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German Photog Wants to Shoot Buildings Excluded From Street View
crf00 writes with this report excerpted from Blogoscoped: "'Spiegel reports that German photographer and IT consultant Jens Best wants to personally take snapshots of all those (German) buildings which people asked Google Street View to remove. He then wants to add those photos to Picasa, including GPS coordinates, and in turn re-connect them with Google Maps. Jens believes that for the internet 'we must apply the same rules as we do in the real world. Our right to take panoramic snapshots, for instance, or to take photographs in public spaces, both base laws which determine that one may photograph those things that are visible from public streets and places.' Jens says that for his belief in the right of photographing in public places, as last resort he's even willing to go to jail. Spiegel says Jens already found over 200 people who want to help out in this project and look for removed locations in Google Street View, as there's no official list of such places published by Google."
This doesn't seem to be a "The man is restricting our rights", more of a "people are nicely asking for some attempt at privacy", and this asshole (Jens Best) wants to say "FUCK YOU, I'm going to go against you because I can, even though you were nice enough to ask otherwise"
Yes, but how far did you push back when you were challenged?
It's really pretty clear that a photographer has certain rights to shoot photos anyplace in public in the U.S.A. Government has often tried to intimidate photographers, under the guise that "national security" demands they cease, or alternately, lower-level security protests under false claims that some "policy" was violated.
The Amtrak photography incident comes to mind: http://carlosmiller.com/2008/12/27/amtrak-police-arrest-photographer-participating-in-amtrak-photo-contest/
A good guide to your REAL photographer's rights can be found here: http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
Having a gun pointed at you is a pretty strong intimidation tactic, yet if you're confident you're in the right, you can still stick up for your rights in that situation. Some soldier driving out to meet you in a Hummer is probably NOT prepared to fire a weapon at a civilian photographer. WAY too many consequences for an action that extreme. So you *could* have let them arrest you and take your camera, rather than complying ... and you'd have a really GOOD chance of coming out the victor.
But let's face it.... that skyline photo probably wasn't something you wanted badly enough to fight for it.
That is what this guy basically is. There is a good change he will run foul of the law in addition
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
...it is about not being a douche bag.
Really, it isn't illegal and that isn't why Google removes them. He isn't going to get arrested so his willingness to have that done is irrelevant. What he is doing is being a a major asshole and justifying being proud of it under some "information wants to be free" meme.
My address, phone number, and a great deal of other information is certainly public knowledge - one can look it up on the internet (and I even use an abbreviated version of my real name so it isn't even that hard), yet I still wouldn't want all that attached to every post I made. There is a great deal of public information that we *all* would rather not telegraph in that well a concise and easy simple way to view. I'm willing to be this guy has a number of things about his life he considers private, is legally not, and would be royally pissed if people made a point of putting it on the internet. If someone walking down the raod asked politely to not be photographed few would call him a hero of anything if he then not only followed them taking all the photos he could but made sure that everyone singled them out to show what they would rather have private - no different here. I don't care about my picture being on Google Street View (well, other than the car was taking pictures when a police man was telling me to move my truck is parked in the road because someone up the street complained - we are on a dead end road. It's amusing as you can clearly tell I'm out on my front porch, the police car in the street, and the man in Blue talking to me - but then I find the thing more amusing than anything especially since I can pinpoint the exact time the car want by) and can't really see why anyone would care - but if they did it is called being a nice person to remove it.
If he wants to push a real cause go take photographs of military installations or secure places like nuclear power plants. But then there you are actually likely to have real consequences instead of just being a douche bag and making people mad. Plus it is places that are actually illegal to photograph, used to be legal to do so, and there is a great deal of debate on what should and should not be allowed. Peoples houses in mapping software? Not so much - as is he is simply trying to make himself feel better by doing something minor/worthless and rationalizing that it is somehow, in someway, actually edge and dangerous. Yea, go stick it to the man! Just wait until these people see their houses photographed on the Internet, that'll show !
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Either way, Google is being nice by taking down photographs upon request. This is not a legal requirement, or censorship, or anything like that.
Not yet.
Clearly a lot of people felt strongly enough that this sort of activity constituted some sort of invasion of privacy to make the effort to ask Google to take the photos down. Clearly Google felt there was enough of a risk (legal, PR or otherwise) in not doing so that they instituted a policy to comply with these requests, and they have introduced various other policies for related reasons.
If people like this Jens guy won't voluntarily respect that and want to deliberately upset all those other people just because they can legally do so today, then the law can always be changed tomorrow to fix that problem. This is the basic flaw in the whole "You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place" argument: it based on law rather than on ethics, and ignores the fact that laws are supposed to change as the world does, including keeping up with the implications of new technologies and how people feel about them.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
After all who can say no to the photographers right to take pictures in a public place, but who can say no to someone's right to keep the front gardens off of a publicly accessible mapping system.
This is not even particularly difficult. Yes, the photographer can take pictures in public places. No, you can't keep your publicly-viewable gardens from being photographed. That is the legal answer, and (in a happy coincidence) the ethically correct position.
So how do you draw the line between what's acceptable viewing/photography, and what's not. To me, a reasonable expectation of privacy would be in within an optically obscure enclosure. Say in your home, with curtains drawn, or window blinds closed. If someone had a radar imager, I'd be quite pissed: it's not reasonable to expect people to live in Faraday cages. But there's nothing reasonable in obsessing about street view pictures -- how do those invade my, or anyone else's, privacy? I just don't get it. Someone has raised an argument that since street view van cameras are higher up, they can look over the fences and make it easier to scout out potential targets for thieves. I guess it's time I took the time to write down the damn serial numbers from any expensive equipment I own. Other than that, the insurance covers me against theft. I should take a few pics of each room, to make it easier to prove ownership of certain things -- as an alternate to having a part-time job of billkeeping. All that stuff will probably end on google's servers ;)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Not sure what you're inferring from the summary, or implying with your "moral high ground" comment, but he's not trying to "stick it" to Google. Google have just complied with requests to remove the photographs. I think he's going to do what they can't(or won't) do, i.e. take pictures and link them to Google maps. If the same people want to request that those photographs be taken down, presumably Google won't be able to just remove them...as they are expected to do when it's their photographs and they're trying to avoid a lawsuit/Bad PR. Even if Google does take them down, he can still find some other way to do it..
Why Google removed them in the first place I have no idea. Photographs taken of anything from the street must surely be allowed on the grounds that there's no reasonable expectation of privacy if your building is situated on a public right of way?
Then you are a clueless twat.
They were asked to, and thought it might not be a good idea not to piss off potential customers by refusing. It's called civility, something a that seems to get forgotten around here with people blathering about their "rights".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Let's ignore the question of the legality of google streetview itself (as far as German law is concerned) for the moment.
This photographer doesn't just assert his right to take panoramic photos - he also asserts the right to completely override a person's wishes.
If someone registers NOT to have their home photographed, and he goes there taking photos and publishing them either way, is that the right way to deal with people?
I wonder - what are all the legal things I am perfectly in my right to do around him if he's out in public - particularly those he might not enjoy so much?
So, picture this 'A' asks for something NOT to be done.
B goes out of his way to do EXACTLY what person A asked NOT to be done.
(You might want to note, that the photographer did not have the intention to go and take photos of any of the buildings, UP UNTIL he finds them pixelated in street view).
Think carefully:
1) is B fighting for the freedom of the net? (or however he might want to justify his action)
2) is B just plain an , for decidedly overriding the wishes of those applying for their houses NOT to be pixelated?
Think very carefully - there are many things perfectly legal that YOU as a person might still not want done TO or immediately AROUND you - but it's exactly that, that the photographer is aiming for.