Google's Bangalore Streetview Project Stalled

GillBates0 writes "The Bangalore Police have objected to the collection of data by Google's cars, which were criss-crossing Bangalore city taking high definition images to give users 360 degree views of streets. Talking about the security concerns in an earlier interview with CNN-IBN, Google India Product Head Vinay Goel said, 'We are only driving on public roads and taking publicly available imagery so what we are not doing is going into a specific installation and taking private pictures and obviously we are working with the authorities so if there are certain locations they don't want us to be there we won't go there, we are happy working with the authorities here.'"

Comments

I'm mildly disappointed

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

From TFA:

Bangalore has several top security installments like ISRO, DRDO and HAL and the fear could be that a 360 degree view of the roads leading to them could be used by a terrorist in the future.

So THAT is what their concern with Streetview is. Always terror and terrorism isn't it, when in reality, the real concern is that, public images or not, people might actually not like living in a f*ing worldwide Panopticon...

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[kylemonger]

Street View is a bunch of still images stitched together in a useful way, which is far from a panopticon. The same gripes Google is getting, street photographers have been getting for much longer, but it hasn't ended up in the press until recently.

As for the terrorism angle, yeah, that's just a crock, but it always is when it comes to photography.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[JasterBobaMereel]

...Quick ban all maps ....

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[martin-boundary]

Oh please. When was the last time a photographer went around the world to take a picture of every single fscking road? Never, that's when. Scale makes all the difference in many things.

For example, steal a penny from a single person, that's nothing serious. Steal a penny from every single person in America, pretty soon you're talking about real money (or staplers, at least).

Copy a page from a book, that's fair use. Copy every single page from a book, that's copyright infringement.

Smoke a cigarette once, you'll probably not get lung cancer. Smoke 12 packs a day every single day of your life, you'll probably get lung cancer.

So yeah, Street View is completely different from a photographer taking pictures.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[Wyatt Earp]

India has had a problem with Google, Mapquest and everyone else since the Mumbai Terror Attacks in 2008.

Remember that? 164 dead, over 300 wounded and the terrorists used Google Earth to pan the attacks and figure out where to go.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3691723/Mumbai-attacks-Indian-suit-against-Google-Earth-over-image-use-by-terrorists.html

So maybe India has a reason to have a problem with Google Streetview

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[Hazel Bergeron]

I don't have a problem with your mother being my sex slave.

Fortunately, rights aren't about one person's preference getting to determine everyone's way of life.

Mostly.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[Eivind]

Indeed. Quantitative differences do add up to qualitative differences. On the flipside, googles streetview doesn't disproportionally focus on "interesting" subjects like photographers do, thus despite being "public" most of the things photographed in streetview are still quite anonymous.

The most creepy databases by far these days, must be those of mobile-phone-companies. The level of detail they capture 24x7x365 about literally 95% of the population above age 12, is *staggering*, and they've got demographic data on most of those subscribers too.

A close-to-complete social map, for example, should be fairly doable to construct, just from observing who calls eachothers or send SMS to eachothers, you can even assign fairly accurate weights to the relationships based on frequency of call/sms and frequency and duration of being in the same spots.

They need to know what base-station your phone is near right now, for the technic to work. But why they are allowed to, or indeed in some cases *required* to keep this data for months or years, is beyond me.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[glwtta]

It's even worse than they realize: terrorists could also use the roads leading to those installations.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[enupten]

Well, sure Terrorism might sound like a cliche to Americans, but before 26/11 in Mumbai, there was a similar - albeit on a smaller scale - at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 2008. There are bomb blasts every other week in India. If the Indian government had an inkling for war, the "terrorism" issue would do miracles by the way of propaganda.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[alostpacket]

Well, to be fair he just said they had a reason, not that it was a rational reason. People do tend to overreact due to the anxiety created by such things. So while I agree that it's important to keep a cool head and try not to do things like this, derriding them might not be the best bet at calming the nerves.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[alostpacket]

A close-to-complete social map, for example, should be fairly doable to construct, just from observing who calls eachothers or send SMS to eachothers, you can even assign fairly accurate weights to the relationships based on frequency of call/sms and frequency and duration of being in the same spots.

Not "should be possible", "is happening."

I can tell you for certain this is taking place and they are collecting and already using this data to try and make more money. One of the things they look for is for who are the "influencers." For example, they have noted that certain people send short text messages and make short outgoing calls, but often get many responses that are much longer. Think of someone who just says "sup?" and 10 people respond with big stories about their day or offers to hang out, etc.

These people are often offered discounted phones or given excellent customer service or some other such special treatment. Mostly without ever even knowing.

The Economist has an excellent article on it all: http://www.economist.com/node/16910031

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[gorzek]

I reject the notion that we must hide any and all information that could be remotely useful to terrorists and criminals.

Might as well take down every site that describes how locks work, how cars are wired, how explosives are made, how to use a gun, etc. etc. etc.

That's where this goes if you start cherry-picking and saying "this information, despite being public knowledge, is not safe."

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[tehcyder]

I don't get what the problem is with a f*ing worldwide Panopticon. I seriously wouldn't mind. Even if the lot surrounding our house has no fence, and you could see us, say, sleeping outside on the hammock. Big f*ing deal.

I don't think you're going to get many supporters of that view here.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[metlin]

A close-to-complete social map, for example, should be fairly doable to construct, just from observing who calls eachothers or send SMS to eachothers, you can even assign fairly accurate weights to the relationships based on frequency of call/sms and frequency and duration of being in the same spots.

I would have agreed with that a couple of years ago. But in the more recent past, I've been using social media sites and IM (using my phone, no less) for the same. In fact, while I was in college and high-school, it was mostly IM and email chains. So, the "closeness" determination by SMS/calls would look a little skewed, since they would all be work related calls.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[plsenjy]

You can't seriously not think that events like the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2008_Mumbai_attacks) do not seriously affect the Indian government's actions. Even Bangalore was rocked with bombings in July that year. You can bet that they're going to do everything to ensure that another string of bombings doesn't occur there.

Anecdotal evidence: I was traveling through Jammu (the state neighboring Kashmir) just after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. The entire place was on lockdown. The roads were swarming with military, army bases were being reactivated and I had to show my papers at roadside checkpoints throughout the state. This was after an event where India had not been attacked, had no hand in a conflict, and yet they legitimately feared that destabilization in Pakistan would lead to attacks on their soil. Yes, the Indian government takes precautions against terrorists, and they probably have more merit to do so (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_India) than some of the steps our government has taken.

In the US we live next to two countries that are friendly with us (or the militant factions within the country are reliant on cash/gun flow from the drug trade in the US in order to stay in business). It's hard for us to understand a mindset where extremist factions within our neighboring country have committed numerous horrendous terrorist attacks on our soil. Yes, you want to control the amount of information those guys have, because that information is what they need to execute their attacks. It's not like they're stopping Google techs from mapping out suburban Toledo; this is Google providing a most detailed map of one of India's financial centers and a certain target for terrorists.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[aevan]

So it's pretty much the asian 9/11? They should instead lock their country down into 'patriotic laws' and invade Nepal?

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[gman003]

And this is why the terrorists have won. We're terrorized. Mission accomplished.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[Pope]

Yes. Quantity and intent go hand in hand.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[kylemonger]

I can understand fearing bombs and I can understand using checkpoints to thwart them. But banning photography is asinine. You don't need photography to know that a skyscraper has lots of people in it during the day. You don't need photography to know where a bank is when it says "bank" on the sign outside. The hard part of planning a terrorist attack is not figuring out what to shoot / blow up.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[tibit]

Life is full of tradeoffs. Being seen in real time from a public right of way is the least of my concerns.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[WNight]

Oh please. I'm sure people made almost identical arguments against maps.

"With every road fully listed criminals will know where everything is, and every road the police could use to catch them! Maps are only okay when they're of small disconnected areas so that you could never use a map to tell how to get from here to there, or anything else dangerous."

Even if this stuff was so dangerous people could simply record their own by driving the path once with a cell-phone recording video. The cat has fully removed itself from the bag and is not going back. If that scares you, ask yourself what you don't want seen and what you could do to fix it.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[WNight]

164 dead, over 300 wounded

Oh my! That's like two days traffic fatalities. Perhaps they're missing the bigger picture?

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[Wyatt Earp]

Like invading Pakistan and destroying the ISI?

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[Eivind]

That's true for some subset of the population. SMS is being used less than it was at the peak, because Facebook and Twitter and suchlike has taken over parts of that.

But locationdata, phones and SMS is still very poweful. Notice that typically not only the cell you're in, but your signal-strength to all towers in range, are logged, which gives positioning that's more accurate than just which cell you're in.

If you know the customer is a male 17 year old, and he spends a lot of time with a male 16 year old school with a home-address that indicates she attends the same school he does, and they spend the night in the same location regularily, it's not a guarantee, but you're gonna be right most of the time if you tentatively assume they're a couple, for example.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[Eivind]

That's true for some subset of the population. SMS is being used less than it was at the peak, because Facebook and Twitter and suchlike has taken over parts of that.

But locationdata, phones and SMS is still very poweful. Notice that typically not only the cell you're in, but your signal-strength to all towers in range, are logged, which gives positioning that's more accurate than just which cell you're in.

If you know the customer is a male 17 year old, and he spends a lot of time with a female 16 year old school with a home-address that indicates she attends the same school he does, and they spend the night in the same location regularily, it's not a guarantee, but you're gonna be right most of the time if you tentatively assume they're a couple, for example.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[uninformedLuddite]

It shouldn't be beyond you at all. You have already articulated the reasoning.

Re:I'm mildly disappointed

[RockDoctor]

The hard part of planning a terrorist attack is not figuring out what to shoot / blow up.

[Your words] ... it's figuring out how to shoot it out/ blow it up, as well as (optionally) get away afterwards.

For all of which, photography is useful.

And of course, you could obtain sufficient, sufficiently accurate photography with a camera in a bag (on 1Hz shots) and an accomplice walking around with a 1m walking stick ("ranging pole", in the technical terminology). Of course, you could protect against this by imprisoning all people who understand geometry, and doubly imprisoning all people who have done surveying work in the centuries before GPS.

Oh, better jail and torture people who have surveying text books (you know : ink-on-paper!) from a century or two ago in their personal libraries, because the only possible reason for knowing of such technologies is to perform terrorist actions. It's comparable to planning kiddy-fucking to even think of using millennia-old techniques for millennia-old problems.

War against photography

[Compaqt]

Their words, not mine

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/06/the_war_on_phot.html
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/115726/
http://www.google.com/search?q=war+against+photography

How to make a man sound flustered

[gtch]

"'We are only driving on public roads and taking publicly available imagery so what we are not doing is going into a specific installation and taking private pictures and obviously we are working with the authorities so if there are certain locations they don't want us to be there we won't go there, we are happy working with the authorities here."

61 words in a single sentence makes Google sound rather flustered by the accusation.

This manager would sound much more relaxed with a bit of punctuation:

"'We are only driving on public roads and taking publicly available imagery. So what we are not doing is going into a specific installation — and taking private pictures. And obviously we are working with the authorities. So if there are certain locations they don't want us to be there, we won't go there. We are happy working with the authorities here."

Re:How to make a man sound flustered

[vinehair]

Actually the long run-on sentences in English genuinely seems to be a common dialect artifact that I've seen from Middle Eastern folk, such as my Pakistani co-workers who have almost exactly the same grammar and sentence length. It's especially common if they're explaining anything. If anything, it adds authenticity for me because as I was reading it, I was just pleased that Google at least hired some local talent for their India product team!

Re:How to make a man sound flustered

[1u3hr]

This manager would sound much more relaxed with a bit of punctuation:

The guy was talking, not writing. Any punctuation was imagined by the reporter or editor.

If you simply write down exactly what someone says in an unscripted interview, it's easy to make them look like a doofus by including every umm, err, false start. Most people don't speak in perfect prose.

Re:How to make a man sound flustered

[vinehair]

Thanks - my geography sucks and I won't pretend that I haven't automatically made that assumption on the basis of being around too many racist and ignorant 'folk'. Though I guess I'm one of the ignorant now, at least.

Re:How to make a man sound flustered

[Canazza]

Middle East and Far east are the two etymologies that you should be comparing. Just because something is in South Asia doesn't mean it's not in the Middle East (or, indeed the Far East). Most of what we'd term the Middle East is technically South West Asia (As Africa stops at the Sinai Peninsula, that part of Egypt is actually in Asia too) and I would include Pakistan in the sphere of "Middle East" more than Far East, but it's an interesting case though, as any further East you have the likes of China, Bhutan and Nepal, which are all definitely Far East, and any further West you have Iran and Afghanistan, which are both definitely Middle East.

The culture of Pakistan has more in common with their Western Neighbours in the Middle East than their Eastern Neighbours, however India is more of a mix of all the surrounding cultures.

I'd still maintain that saying Pakistan is Middle Eastern is still correct. Saying India is Middle Eastern, less so, but forgivable.

Re:How to make a man sound flustered

[Whatshisface]

There is no official definition for "Middle East" but it generally refers to the Arabic-speaking countries of South West Asia and North Africa (plus Iran). Even Afghanistan is debatable, and Pakistan does not qualify at all. The only reason you or anyone else qualifies Pakistan as Middle East is because it is an Islamic country, by which definition Indonesia should be in there as well. In every other way, in terms of language, culture, ethnicity, Pakistan is very similar to India. Maybe that's because they were one country till 60 years ago?

Re:How to make a man sound flustered

[Canazza]

I know quite a bit about the history of Pakistan and India, and while elements of Indian culture remains, the forced division of the country by the collapse of the British Empire caused alot of that to disappear. It's also the reason Pakistan is a predominately Muslim country. When the division was created, most of the Hindu tribes living on the border region fled to India (around 12 million of them), leading directly to conflicts between India and Pakistan, pushing Pakistan to not only turn to it's neighbours for support, but also created it's own distinct culture, encompassing many elements of their new allies and somewhat shunning old Indian traditions.

From Wikipedia: American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902[3] to 'designate the area between Arabia and India'. now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Pakistan (while formerly India) is now Between Arabia and India.

My own definition would be anything between the Red Sea/East Med shore and the Indus River that bisects the Indian subcontinent.

As for the run-on sentences, I'd call that an Indian phenomenon, rather than an Arab one. I've spoken to quite a few Arabs and they don't have that issue, but all the Indian friends I've got speak in extended sentences more often than not.

Re:How to make a man sound flustered

[creat3d]

Why don't you go ahead and catch syphillis? Bonus points if you're jumping in a fire at the same time.

Re:How to make a man sound flustered

[tehcyder]

My own definition would be anything between the Red Sea/East Med shore and the Indus River that bisects the Indian subcontinent.

The thing is, your definition is wrong. Pakistanis no more in the Middle East than Chicago.

Real reason:

[no-body]

Insufficient greasing of palms so far - Google is rich, so....

What are they hiding?

[souravzzz]

Stupid Indian cops are afraid that a car will capture them taking bribe or sleeping instead of working.

Re:What are they hiding?

[Malc]

No need to be so judgemental. India has some serious paranoia around photography, due to terrorism. When we were there on holiday, we were told for instance that it might not be a good idea to take photos at railway stations if we valued our cameras.

Re:What are they hiding?

[perryizgr8]

that might have been due to a risk of some guy snatching away your camera.

Re:What are they hiding?

[souravzzz]

You would probably get away with photographing railway stations. I have took many pictures at big and small stations and have seen others doing so, without the police or the security bothering about it. Actually, there is no law against photographing rail stations, so the police can at most harass you, not confiscate your equipment or prosecute you. However, they usually are more suspicious about foreigners, and one reason is that foreigners are generally unaware of the rules and would be more willing to pay up a fine (bribe, actually) to get away.
Metro rail and Airports are a whole different story. You are most probably going to be caught and detained. There is no law baring photography in metro rails, but they have big notices prohibiting photography on metro stations and rails. I doubt the legality of it, but I will have to file a PIL to find out.

Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[captainpanic]

Although similar complaints have been heard for the last couple of years, Google keep pretending they do not understand it. Arguments like "but we only take pictures of public areas" are just silly and besides the point.
Google ignore the fact that there is a massive difference between a public place being public and a public place being available to everyone on the internet (including data gathering servers, and all kinds of face recognition technologies).

And anyway, they accidentally take lots of pictures of not-so-public places because open doors/windows offer a glimpse into private houses and companies.

Google also always place the responsibility for pointing out what cannot be put on the internet with other people/companies/authorities. It's like the checkbox saying 'no, I don't want advertisement', which if left unchecked will get you on some spam email list. Right now, other people/companies/authorities spend a lot of time (and time = money) to get pictures off the internet. I think that Google should be paying for that time spent.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[PatrickThomson]

Not that it undermines the main thrust of your argument, but I feel that sloppy investigating on your part makes you look weak - Specifically:

Google's the world leader in face recognition technology. It uses this technology to identify faces in streetview and blur them out. The best you can rant about is that Google themselves may have a private database of times when people who've been tagged elsewhere in Google have wandered past a streetview car at a particular time. For the rest of us, there's always "that's blatantly your shirt in streetview!"

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[1u3hr]

Google ignore the fact that there is a massive difference between a public place being public and a public place being available to everyone on the internet (including data gathering servers, and all kinds of face recognition technologies).

Your argument would apply not only to Google, but everyone who puts any picture on their blog/Facebook/Twitter/emails to his auntie.

Any photo on the Internet is available to EVERYONE in the world. If you stop Google doing it, you must stop everyone. If Google bends over, then the precedent is pretty awful for everyone else.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[thej1nx]

So you will have no problems with this, if Google maps was an open-source project run by "a bunch of people" instead of a corporation?

Focusing on the wrong thing, aren't we?

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[captainpanic]

You make a fair point that the pictures are only available to Google's own face recognition technologies... and until now not to third party technologies.

My sloppy investigation indeed did not tell me whether the unblurred pictures or the blurred pictures (or both) are stored at Google's servers. Do you know by any chance? In other words: is there any chance that Google will sell the unblurred pictures to third parties in the future?

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[SnowZero]

Those people get to choose whether or not they put pictures on the internet. They do not get to choose whether google puts pictures of them on the internet.

So you're saying that this guy got the permission of the ~400 people in this photo?:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/wesbs/5273648283/

There are lots of geotagged or labelled images on the web now, and the trend is clearly upward. Lots of people over-shard on Facebook, and yes that includes people who might take your photo and not ask you before uploading it. Google may have good coverage, but open photo sites are easier to scrape and make no attempt to blur faces. Facebook has just-enough-to-be-reasonable controls, but now it's actively scanning for faces.

Say what you want about "righteous standards of behavior", but the horse left the barn a long time ago.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[serviscope_minor]

So you will have no problems with this, if Google maps was an open-source project run by "a bunch of people" instead of a corporation?

Are you claiming that corporation behavoiur shouldn't be regulated, or that this is not a case where it should be regulated?

What you suggest is an interesting philosophical point. Of course, there is always a complete continuum from entirely acceptable behaviour to entirely unacceptable behaviour. The line generally needs to be drawn somewhere and it will always seem unfair to the person just on the wrong side of that line.

The thing with a bunch of people is that it is much harder to scale up, unless they get some kind of revenue. At that point it no longer becomes a bunch of people.

Focusing on the wrong thing, aren't we?

I don't think so. I think this is as good an example as any to determine whether corporations should be able to do as much as people.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[1u3hr]

Those people get to choose whether or not they put pictures on the internet. They do not get to choose whether google puts pictures of them on the internet.

Well, "bizarre ass-backwards broken logic" indeed. Many people are "choosing" to put pictures of OTHER PEOPLE on the Internet, and those that seek permission from the subjects would be a very small minority.Good luck trying to stop a bunch of teenagers from putting up their snaps, or videos, if they catch you doing something embarrassing in a street alley.

You're also getting awfully close to the whole "corporations are people" line of thinking.

Well, by default, they are. But if you want to have laws that people can do this, but corporations can't, you'd better get lobbying.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[Rob Kaper]

Google ignore the fact that there is a massive difference between a public place being public and a public place being available to everyone on the internet (including data gathering servers, and all kinds of face recognition technologies).

That, or you ignore the fact that legally and for all purposes of the word public, there isn't.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[captainpanic]

is there any chance that Google will sell the unblurred pictures to third parties in the future?

Who in their right fucking mind gives a shit? You're asking the police to quash a perfectly legal operation because someone might have an unblurred picture of a complete stranger and might sell that to someone who might piece together who is in the photo (amidst billions of photos/people) and said third party might use it for some unspecified underhanded purpose.

Tin foil hat much?

No, I'm not talking about one single picture. Nobody in the 'right fucking mind gives a shit'. And I also do not wish to obstruct police investigations.

I'm talking about Google being (perhaps) able to sell pictures of a couple billion people... They can sell the rights to all the streetview pictures at once. And that has a commercial interest. And it can get coupled to Facebook or another huge website (where you can tag your friends). Suddenly large companies have even more interesting information for targeted advertisements. Once such information becomes available in bulk (that's the keyword: bulk) it is interesting for many different purposes.

And why do I care about privacy? Not only because I hate advertisements. Reason is simple: because it's nobody's business except me.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[Chris Mattern]

Google ignore the fact that there is a massive difference between a public place being public and a public place being available to everyone on the internet (including data gathering servers, and all kinds of face recognition technologies).

No, they're recognizing the fact that this difference WILL go away. It might be Google who does it, or it might be someone less well-known (and less monitored). But someone will do it.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[misexistentialist]

That might be an argument in India for the time being, but is completely laughable in the Western countries that have pervasive video surveillance. And even in India people should be far more concerned with the drones with missiles under their wings watching them.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[Chris Mattern]

Those people get to choose whether or not they put pictures on the internet.

No, they don't. The person putting up the picture chooses, but does everyone in the picture get to choose? No, they do not. They're along for ride whether they wish it or not.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[Threni]

Technology will catch up; eventually you'll be able to scan photos for your face, and then, laws permitting, commence with a 'pay up or take it down' action.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[serviscope_minor]

So you're saying that this guy got the permission of the ~400 people in this photo?:

Try reading the parent post I was replying to. It was about people putting up photos of themselves.

While your point is valid, it has nothing to do with what I was saying.

Say what you want about "righteous standards of behavior", but the horse left the barn a long time ago.

I didn't say anything about "righteous standards of behavior", so I've no idea why you have it in quotes like that.

Re:Google: Let's pretend we don't understand it.

[thej1nx]

I didn't claim any such thing.

I guess I will need to be more explicit. It shouldn't matter here whether it was a "corporation" doing this or if it was a bunch of people doing it. Is the thing they are doing, a problem in itself?

And it is hard to scale up open-source/crowd-sourced projects? What have you been smoking? You lack the imagination, I am afraid. But for hints, I will recommend a look at the entire Linux community or even all of the flicker/twitter/internet/whatnot(when you consider that it is "a bunch of people"(pretty much everyone) who are providing the content. To be more specific, any of the "corporation" is essentially a "bunch of people" hiding behind a fake entity. Let us say they are hiring a team of 80 developers to work on google maps. Are you saying that same cannot be theoretically done by another group of equally-skilled 80 developers who join a similar project voluntarily? Much of satellite images that Googlemaps uses, are in public domain anyways. And what will you do then???? Will you be okay with the images being uploaded then? Community run projects can run sufficient revenue as well btw, via donations or ads etc.

What is to stop Google from "donating" to such a community project(developer time/cash/servers) and come up with exactly the same thing that they have now? What will you do then? Stop corporations from donating anything to opensource projects(linux/apache etc) completely?

So basically your gripe is not whether someone can upload pics of your house on the net or not. Your problem is simply "I dislike xyz. I will allow everyone except xyz to upload such pics". Which is kind of silly.

Corporation as people is indeed stupid. But your sole argument here seems to be "Corporations are evil! I will never allow them to do stuff". It is you who seems to be arguing that a corporation is a separate entity instead of just "a bunch of people" hiding behind a fake name.

What we were talking about was, whether there is actually any problem with the act of taking photos of public streets etc.

     

Truth strikes

[WNight]

Instead of bitching about the new reality make use of the tools it provides to help wipe out corruption.

"We'd be happy to work with them.."

[backslashdot]

Why do people say "I'll/We'll be happy to [__insert_pain_in_the_ass_here__] ".

They never really mean it. I mean, for example why would google be happy to inconvenience themselves .. seriously? Feel good corporate speak. /rant off

Re:"We'd be happy to work with them.."

[glwtta]

It's a phrase people often use to emphasize, somewhat diplomatically, that they're making an effort to cooperate with someone who's being a pain in the ass.

It's not really "corporate" in any way.

Re:"We'd be happy to work with them.."

[alostpacket]

With all due respect, its irregardless of all things Holy.

Coming soon - Google StreetListen

[Anonymous Coward]

A record of all conversations and sounds audible from public places.

Record this - "Fsck you Brin and Page"

Re:pff

[trum4n]

That's what they said about Pakistan.

A rather unpleasant thought

[countertrolling]

...we are happy working with the authorities...

Smell that?

[gregor-e]

I think the opening sentence of the summary might be more accurately rephrased: "The Bangalore Police have sensed an opportunity for a jolly fat slice of baksheesh from Google, and have hence objected to the collection of data by Google's cars". A company that size ought to be able to pay a few million USD to help the Bangalore Police address these security concerns, neh?

"Secret phonebook problem" variant

[mrheckman]

>Scale makes all the difference in many things.

The argument against Google's streetview seems to be a variant of the "secretive government agency phone book problem", In that example, the entire phone book is classified but individual numbers are not.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-x18fG3G-ioJ:www.acsac.org/secshelf/book001/24.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us

Similarly, Google is right that it is taking pictures of public streets, which people are generally free to do (sensitive locations notwithstanding), but the objection is to the compendium of pictures as a whole. This seems to many to be a security problem, possibly because of how easy it makes it for someone to do reconnaissance without actually visiting and taking their own photos, the act of which, presumably, could be detected.