Slashdot Mirror
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."
Google is your friend, so nothing to worry about! Google is your friend!
The thing is, no one cares about your lawn.
The problem with the whole street view debate is that it's nothing that isn't seen.... from the street.... by every commuter. But because it's on the internet, it's somehow special now.
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.
It's only really messy in other parts of the world (In this case, Switzerland.) In the United States the courts have long ruled, and it is well established that pretty much anyone can take pictures of your home if they want as long as they're on public property (sidewalk, street, park, etc...) They can also take pictures of YOU if you are in public. Shock! Horror!
The problem is that Google caves in to the requests of amateur lawyers who have threatened to sue Google over publishing pictures of their homes or faces in Street View. From Google's point of view, it's easier and cheaper to blur things out. But from a public policy and rights perspective, it would have been better for the American people long-term if Google actually started fighting and winning these suits in order to shut the nutjobs up. If you don't want people to see you -- stay inside. If you don't want people to photograph your house, build a wall or buy out the neighbors to construct a massive lawn.
Of course, it isn't Google's job to fight these kind of fights. That's what newspapers are for, and is an example of the constant legal battles that newspapers are (mostly silently) fighting in court to protect the rights of the average American. Of course, then Google leeches the newspaper's content and makes money off of it, but that's a different argument.
And before I get a bunch of IANALs responding to this post, let me just say STFU. It's my job to know these sorts of things. Unless you're a lawyer or a judge who disagrees with all the briefings I've had with some of the nation's top attorneys on just this kind of matter, don't bother to respond.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
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.
But because it's on the internet, it's somehow special now.
Someone in the street randomly walking past your house is a momentary, transient thing. Any observations are made incidentally by a single person, if they happen to be looking at all, which most people won't anyway because they'd feel a bit embarassed if they were caught peering in through someone else's window.
Google is a commercial organisation, systematically collecting high resolution images of an entire area while the people doing it are safely hidden away inside a car and then storing those images in a permanent, searchable database that is accessible to anyone.
Can you really not see the difference between these two scenarios?
Google have always pushed the boundaries of what is reasonable behaviour in terms of data mining, but I think this time they have clearly gone too far and they're about to start feeling the resistance that has been brewing for a while now. Countries are trying to prohibit their actions by law. Perhaps more telling, whole villages of normal people are turning out to physically block the car because they don't want it spying on them. Google are even failing the obvious reasonable behaviour test of "Would people think it was acceptable if those Google staff went up to every home in person and took a high res camera shot through the front window?" Are you seriously claiming that if someone walked up to the front of your home in person and started snapping away through all your windows, maybe a shot down the side to where your kids are playing, noting down your car registration, and so on, you would have no problem with that? I suppose that's possible, but I think you're in a very small minority if that's true.
As usual, the law is not keeping pace with technology, but in an era of mass communication and enormous databases, we really do need to make sure we get serious privacy/personal data protections enshrined in law in the very near future. Very bad stuff is already happened to far too many people, and it's only going to get worse if governments and megacorps are allowed to continue on their quest to turn every citizen's life into rows in a database.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Perhaps google is removing those images upon request, not because it's worried about the lawsuit, but because it's simply polite? Sometimes companies do things for other reasons than for absolute legal necessity. Sometimes for PR... sometimes because an employee actually is NICE.
Of course, it isn't Google's job to fight these kind of fights. That's what newspapers are for, and is an example of the constant legal battles that newspapers are (mostly silently) fighting in court to protect the rights of the average American. Of course, then Google leeches the newspaper's content and makes money off of it, but that's a different argument.
That's not a newspaper's job; it's job is just to report facts. Activism on the part of newspapers is generally detrimental. It's the citizen's job to fight for rights.
And before I get a bunch of IANALs responding to this post, let me just say STFU. It's my job to know these sorts of things. Unless you're a lawyer or a judge who disagrees with all the briefings I've had with some of the nation's top attorneys on just this kind of matter, don't bother to respond.
Wow, you're an ass. Specifically, you are thinking that the only relevant issue is the legal issue. It's not... although the lawyers and judges have probably told you it is.
But from a public policy and rights perspective, it would have been better for the American people long-term if Google actually started fighting and winning these suits in order to shut the nutjobs up. If you don't want people to see you -- stay inside.
So where do you draw the line? Can I follow you around? Can I record everywhere you go? Can I watch over your shoulder while you type your PIN, and photograph your credit card number when you take it out of your wallet and it is momentarily visible? Can I systematically record who you spend your time with, when you and your family are out of your home, how your kids go to school, what routes you drive and the details of your car? What about using high-res video equipment and listening devices to monitor what's happening inside your home from outside? How about I publish your entire life, and those of your family and friends, everything I can observe from public places, using any modern technology I can lay my hands on, on-line for all to see?
I wish someone had tried to do that to fools like Scott "Privacy is dead, deal with it" McNealy. It would made a nice demonstration of the hypocrisy when his expensive security people and/or the police had intervened, particularly if any sort of privacy or harassment laws were used to justify the intervention.
Unless you're a lawyer or a judge who disagrees with all the briefings I've had with some of the nation's top attorneys on just this kind of matter, don't bother to respond.
Yes, I definitely believe that someone who wrote a post like that on a forum like Slashdot is a high-flying legal eagle, and furthermore that my own ethics should be completely dictated by the legal system in your jurisdiction, and I'm sure everyone else here agrees that we should just take your word for it.
Oh, sorry, wait: your listed homepage is for a company that makes money from photographing buildings. I'm sure you're not biased at all, then.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.