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

[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

[aevan]

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

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

What are they hiding?

[souravzzz]

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

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.