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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"
For those of us who don't read German fluently click here
The manually taken photos were of higher quality, and more detail than the Google streetview ones. Then the request to remove from streetview........ could result in more detailed imagery of the area being posted to a place where more people will notice it
(Since streetview is so large, and has so many images.... a picture of an obscure place would probably not be noticed by many people, let alone get any attention or concern)
I can remember getting off the train at the Pentagon. I wanted to go upriver on foot to photograph the skyline of DC at night from across the river (don't ask me why -- ugly city). It didn't take too minutes before a Hummer came rolling out and a guy in a gun turret (gun pointed at me) told me to go away and not take any photos.
Like it or not, some really stupid rules -- and even just really stupid etiquette -- governs what you can and cannot photograph.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
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.
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.
Is a photo of your lawn, outside of home, and garden a private affair? When people drive by your home do you chase them away like a barking dog? No (reply if you do). Then why should you shoo away the Google car?
OK. But does that give you the right to aggregate those photos, organize them by location, creating a photo map of the entire planet?
On the one hand: Location based services are increasingly being incorporated into photographic devices. It's only a matter of time before the planet is completely photo-mapped with location information. Attempts to prevent this are only by scaremongers who have an idealistic view of privacy.
On the other hand: People have a right to privacy and it's unreasonable for one corporation to destroy it.
...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
Phew! I had to read the subject twice. For a while there I thought Germans had started assassinating buildings.
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.
I support a citizen's right to shoot. (I live in the U.S., not that that's relevant)
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?
A camera is not a gun. It doesn't threaten the life of police, and it probably won't get you killed, no matter what.
That "probably" is not good enough - especially when dealing with soldiers. It only takes a misunderstanding. If a gun is pointed at you then a mechanical malfunction also can kill you. (That's why we are told to never point a gun at anything but intended targets, among other rules.)
In Germany, there's the so-called freedom of the panorama, which means, that you're allowed to take pictures of the panorama in public places, which includes houses etc. However, that freedom is limited to a natural perspective, so you may take take the picture while walking down the street, but you may not use a stepladder or step on a car roof to get a higher vantage point. It's a very simple to understand and convenient rule about private space. If you don't want to be photographed in your garden, make the wall high enough that people passing-by can't see over it. If someone peeks over that wall and takes pictures, he's invading your privacy.
So what the photographer proposes to do is probably perfectly legal. With the Google streetview cars the problem is, they take the pictures from higher up than regular eye level, thus the freedom of the panorama doesn't apply to them and they get in all kind of trouble. There's another company (can't remember which one) taking pictures of streets, but they have mounted the cameras directly on the car roof, probably to avoid the problems Google has.
All in all, Google is in this mess in Germany because they didn't bother to check local laws and believed American rules apply everywhere.
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.
When I am on the street, I did not trow away any rights. I still should be expected to have certain privacy. e.g. NOT have pictures of me place online.
Actually you do. When you are in public, you give up some of your privacy rights. If you have a picture of you taken in a public place that will embarrass or harm you in some way, you have no legal recourse to avoid having that picture published as far as I know.
Repeat after me, "I have no expectation of privacy when in a public place.". It is an extremely simple principle, and I don't understand why people think that it doesn't apply to them.
There are laws against posting defamatory information of most kinds, but if it is a legitimate picture then there is no recourse.
And just because something is legal does not make it right to do so.
I feel the same way, like about people telling photographers that it is illegal for them to take pictures in public. It isn't illegal for private citizens to claim rights that they don't actually have as far as I know, but it isn't right to do so.