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Switzerland's Data Protection Watchdog Wants Street View Disabled
glow-in-the-dark writes "The Swiss office for Data Protection has asked Google to turn off Street View within the country because it doesn't meet the conditions demanded when permission was given to go ahead with the photography. Google answered privacy concerns with the following points (I'm translating them from German; here's an automated translation): 'Google will publish in advance where it is going to record the images, so you can act accordingly.' Do they want you to hide? Where is the real obligation here? 'Google has made masking the images of people and car license plates obligatory.' I think this is where trouble starts, because their permission to go ahead appears to have been dependent on how well they did this. I have browsed one particular town as an experiment and was quite quickly able to find unmasked faces. This means that either the algorithm they use doesn't work, or that it is done manually and they've fallen behind (in which case they should not have put up the images). 'Although a picture of a home is generally not covered under Data Protection, Google has agreed to remove them if asked. Follow the same process as removing a person.' I think it wouldn't be half as bad if the pictures weren't taken with a high enough resolution to see inside a house. In short, Google has not been given the easy ride it had in other countries regarding Street View. I actually suspect there is more to come."
Kinda glad that they missed my street, so I don't have to worry about this.
Four posts on this topic so far, and all from AC.
If we're all so concerned about regulation of corporations by governments, maybe we need a meta-government
... but I'm just not happy with google going around streets and taking pictures of my house, my car, etc. Of course I've put photos up on the internet of the house, the cars, the inside of the house, loved ones - but that's stuff that *I've* posted (and on services that - theoretically - only an elected few can view). It's not illegal in Australia (hell, is it technically illegal anywhere yet?) and I'm sure it fits into google's "do no evil", but while it's not "evil", if an individual person (rather than a computerised camera car) put photos up of my house it's plain creepy. Big cities full of stores, monuments, various points of interest - fine - driving all the way out to where I live and showing the world I've neglected my lawn - not so much.
Google is your friend, so nothing to worry about! Google is your friend!
Do you mean people walking down the street with a camera might photograph cars or faces? Or see things through a transparent material? And those same people could publish pictures on the Internet for any reason! They are history's greatest monsters. Well, I'm going to go live in a cave where this sort of thing can't happen. Who will think of the children?
What I've never fully understood is why Google doesn't just do two passes before they post a photo. I realize the world is a big place, but it should be possible to remove moving objects from a scene from two photo sets. With a single pass many fast moving things should be able to be removed from the multiple angles, and a second pass should be able to remove slower moving objects from another set of multi-angle photos (with the possible exception of certain cats).
Anybody can snap pictures on public streets and put them on the Internet. Cameras are increasingly geotagging them, so soon, anybody will be able to find pictures of anything by location anyway, whether Google drives around in a car or not.
In Canada, at least not long ago when I was still an avid photographer, permission had to be asked of an individual before h/is/er picture was taken. I think it's reasonable that a person has a right to vet images of them that reach the public. Extending the argument, property has value, and public posting of a property's image could impact on the property's value. Not to mention weird stuff like stalkers. Google's gone totally Kafka. It's metamorphosed into something you wouldn't want to wake and find on your living room floor, only Google wouldn't fit of course, as it now looms larger than 'The Castle', more like Gormenghast. It's kinda tempting to see Google in Baroque, Gothic terms. A grotesque parody begins to writhe in fetal form.
ideopath @ play
Where does it stop? Does this mean just about anybody can be forbidden from publishing pictures of things visible from the public eye? I can see a danger of this sort of thing being applied very selectively.
Why don't they just use Google's opt-out feature.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
This is a clear reprisal for the US cracking open the treasured Swiss banking secret in order to dry up terrorist cash pipelines & catch deadbeat US tax dodgers. I think the US should still have pushed for total transparency in the Swiss banking sector. Swiss bankers have absolutely no compunction in taking your cash no matter how much blood it may have on it.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Google attempts to automatically blur faces, but the algorithm they use isn't perfect. I've noticed an image of Colonel Sanders on the store sign of a KFC that was blurred. I can't imagine that someone at Google manually went in to blur a black and white drawing of the Colonel.
On an interesting note, since the Colonel's image wasn't in color, looking just for flesh tones isn't required to trip Google's blurring. I guess Google wanted to make sure they'd even blur the faces of any mimes they came across...can't say I blame them for that one.
"Google has made masking the images of people and car license plates obligatory."
What about windows on houses, that's probably the biggest privacy concern right there, but no mention of masking windows so you can't see inside people's homes. Why not?
Why is it that Street View is OK but CCTV in Britain is bad? Both only see what anyone on the street could see. You don't have an expectation of privacy in public.
Advice for Google:
Switzerland wants not to have street view in their country? Give them what they want. Turn it off. Don't spend another dime on it. Every time someone tries to use the feature for switzerland, put up a notice that says "Street view is blocked for this country by order of the Swiss government." And then wash your hands of it. You don't have to spend any more money on delivering a perfectly reasonable feature when the government wants to give you a hard time about it, and they don't get to have enjoyment of the service after they've been pissy about it. Maybe then other countries will be slightly more reasonable about your services when they recognize that if they give you too hard a time about things, you'll make sure their population knows *precisely* why they can't get the same level of service that people in every other country can.
God damn. Some of you Europeans are as irrational about Google as the nuts claiming Obama is setting up "death panels". You really think the driver of the Google van would drive by a nudist beach and not either turn off the camera or make a note to delete the photos on that side?
Why don't they just use Google's opt-out feature.
Tell me why - when the shoe is on the other foot - the geek will settle for nothing less than "opt-in."
When I first saw this story, I thought, wow do the swiss people never travel to London? Every move they make is recorded and analyzed. Frankly, it would not surprise me if inside switzerland's large cities they record.
Advice for Google:
Switzerland wants not to have street view in their country? Turn it off. Don't spend another dime on it. [Put] up a notice that says "Street view is blocked for this country by order of the Swiss government." And then wash your hands of it. Maybe then other countries will be more reasonable about your services when they recognize that if they give you too hard a time about things...
And just maybe the party that stands up to Google will find itself in control of the cantons and the Federal Assembly.
A lesson that won't be lost on others.
People can turn dangerously territorial when it comes down to the intimacies of home and neighborhood.
The geek never sees the warning signs until it is too late.
It only blurred 1/3 of the people in this image: 3 Guys in Geneva
I'm a 2000 man.
I am swiss, this has nothing to do with with UBS or the IRS (UBS is a private company, not switzerland).
We do actually have quiet some strict privacy laws, but some are getting abandoned due to us pressure.
-S
I'd mod this up if I had any mod points left (and i also forgot my userid). This is the most insightful defence against "why not put up pictures of public places". Sure, everything outside your house is public but that doesn't mean that the google-eye should be able to photograph all plublic places at all times. Claiming this is not a problem unless you're paranoid, is insane.
Any governent that does what the citizens want has no option but to forbid google earth for its country.
But on the net, it stays there forever.
The photo doesn't "stay around forever". You can ask Google to remove photographs that portray you in a bad light.
That's the problem here. Like an elephant in the room.
If you're jacking off in front of your window without curtains, well, geez, that's a problem. In fact, it's probably a misdemeanor.
Google accidentally taking a picture of it and putting it on the web until you ask them to remove it is not a problem. In fact, they probably aren't even obligated to remove it, in particular if you get charged with indecent exposure.
...and while there are people who object to having their house put online, that does not seem to be the main objection. After all, the view of the house or apartment is a view from a public street. Google is going "above and beyond" by offering to remove these images on request.
The main objection is to the people and license plates. To take the example that seems to be brayed about the most, the google-cars also travel the red-light districts. If you happen to be popping into an erotic shop or a brothel as the car drives by - do you really want this memorialized on the Internet? I think this is a realistic objection, and it is the basis for the requirement that Google blur faces and license plates.
They do the blurring automatically, but their algorithm does not catch everything. They are working on it...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Chris di Bona certainly wouldn't. I bet Greg Stain wouldn't either now that he got mugged.
Many nudist beaches have explicitly posted restrictions on photography. If they don't, and they do not prohibit others from taking photos, why should Google be prohibited? How are they different from any other private entity?
Settle down kids..
1 - Switzerland is a democracy. It doesn't always work so well, but in general I think they are ahead of other countries - unless you know another place where collecting a batch of signatures can actually start a law changing process instead of a stiff ignoring..
2 - Switzerland is simply telling Google to deliver what it promised when it was presented with concerns of residents. Google said they would, and it was clear something hasn't worked as planned. If they fix that I guess there won't be a problem, but at present they are in breach of their own promises. That's not good news in a country where a even a handshake deal still has formal legal value. I looked at this myself, and it was very easy to find people who were not masked and recognisable. That was not the deal, end of story.
3 - I personally think they have missed one thing: windows (the glass type). I've looked at places I know in various countries, and you can actually look *inside* houses near the road. Not very good IMHO.
4 - Streetview is NOT Google's biggest privacy problem, I think that one will erupt next week. I sometimes wonder why the NSA still gets a budget - Google is globally getting more data out of people voluntarily than the NSA managed by stealth..
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I can't show you the locations (I am not going to break other people's privacy) but I've seen quite a few houses in North London where you can look in. You forget that sunshine on the "away" side of the street will light the inside up - your argument is correct insofar the camera is in the light.
In general, you find the ability to look inside is highest when houses are near the road (typically on narrow roads) - the camera resolution is high enough to make out quite some detail.
*Not* good.
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Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
First of all, why should I have to build a fence around my home because some weird ass US company has decided to do a mass photo shoot abroad?
However, a fence is no solution either.. That's actually part of the problem: the camera's are higher than eye height.
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Rights do not scale (up)
I don't think there isn't a better way to summarize the 150+ entry discussion that is brewing here.
Kudos.
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that google is having such trouble in european states where government power is so strong, people there clearly have no problem with intrusive government, but somehow pictures in public is over the line:P
massive use of cctv in the uk is a prime example. the outrage over streetview when in city centers there are places where the people staffing cameras can even speak to you over loud speakers if they "catch" you litering and such. big brother is real in these countries. yet google streetview is somehow the problem:P
it's a record of what happened when the car went past and is open to all sorts of misinterpretation. Here's an example. If you drive past my house you will see that the lawn and house are USUALY pretty neat. Last year we went on vacation and payed a kid to mow the lawn every week for a month. What he did was wait until two days before we came home and did it once. Street view photographed the house while the grass was a foot long. Two issues, first the kid got caught (good for me but bad for him). Second, my house is now shown on streetview as unkempt with grass a foot deep in a well kept neighborhood, which looks bad for me.
The thing that streetview does is capture a moment in time. The problem people that people have is they don't get to choose which moment.
Lets say they took a picture of my house the day I stripped the paint off in preparation for new paint. There is my house enshrined forever in the way back machine looking like it is worth $100K less than it does today. That picture could stay around for years depressing the subjective value of the property in the eyes of anyone that believes google street is reality. Is there any review process? Google earth is just as bad. The picture from the satellite is about two years old. Photographing the world is a novel idea, but the reality is problematic.
Lets say they took a picture of my house the day I stripped the paint off in preparation for new paint. There is my house enshrined forever in the way back machine looking like it is worth $100K less than it does today. That picture could stay around for years depressing the subjective value of the property
You cannot be serious.
When I sell a house I take photos of it to show people before they come to visit, if you tell someone "Just check my house on street view" then you don't deserve to make a successful sale.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
It is not about me telling someone to check street view. It is about the expectation that they can go to street view and receive a relatively recent picture. At the very least the age of the picture should be visible. It is not about me making a sale. It is about the general credibility of street view to provide something even close to reality. If you cannot tell to the nearest two years how old the photo is, How can you correctly interpret what you are looking at. I am not a realtor. I am not selling anything. I am a technologist looking at a serious weakness in the value of the service. Observation is imperfect enough without temporal distortion.
so it's not different from any other photo?
My photos of China show the forbidden city covered in scaffolding.
Street view is nothing more than a photo gallery. Why should it be treated any different?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
My [swiss] co-workers were caught eating lunch at a restaurant that is derided as being for the uncouth masses (no, not McDonalds). [Sorry guys, if I just outed you on slashdot :-)]
http://maps.google.ch/?ie=UTF8&ll=47.383045,8.505821&spn=0.002477,0.009645&z=17&layer=c&cbll=47.383047,8.505825&panoid=6fhJi7LDrhilQAciWe5PZA&cbp=11,155.84,,2,8.53
During the summer, every restaurant that can, puts tables/chairs outside because the swiss strongly favor it.
That was the main argument: Google has been told to disable Streetview in Switzerland because of privacy concerns (I actually found an article that shows an unmasked car license plate - in a definite red light area).
The problem is that Google is stepping in unchartered waters re. privacy here - only the NSA has ever collected data that has privacy risks on such a large scale, but it appears they don't have to care anyway - even if they spy on Americans. It would thus be wise for Google to address such concerns BEFORE they become problems, and they screwed up in the one country which has not removed privacy from its citizens with the excuse of "terrorism". Google acts as an enabler for breaches of privacy, and that should stop.
The result is that they have now come under extreme scrutiny, and what I told you is no joke - it happens that I know a couple of people in London so I looked it up - you can zoom into their homes. Not enough to read book titles on a shelf, but you can see what they have and, for instance, if it's worth planning a break in.
Burglars "work" ares at a time, which they scout, plan for getaway and see which ones are likely to have alarms. Originally they would have to go there physically (and in the UK be caught on CCTV), now they can do it from their armchair. No risk involved.
This is a problem with all of Google's services. It's breaking new ground, but they don't appear to exercise the minimum care required to stop abuse. "Respecting people's right to privacy" is NOT a line for marketing - it should be a fundamental principle in Google design, even if a lot of so-called democracies have been doing their level best to remove privacy. Maybe that has been Google'^s problem: they have been getting away with this so the expectation was they would manage to bend the rules in Switzerland too. Ain't gonna happen.
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Having laws that protect peoples privacy is not a police state, and the polizei here are much more polite, and reasonable, than they are in the US, as they report to the geminde leadership or the Kanton.
The privacy officer is making a corporation abide by its agreements, which would also be a good thing in the USA.
So you are saying they are using extra high resolution in that country? Because in most other countries its fuzzy crap.
And why do people have so much to hide? Its far worse the government snoops on you all the time.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It's a shame I have to put up a reminder - sign of the times I guess.
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights :
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
This is, in a nutshell, the simplest argument to respect someone's privacy. It is a basic human right. It really is that simple..
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Seriously, if you want to throw down like this, what's to stop your argument from going after volunteer groups like OpenStreetMap?
Furries make the internet go.