paper proving a database query exists.
In short, I fully believe that losing the ability to record public places is worse than a large organization ALWAYS (which isn't even the case with Google) watching those same public places.
But of course they do. Where do your tax dollars end up? The military-industrial complex, or the prison-industrial complex. Why did we go to war in Vietnam and Iraq? Because war is good for the military-industrial complex, communism must be contained (because it tends to make workers uppity), and American industry needs cheap oil and cheap tungsten and tin.
Don't think corporations can send you to jail? Take another look at the headlines about the RIAA.
Corporations are government entities. They are created by government fiat ("charters"), and when they grow large enough, they exert disturbing levels of control on their environment, including governments.
Big business is big government. "Anarcho-capitalism" is a self-contradiction.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
They are more than that: progressive taxes are also an important governor on the government actions and policies that enable the concentration of wealth.
But the government does not render the same service to the rich as for the poor. Since one of the government's prime tasks is to create and enforce so-called "property rights", it provides much more service to the rich than to the the poor; it is the government that keeps the poor from setting up shanties on the lawns of the owning class's mansions.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Real people don't call them "bobbies". They're coppers, plod, filth, pigs, old Bill and on those rare occasions you actually need their help, it does not really matter since they do not turn up.
(There we go, fixed that typo for you)
I dont read
Were they paintings in the scene, or a close up shot? Things like this could matter for issues such as fair use - the latter is basically making a duplication of a copyrighted image, whilst the former example, such as a photo taken from a van, results in a lower resolution poorer quality results. So these aren't necessarily comparable.
Also note that Wikipedia often has tighter rules, such as wanting images to be free.
Is that Fort Rucker then? However, at least it is a) official law and b) posted.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
your bunker? Try in your house.... or behind your fence.... or, really, anywhere not visible from the PUBLIC street.
Your missing the point.
Hell, you could drape a sheet over your house and people can do shit to see what's behind it.
Is that what you are seriously suggesting people should have to do if they don't want to be part of google streetview project?
I'm curious what you think of victims of upskirt photos. Is it "Hey, you could drape a sheet over your entire body if you want some reasonable privacy." or is it "Hey, if you want to wear a skirt or dress in a public place without being upskirt photographed that's pretty reasonable."
Also, I don't know why your problem seems to be with the scale. You're not that important - your house will be right up there with the billions of other houses visible on google. If anything, you're protected by the relative anonymity and by the crowd of other, equally boring images surrounding you.
Right, and if we put a camera in everyone's shower, hey, nobody would ever look at yours with all the billions of other equally boring shower cams right? No one at work / school / neighborhood / slashdot would try to look in at you or your wife or family, for their sick amusement or just to embarrass or harrass you... no that would never happen.
If I don't want MY house on google, and I support the right of anyone else who doesn't want pictures of their houses on google, why should that be a big deal to you?
I mean, I'm not stopping you from posting all the pictures of your house on the internet that you want. Go nuts.
I happen to be shopping for a house. I find possible matches via a realty site, and then find the house on google maps. I find it really handy to see an actual photo of the house. I can see the neighborhood, the nearby houses, and the general layout of the street and land. I find this really helpful, because often it saves me from driving out and wasting my time.
I happen to be shopping for a house too. Streetview is only worth beans if its really recent. If only we didn't have to wait years for google to drive their van through town again... if only they'd set up live cameras every few hundred meters. That'd be so great! It would save me so much time shopping for a home. We should totally do it just for that reason alone!
Expressing a preference or desire that is different than that enshrined in the law is hardly sufficient grounds to label someone an idiot.
Obviously it would be moronic to believe that the entire universe can be simply and neatly bisected into "public" and "private" areas.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Neither televisions or laptops are particularly expensive, so I'm not entirely certain it is possible to justify that people who own such "luxury" items would also be able to afford measures necessary to protect their investments.
Granted.
Yes, this is true. My examples were generic and not directly aimed at this neighborhood, though. So please keep in mind the context of my statements, too. Thanks. :)
He who has no
This is exactly right. Really, the only thing people can do is increase their own layers of security (bars on windows, fencing, and so forth), but it still doesn't prevent someone from breaking into their house, just as you said. Unfortunately, the only thing homeowners can do is attempt to make the house so difficult to break into that someone else's house looks to be a far more attractive prospect.
He who has no
Well, no easy citation, and obviously when the hydrogen bomb came about it was worthless. Some tv or movie mogul bought it later, and his pool is still up there (covered and used as a resivour for the firefighting helicopters.
If you can find a good sat photo, the air intake is just north of the main antenna, and I think the stairs down are by two north-east most structures.
Nothing really important is in the bunker anymore, but there is always one person down there. Most boring job imagineable!
In other words, you're blowing smoke.
As others said, the real assett is microwave line-of-site to almost all of metro la. A certain group forces cropping or airbrushing of the arrays in commercial photos and movies, with one notable exception.
The bunker is just odd trivia.
Care to tell us who JK Rowling stole from?
Uuuhhmmm... Maybe the fans?
George Lucas has done OK, who did he rip off?
His co-designers?
Don't know about Beckham, though, but it seems ridiculous to me that someone could get paid as much as he does for simply kicking a ball around a field.....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
How can you look at a report that counts multiple crimes against multiple people in a year only once, and not immediately see that it's a ploy to reduce embarrassingly high crime statistics?
The FBI report consists of discrete criminal events.
The UK report consists of essentially one tick for any number of crimes committed against any number of people in a household.
In the US, if a person's house got robbed 12 times, and they called the police each time, then that is twelve burglary events recorded for the year.
In the UK, if a person's house is robbed 12 times in a year, than that person is noted as a victim of burglary, and that's that.
Not to mention the UK figures are for households, not individuals. Another example of "look what I can prove with badly used statistics".
And still it's modded up, so it must fool some people.
Have you considered why the UK might pick a different method of reporting crime statistics, and what implications that might have for international comparison?
If you are unwilling to consider why methods are picked, what implications those methods have, and what institutional goals are supported by those methods and implications, then you are the essentially the most likely to be bullshitted by statistics.
If you have a report that is more appropriate for direct comparison, please share it.
If you do not, then you must attempt to extrapolate the differences yourself, if you wish to say one country has more crime than the other.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
And that makes you better than everyone else who stuggles to survive how, exactly?
How did he suggest that he was better than anyone else? He was accused of a crime, took offense to that, and explained the situation.
The fact is, human work is human work, and money is nothing but token for that work.
Work is one valuable thing that people exchange for money, but not the only thing.
Excluding a few immature people who still have to realise the economic pressures they're under, most people work pretty hard.
That's absurd - the vast majority of people in the first world do very little work.
For the same hours, we should all earn the same.
Why? I can't think of any moral or practical reason to support that.
If you earn much more than someone else for an hours' work, then yes, you're stealing it, even if you don't realise that.
A farmer that does a better job and grows more food that his neighbor is not stealing from his neighbor.
That's exactly why the world is in financial melt-down right now: because people have been imagining that they've made money, when in fact, they've made shit up.
You've obviously had a lot of practice at that.
Well, you were attempting to refute it. What you were actually doing was trying to conclude that, because you don't realise you earn more for the same work as everyone else, you must be earning your money justly. That's an entirely different matter, and highly debatable.
But I can see that we'll never agree on this, so let's just agree to disagree.
hows that working in the US?
Gun crime homicides per 100,000 pop:
#9 Zimbabwe: 11.98
#13 Ukraine: 9.27
#14 United States: 9.1
UK : Not listed.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_gun_vio_hom_ove_hom_rat_per_100_pop-rate-per-100-000-pop
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Some people care about their privacy more than you do.
That doesn't make them 'knuckle draggers'.
Right now, the tech only exists for a limited number of properties to have airplane-taken and streetview taken single photos of limited resolution.
What happens in 5 years time when the tech exists for those photos to be updated every 6 months at treble the resolution?
What about 10 years time where its ten times the resolution updated every day? What about when micro-satellite ai-drone doodads can take photos through every window of every house 24/7?
I'd rather we sorted out peoples rights to public privacy before the tech exists to really abuse it. As such, these people are kicking off a reasonable debate about individuals right to privacy from a US-owned company systematically cataloguing their community.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Has it ever occurred to you that the version of the UK that you get broadcast in the USA might not be 100% accurate?
As we are shown it, you guys are a bunch of gun-toting hamburger-munching obese rednecks who don't believe in evolution or climate change.
Sometimes the media exaggerates.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
What is a block?
Towns in the UK aren't laid out like chessboards.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
George Lucas has done OK, who did he rip off?
Kurosawa?
i - This sig provided by
I always thought that US is a democracy, that if you don't like what your goverment does, you can change it either by voting or by actively doing politics. I guess I was wrong.
Yeah, but that's just a second thought because I'm leery of broadcasting the location and reason of the first place I thought of. Maybe it has something to do with the DHS NDA they had me sign. (I could probably still tell you where it is, but I'd rather just not.)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
For whomever moderated me down, if you actually watch the video it's incredibly on topic to the parent's point. It's a very visible (on youtube) case of public respect and law vs. common sensible respect.
As a Brit that lives in Portland, I think that I can address both of these :-) (also, funnily enough, the image posted uses a car with an Oregon plate).
@Locke2005: The Oregonian is not free. Yes, they do keep trying to give you trial subscriptions, but if you tell them to stop delivering it they will.
@Cederic: Unfortunately it's a mindset for newspaper delivery people to toss the newspaper on your driveway here. Oregon gets a great deal of rain, so typically the papers are wrapped in a non-environmentally friendly plastic wrap. We all have nice yellow newspaper mailboxes, but it's like herding cats trying to get the newspaper guy to actually use them.
Yes, I still get the newspaper delivered... There's nothing like a cup of tea and a bacon sarnie in the morning while reading the comics!
Right, so its proper to kill off the riff-raff, until only the good, honest, trigger-happy folk remain?
From where I'm standing, dispensing completely with the judicial process seems seems only a small step away from pre-emptively striking at those you think might act against you later.
Please stay out our country, cos frankly you're sounding like a freakin psycho.
Expressing a preference or desire that is different than that enshrined in the law is hardly sufficient grounds to label someone an idiot.
It is, when the reasoning and way that it was handled is plainly idiotic.
Obviously it would be moronic to believe that the entire universe can be simply and neatly bisected into "public" and "private" areas.
You may be right, however, since the camera operators were clearly in public, you've constructed somewhat of a strawman. We were not speaking of borderline cases in this instance. If I can see it from the road, it isn't private.
I don't know... the possibility that the random stranger you go to stab and other people nearby might have a gun and shoot you, and get away with it instead of being locked up longer than you would be for stabbing them, might act as some sort of deterrent.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Manifestly untrue. From such public areas as roads and sidewalks, we can see through windows into people's houses and apartments and backyards, their private areas. In civilized areas, we don't have to black out our windows or put up high fences but can rely on other people to respect our expectation of privacy -- to take no more than a passing glance inside, not to press their face up against the glass.
The problem with Google's Street View is that it can take that passing glance, make it permanent, and publish it to the world. The folks who ran the Google car out of town may not be able to articluate it clearly, but there is a real problem here, and it cannot be glossed over by pretending that there is a clear separation between public and private areas.
Steve Mann's idea of Humanistic Property is relevant here (though his rhetoric is sometimes needlessly inflammatory).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It is true, if I can see it from a public location, it isn't private. End of story. You might not agree with it, but legally, that's how it works. Even for LEOs, if I can see a something illegal or an illegal event occurring in plain sight, even though I am outside a house, I can enter or act upon that if I can see it from a public location.
Sorry, you might not like it, but that's how it goes.
You are assuming that people are all getting the same service from our government. This isn't the case. It seems to me, the more money you have, the more protection/benefits you have from the government. I think you look at the progressive tax rate and don't actually figure in what the actually effective tax rate is. There are many billionaires that pay a lower effective tax rate than the rest of us because they can work the system. Why does the system work that way? Well, those with money can lobby congress to do that. So, your comments are ignoring reality.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Except that that whole premise of this thread is that "Expressing a preference or desire that is different than that enshrined in the law is hardly sufficient grounds to label someone an idiot."
When arguing whether law is proper or if it ought to be changed, citing the law to resolve an issue is begging the question.
So, no. The fact that you can see something from a public location does not make it public. If the law currently holds that (and I'd like you to cite a statute to that effect, please), than the law is an ass, the law is in variance with the requirements of human dignity and freedom, and the law must change.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Oregonian targeted publications are free, and apparently they throw them in your driveway whether or not you want them. The normal daily paper is not free.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In my case, they were just images demonstrating the art exists, they were scuptures, thus not actually infringing the artists right to display or profit from their work. In the other instance, the artist sold photographs of the sculpture, and was having cops harass tourists (really) who were simply snapping photos while on vacation. It wasn't about anyone else even trying to sell "competing" images.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The problem is that the random stranger you go to stab is lying on the ground bleeding because you have just stabbed him, and is unable to shoot you.