Greece Halts Google's Street View

Hugh Pickens writes "Greece's Data Protection Authority, which has broad powers of enforcement for Greece's strict privacy laws, has banned Google from gathering detailed, street-level images in Greece for a planned expansion of its Street View mapping service, until the company provides clarification on how it will store and process the original images and safeguard them from privacy abuses. The decision comes despite Google's assurances that it would blur faces and vehicle license plates when displaying the images online and that it would promptly respond to removal requests. In most cases, particularly in the US, Google has been able to proceed on grounds that the images it takes are no different from what someone walking down a public street can see and snap. And last month, Britain's privacy watchdog dismissed concerns that Street View was too invasive, saying it was satisfied with such safeguards as obscuring individuals' faces and car license plates. The World Privacy Forum, a US-based nonprofit research and advisory group, said the Greek decision could raise the standard for other countries and help challenge that argument. 'It only takes one country to express a dissenting opinion,' says Pam Dixon, the group's executive director. 'If Greece gets better privacy than the rest of the world then we can demand it for ourselves. That's why it's very important.'"

Comments

lunacy

[poetmatt]

I to love how people have no problem with police videotaping you/preventing you from videotaping with an excuse of terrorism just to cover their asses while everyone panics over a google streetview of a public area.

Re:lunacy

[RiotingPacifist]

The world doesn't run by your standards! In greece people do not want picture of them in public view published on the internet, so they have passed laws/etc to prevent it. If you don't like it move to...

Re:lunacy

[Colonel Korn]

I to love how people have no problem with police videotaping you/preventing you from videotaping with an excuse of terrorism just to cover their asses while everyone panics over a google streetview of a public area.

Pretty much everyone has a problem with both. The article mentions Google's usual argument that they're not showing anything that can't be seen by taking a walk down the street. Similarly, there's nothing that can be seen by 10 hovering cameras surrounded every person's head recording every visual and audio detail of his public time for permanent display on the internet that can't be seen by walking down the street while watching and listening.

I don't think their argument works.

Re:lunacy

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Anything in public view should be fair game to publish on the net.

Why?

There is a difference between one person incidentally observing something while going about their daily business and having a commercial organisation with vast resources deliberately and systematically collect information about the entire world and then provide it in a permanent, publicly available, searchable form that anyone can use for any purpose.

Well, actually, that's at least seven qualitative differences.

If you really can't see why those differences matter or why it might be better to consider one form of behaviour antisocial and legislate accordingly, then I invite you to have some random stranger follow you around every time you go out in public, running a live video feed on the Internet, looking over your shoulder every time you enter a PIN or sign your name to make a card purchase or withdraw cash, cataloguing every road you follow and the times you've been there, looking up the identity of every person you meet and sticking their name and face up there as well. Then when you get home, they can wait outside your house in a public space, and use high resolution video equipment to look through your windows (or any gaps if you close the blinds/curtains) and film whatever you're doing on your computer, whoever is getting changed upstairs, who's visited you and when, and anything else they can see. After all, this is all stuff that you've done that's visible from a public place, so in your world it seems everyone in the universe has a right to see it.

If people put themselves in embarrassing positions why is it wrong to expose them?

Because everyone makes mistakes, and perhaps the world would be a nicer place if they didn't have to suffer for them publicly, universally and eternally?

Which?...

[whisper_jeff]

Which would you prefer, a world in which you know you'll never stumble upon a picture of your home or car or face on the internet because your privacy is so secure or a world in which it is illegal for you to take a photo outdoors because you may have someone's home, car, or face in the frame and thus be breaking privacy laws? That's an important question for you to ask yourself before you take a stance on this issue...

Extremism

[Option1]

I really am bemused by the extreme ranges of responses to this story. It seems that there is only either end of the spectrum - "Yay, for Greek Government for protecting our privacy" to "I trust Google more than I trust any government" - and almost no middle ground. Have we really become that fractured and that single-minded about things?

Neil

Re:So very stupid

[drinkypoo]

That's a really sad statement on the state of society. Whatever happened to quiet, friendly communities where you can throw your windows open to let in the fresh air and chat with passersby?

People started walking around naked in their living rooms! It used to be practically a sin to go to bed naked. Now people want extra privacy! I mean, I like doing this myself, but if my hairy ass ends up on the goog as a result, I have only myself to blame.

A lot of people have also decided that they want more than the baseline of privacy. For instance, it was once considered polite to invite people into your front room to talk; it was decorated and organized to receive strangers. These days there's ample reason NOT to let anyone into your house... The interior of the house has become a more private space. But then people don't want people to look into their private space, and that is just stupid.

Google isn't looking at anything you can't see from a legally-sized vehicle on a public road. If you have something private that can be seen from that vantage, you're not very smart.

Bribe

[wiredlogic]

This is Greece we're talking about. Google just hasn't bribed the right person yet. This is just part of the procedure to extract money from foreign nationals.

The DPA might have a point

[xlotlu]

So (emphasis mine),

DPA said it wanted clarification from the U.S. Internet company on how it will store and process the original images and safeguard them from privacy abuses

despite

Google's assurances that it would blur faces and vehicle license plates when displaying the images online.

The question is then, does Google store the images with faces and license plates blurred, or that's just post-processing for online display?

Google's statement definitely tends to point at the latter. And I could see a few problems there.

Re:'Street level' a bit misleading

[__aarvde6843]

Is it that different from you walking down the street and take pictures yourself? Is it against the law? If I don't want people peeking inside my house, I use blinds ;)