Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
so I hope society can reach a compromise that allows these images to be available without unduly infringing on anyone's privacy.
There already IS a compromise like that, it's called what google is already doing. Google is NOT infringing on anyone's privacy because by definition anything that they are photographing is visible from a public thoroughfare. They are trampling some people's mistaken assumptions about privacy, though. Here's a hint: if you want something to be private, you don't do it in public.
The amount of data should not even be considered as a factor; if one person did what google is doing in every state of a nation, would that be too much data in one place? What if it was one person per city? Now, imagine that those people link their map sites together seamlessly. What's the difference between that and what we have now? That google did it for us?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Years ago I built a panoramic, stereographic photography system (spaceshot) and also did a great deal of work with rendering and measuring spaces using stereo images. This leads me to the following theory, which, if Google are NOT doing what I describe here would be pretty damn surprising. J from: http://jerrykew.blogspot.com/ If you have a perfect spherical photo of a city, taken at equidistant intervals, then you have the necessary information (think stereo images) to reverse engineer the 3D form of the city. Google will build a virtual version of every city, and we will click on objects in that 'space' to go to sites. PPC ads will follow in the space, and thus their investment in Google Maps, Earth, Sketchup and Streetview will deliver their returns. I am sure they will be playing with it now in their labs.
The real reason for ban is quite different, the new street view used in Europe has hell of a resolution, meaning Greece tourism can be in danger, you can go around all the famous places from the comfort of your PC.
I roamed around Napoli (Italy) the other day, and even get texture grade quality facades from zoomed details for our project. SV is really an amazing tool.
You are referring to US practices when the article is about Greece, where for example the "Personal Data Protection Authority" has power over courts & the Police. So far they have disallowed cameras from being used at streets, deny requests even by embassies for outside cams, do not allow cameras in schools (they say have private guards if you want to thinkofthechildren). Sorry but all links are in Greek.
Personally, I'd rather there were cameras in public places, since that might allow the very ineffective Greek police to catch a bad guy or two once in a while. I mean, they ARE public areas, if you want privacy stay in your hut.
And to make it clear, in Greece as in most other countries outside the US, "terrorism" is no excuse for anything, certainly not for the police. The "you are subject to search" big-brotheresque messages I hear every day in the NYC subway are not common in other countries, which is why I hate it that such things are taken for granted here. Yeah, for our protection. Right.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
This is ridiculous. It's one snapshot taken at a more or less random time. How is this an invasion of privacy when the picture is taken in a public place? Total idiocy.
"you can go around all the famous places from the comfort of your PC"
That's not going to stop tourism. If anything its going to greatly encourage tourism. I've just been driving down a road in Rome, then I jumped to Paris and crossed the Seine. All within a few minutes. My first thought was I wish I was there for real.
I can understand Greek fears of wanting to maintain privacy of buildings and routes behind buildings etc... Although that is security through obscurity, which is a very weak form of protection. If anything if crooks can find a way in via Street View its stress testing houses to become physically more secure.
Also all privacy is ultimately an attempt at protection against exploitation. So privacy isn't such a problem, its how it can be exploited. I think how someone can exploit a new technology gives a clear distinction of if its a good or a potentially bad new technology to implement. I don't think all Big Brother technology is a bad thing. (I would say that Big Brother technology that can cause greater political and/or commercial corruption to grow is bad, as that opens up ever greater exploitation of people without power to resist or stop being exploited or outright abused (e.g. Phorm and all DPI technology is a good example of an outright violation of privacy for the financial gain of just the few who run and control that technology). However I don't think Street View is such a technology. Sure it could be exploited by someone looking to break in, but security through obscurity is already a weak protection. Crooks have found it no trouble to break into houses for centuries. Better to stress test building security now and sort it out.
Also I think one of most important aspects of Google Street View is its historical importance. Imagine say in 100 years from now the historical importance of being able to view cities all over the world as they were once decades before. It'll obviously take decades to build up such a detailed history of changes, but future generations are going to love being able to see how previous generations lived. I wish I could view my city decades or even centuries ago. (Imagine for example future Google searches back through all this data to dig up views of a house you are interested in buying back throughout its entire existence, from the moment it was built right up to the present day).
Future generations are going to be able to look back like never before with Google Street View data. I think its utterly fascinating just how much potential this data has to allow future generations to look back at us and how we live now.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.