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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.
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.
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.
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"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
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"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
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.
In other news, Chrysler calls Google and offers them a great deal on some less recognizable cars.
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.
Ah yes, a story about Google Street view and an article with no mention of guns gets turned into an anti-socialist, pro-gun debate.
Kuddos to your crafty (yet really quite subtle) way of getting your point across while staying on topic.
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.
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
Also note my crafty and subtle way of injecting a socialist point into my comment when the parent actually didn't mention the word "socialism".
Crafty indeed. Socialism + me 4evR!
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.
The Streisand Effect should be banned!
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.
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.
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.
Don't take pictures of our houses! We are hella rich! We have hella money, just lying around! Taking pictures is just like begging people to steal from us!
That is deeply related to the Streisand Effect, if not the same thing.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Yup - and, you know what? It's horrible.
I'm resigned to the fact that my face is going to turn up in the background of maybe hundreds of tourist photos and videos, being as I live in Oxford which is Tourist Central at this time of year. Regardless of what I'm doing, whether I'm hungover in my sweats and going to the corner shop for a pint of milk, or out on a date, or on my way to work. If I'm unlucky, I'm on my way to a formal dinner and wearing my academic robes. Then I'm not in the background - they're actually taking pictures directly of me. There are nine years of photos out there of me trying to look nondescript or putting on my "piss off you bastard with the camera" face. Okay, I know none of the people who see those photos is likely ever to recognise me - but it still feels like an invasion of privacy. And yes, if I don't want my "privacy" invaded in that way I should lock myself in a bunker. But can you not understand why it's annoying, even if it's not actually illegal or even immoral?
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Also, Britain has roughly 8 times the "hot burglary" rate of the US, meaning that in the UK, criminals enter your home without bothering to see if you're there first. In the US, they purposely enter when you're not home so they won't get hurt.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
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.
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......
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.
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.
Actually, they go after people on the Hollywood sign for a slightly different reason. You won't find many pictures taken from the south-west that show anything above the "D" without airbrushing out the background.
Among other things, there is a cold-war era relic for the governor's fallout bunker, but this isn't the issue.
You see, unlike us savage Americans, the British know that it's not a violation of privacy if the government are the ones watching you.
Google should just cut a deal with parliament to use the 88,000,023 cameras already installed across the UK.
Causation can cause correlation
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)
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.
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.
You wouldn't want them taking your soul, would you?
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.
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.
> "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.
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
How to say this politely...
STFU!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/britain-records-18-fall-in-gun-deaths-1232069.html
[...]Most of the 42 gun-related deaths last year took place in London, the West Midlands, Manchester or Merseyside, with swathes of the country recording no homicides, suicides or accidental deaths from firearms[...]
http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html
2005 CDC Statistics for firearm related deaths in the US (latest that are available):
Number of Deaths: 30,694
Now, tell me again how gun control does nothing to prevent crime?
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
Am I the only one that read this article...
Probably.
If you can't mod them join them.
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
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???
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" ???
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.'"
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....
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?
If you shoot someone breaking into your house with you there, it's probably not murder.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
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...
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.
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
You're right -- the rate of burglary in the UK is about 3 times the rate in the US. Of course, the murder rate in the US is about 3 times the rate in the UK, so gun laws aren't all bad.
Furthermore, it isn't as if burglers can't drive around the neighborhood scouting it out themselves or wouldn't be likely to do so regardless of whether Google Street posts the images.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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?
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.'"
What?
You think that potential burglers are going to see you neighbour's front door is open and think "You beauty! Someone has left their door open! I better get my stripy t-shirt, mask and sack with loot written on the side".
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.
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.
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"?
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?
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.
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
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!'
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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.
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
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.
"Hot burglary"? Is that like a "hot cop"??
The gp explained what the term means right after using it:
meaning that in the UK, criminals enter your home without bothering to see if you're there first. In the US, they purposely enter when you're not home so they won't get hurt.
Which is why the study you linked to fails entirely to address the point. It doesn't even look at the issue of hot burglaries.
The US has a higher burglary rate than the UK. But rate at homes are broken into, while the owners are present, is eight times higher in the UK than in the US. In the US burglary is typically just a property crime, but in the UK it is typically a violent crime.
That's a big difference which is hard to explain away.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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 ;-)
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
George Lucas has done OK, who did he rip off?
Akira Kurosawa.
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.
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.
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....
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.
Diamond burns just fine: it's a bit harder to ignite, is all.
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?
>>>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"
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.
You need guns to protect yourself from Google?
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
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.