Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Street View On iOS Pierces German Privacy Veil

Posted by timothy on from the you-can-just-move dept.

jfruhlinger writes "After some prickly negotiations with the German government's privacy regulators, Google got permission to launch its Street View service for German addresses, so long as people had the right to opt out and choose to have only a blurred version of their homes on the service. But it turns out that iPhone and iPad users can see those buildings after all."

10 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. You've got it all wrong! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Those aren't photos of your house! Google uses photos of houses from a Universe which is only fractionally different from ours. The terrain's totally the same there. The only difference is that 99% of the people use Linux except for an exclusive club of Microsoft users.

    1. Re:You've got it all wrong! by wygit · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It didn't say they were supposed to be deleting the images, but de-rezzing them, which deletes data, as opposed to adding a filter on top of the images, which is apparently what they did.

      I can see that... It's not like you can put the data back later if the German government changes its mind.

    2. Re:You've got it all wrong! by laughingcoyote · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Honestly, my first question is, is it Google or the German government ignoring the law here? I'm not entirely familiar with German law, granted, and it does have some oddities, but I'm not certain under what legal theory an "opt out" right could be created. If I took a photo of some friends on a public street in Germany and posted it on a website, with a home in the background, would the homeowner have the right under German law to demand I blur the home or take down the photo? And if they wouldn't, what's the difference here? I know in the US and most countries with similar legal structures, photos taken from a public street of the street-facing part of a building are not presumed to be a violation of the right to privacy, as anyone walking down that street can see it. What's the significant difference here?

      --
      To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
  2. We're idiots about privacy by Arancaytar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It appears that here in Germany, we don't care much whether our ISP is obliged to keep all our internet traffic on file for months, our web access can be arbitrarily and secretly limited, our radio organizations can demand listener fees from everyone with an internet connection and shit like ACTA can get dictated on us from the copyright mafia... ... but DON'T YOU DARE put a photo of my HOUSE on the INTERNET.

    Thanks for the tea party, America; at least that way there are a few things left we can feel smugly superior about.

    1. Re:We're idiots about privacy by mischi_amnesiac · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, remember those idiots who protested against street view and the newspaper made a picture of them in front of their home and published the article online?
      http://www.rp-online.de/duesseldorf/duesseldorf-stadt/nachrichten/Buergerprotest-gegen-Google_aid_892897.html

      Sorry, article is in german, but the picture is there.

      --
      "Die endgueltige Teilung Deutschlands - das ist unser Auftrag." - Chlodwig Poth
    2. Re:We're idiots about privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It appears that here in Germany, we don't care much whether our ISP is obliged to keep all our internet traffic on file for months

      Remember how a German court declared this illegal?

    3. Re:We're idiots about privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The craziest thing is that "panorama photography" has been explicitly allowed by law in Germany for ages and nobody seemed to have a problem with it. Now they're looking to severely restrict the right to take pictures in public space, because apparently now your private property extends to blurry images of your house facade. But I'm sure that when they pass Lex Google Street View, there will be a sweeping exemption for camera surveillance by government and business. Germans actually love being watched as long as it's their own Big Brother who watches them, not some American company.

      Now I'm going out with my camera to help uncensor Street View.

  3. Google voluntarily pixels buildings by Geheimagent · · Score: 4, Informative

    The streetview service is not illegal in Germany. Google voluntarily pixels houses if people living there demand it. They don't have to. Other services like sightwalk.de do it without for years.

  4. don't feed the German government trolls by t2t10 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The German government may pretend that hiding images of buildings and people visible from public streets is "privacy" but it's merely privacy theater.

    Germany's government has one of the wost records on privacy among European nations, pushing for data retention, registration of religions beliefs with the government, extensive electronic government surveillance, even aerial photography of people's backyards.

    So, don't feed the German government trolls: don't call this restriction of photography "privacy".

  5. Re:Amateurs by SydShamino · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And what happens when the house's new owners want it unblurred? Google has to send out a new truck because their only copy of the existing picture is blurry?

    I think Google operates under the memo "Never delete anything without a court order." They're required to blur the images they display, not their source material they store internally, so they didn't.

    --
    It doesn't hurt to be nice.