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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.'"
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."
That's not breaking news. The Greeks have history on locking people up for innocently taking photos in public.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
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...
Can you really blame them for not believing that "normal" Britons go around looking at planes on military bases and keeping track of the call letters in their little books? While on vacation to Greece?
I certainly think the British government should have applied more pressure to get them out of jail sooner. But you have to admit their behavior was suspicious.
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
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.
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.
Maybe they fear Google, wherever or not Google brings presents.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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.
"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.