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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.'"
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.
Don't the cars have big masts on them for the camera? They see into places you can't see walking down the street.
If you outlaw street-level imagery, only outlaws will have street-level imagery. Security through obscurity never works. Don't do things in public if you don't want people to see them. If you want to keep people off your driveway, install a gate. Close your fucking curtains! It's already safest to assume that everyone has a camera, because practically everyone does.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Greek Tourists Now Prohibited From Taking Photos In Public Places!
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
Is anyone surprised Britain is ok with it? They've apparently been desensitized.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
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...
too many don't have a problem with THEIR government doing it.
Of course I have a problem with it, but I was born and raised in the United States and frankly trust Google (or other corporation) more than I trust the Government. Considering my government's willingness to spend me and my children into debt for the foreseeable future I doubt that my view will change.
Throw in the fact that far too many people think they have much more privacy than they truly do... totally forgetting how much information not using cash for transactions provides other people
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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
It's nice that we have laws governing things like this, and that we can take companies to court when we believe that they have broken them. Supposedly government can be taken to court as well. However, it's rare that anything ever comes from it. When a company is wrong, they get punished. When the government is wrong, the law is amended to make them right. In the odd case where the government can't get the laws amended, they simply continue doing what they were doing before, it's just that they don't tell anyone. Not that they were telling anyone to begin with, but that's the government for you.
Move sig!
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.
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.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
The Greeks just misunderstood the driver of the Google van! He said he was going to sneak some trojans inside the van and the Greeks feared that the Trojans' time for revenge had come!
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.
The Greeks would seem to be specifically asking about how the __original__ images are to be handled, not just how the images which eventually make onto the service will be presented. 2 different things.
A secret video may be taking a shot of your wife bending over in her short summer dress.
On the internet, you can see that shot and get it removed.
Didn't you know that CCTV in US Malls were monitored and they found many of those cameras had been tuned to follow the good looking women rather than watch the store.
Also, if you're a paedo, would it be better to hide a camera on your person to take photos from a distance of kids playing in the schoolyard, where you may still be found out, or to be esconsed in a closed monitoring booth with CCTV cameras outside a school, monitoring the public places?
And how many times have the police said "We cannot find the tape" when the tape would have caught them in an illegal act, but oddly seem to find it when it catches someone in the same manner?
If the output were public, you would KNOW what the police are watching. You would KNOW what they look at. And knowing we are watching them will keep them honest.
While Ms Dixon states it almost as a pre-established fact, I'm not sure one can assert "It only takes one country to express a dissenting opinion".
North Korea, China, Iran...there are a quick handful of countries who would quite clearly 'dissent', yet I don't see case law being formulated to accommodate their views.
The whole "right" to privacy is a vague and questionable concept anyway. Clearly it doesn't apply where lawbreaking is concerned (not many people are murdered in public; ergo someone's privacy must be violated to apprehend the murderer).
So what is the much-bandied "right to privacy"? It was really a concept INVENTED in the late 19th century by Judge Brandeis, before he was a USSC judge. As far as I can tell (and Wiki seems to back me up on this), there are 4 basic precepts:
1. the protection of one's identity as unique
2. protection from defamation
3. protection of one's private facts
4. protecting someone's ability to be left alone
NONE of these are articulated in the US Constitution, and in fact #4 may be directly contrary to some basic concepts of modern civilization - for example the idea that the law is pervasive and applies to everyone, it doesn't stop at your threshold.
So where does this come from? IMO it's a natural reaction to the increasing pervasiveness of state power, and not unjustified. But let's be clear: the assertion that it's a "right" is not established in law or custom.
-Styopa
Maybe it is for the children.
Dear Google, people go to Athens to see the Parthenon which is on top of the Acropolis, has no roads to it, and not visible from street level.
If you can't go on holiday. There are many books and sites that are much better.
Maybe they fear Google, wherever or not Google brings presents.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When Google alleges that what they show is no different from what could be seen by a person walking down the street, they miss the point. That hypothetical viewer is also part of the scenery...and can be seen. For example, someone lurking in the area of a women's shelter would run the risk of being noticed and identified. Google allows such a person to stalk their victim safely and securely, and merely blurring faces and license plates wouldn't prevent an abuser from identifying their victim with ease.
Privacy is easy to lose, and almost impossible to get back.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
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.
So while I can go to my house and request that google blur the license plate of my car in my driveway. How else do I find my license plate in the pictures that are not of my driveway? Do I have to now check out ALL of the various gas stations, supermarkets, parking lots etc... that my car could have been photographed? What about all the highways and streets that I've driven?
It seems that google is saying in the above quote, "If you can find something you don't like, then we'll blur it.
It's very possible (how ever probably) that someone could be convicted (or proven innocent) because their license plate was in various street view maps.
While I do like streetview because it allows me to see what a give store/location actually looks like before I drive there. It also enables "evil doers" to see that type of car that everyone on my street has, or parks in their driveway. And very easily compare it against the hundreds of other streets in the area. Sure criminals could do this by hand, but in this case it doesn't require the criminal to fly from NY to SanFrancisco and drive around with a camera. They just open up a web browser and put in various addresses to mine the database for neighborhoods with Porsches in the driveway.
Does google have any safeguards in place from someone recording all sorts of data/screenshots and running OCR on them? To record thousands of license plates? I wonder what privacy advocates would think if they knew that one could build a database of "License Plate & Street Address" Sure there would be some margin for error (say when your car is at another house, but I'd bet those building this database are willing to live with that.
Google should be by default blurring all license plates and faces. I haven't seen a reason yet justifying why they need to display either faces or license plates.
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.
What, do you seriously think Google's street-view provides real time updates of it's images?
I couldn't imagine seeing Google's goofy cars driving by at a rate of ~1 per second, ON ALL ROADS IN THE WORLD.
I think Google should blur everyone's face and license plate. I think our privacy should be more protected here in the US than it is now. I'm happy to see a country lookout for it's citizens for once.
"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.
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.
Google Street view is completed unlike a person walking down the street, perhaps even if they have a camera.
One, I don't seem to have the entire web-viewing population of the earth marching by my home on the sidewalk. The pictures Google may take are available to anyone who cares to look.
Two, of those that do come by many of them do not have 'photographic' memories. (and don't seem to be snapping pictures of each and every house they pass).
Three, Even walking down the street looking at each house, one does not expect the person walking to remember many of the details for as long as they will be displayed on Google Maps.
Google, you are free to come over and map our streets.
The real concern is that people, cars, etc. are still in the images. Google needs to perfect a post-processing cleansing of the image to remove all evidence of cars, people, and other movable objects. The final result should look like an abandoned city.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
The neo-luddites really need to lighten up. As if the entire world isn't on camera already, and you're worried about a single still photo designed to help people find things on Google maps? Do they even know what millenia we're living in, or are they worried that Google's magic boxes will steal their souls.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
But this time for a tube photo not for airforce bases.
nemesis. Home of an experimental fe code.
At least they didn't kick the Google Street View car into a bottomless well.
[Insert pithy quote here]