Japanese Group Asks Google To Shut Down Street View
from the public-is-private dept
Apparently a Japanese civilian group, The Campaign Against Surveillance Society, is asking Google to shut down its Street View offering. This is hardly the first time that people have complained about Street View, but, honestly, it's difficult to see how this is a "surveillance" issue or a violation of anyone's privacy. Google is taking photos of public spaces that anyone is free to look at. It's not doing it in real-time or anything. It's just a still photo of a public place that anyone with a camera could take. I can understand people's concerns about growing surveillance or loss of privacy, but efforts to combat those things should focus on areas where there are real threats to privacy -- not a useful service like Google Street View.
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Filed Under: google maps, japan, privacy, street view
Companies: google
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Re:
Uh. I will point out a slippery slope if there is one. This is not one.
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Street View is awesome!
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street view is evil
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Re: street view is evil
merely branding something as evil doesn't even make it morally reprehensible, but it does make you look foolish for talking in moral absolutes
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Re: "street view", that is, free speech, "is evil"?
I think that is the kind of society we are trying to grow out of, the kind of throw-back societies in Saudi Arabia, the Taliban Malitia, and so on, where one or some in power do all the (lack of) thinking, then incflict their conclusions on everyone else.
Ouch!
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public not the same idea
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Must be nice to have that kind of juice....
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Re:
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The day is not far
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Re: The day is not far
Contrary to popular mythology, you do not need someone's permission to take a picture of them in public. You do not need their permission to then publish this picture for all to see. A person's appearance in public is, as should be obvious, public information. Furhter, the person taking the picture, not the subject, owns the copyright to the image. There are no legal grounds on which fight off this kind of stuff unless it becomes harassment (take a look at the paparazzi - not even the Golden Rule will save you.)
"All words in the english dictionary are copy righted or trademarks"
This is also incorrect. While a dictionary *itself* can be, and usually is, under copyright, none of the words in are necessarily trademarks. As for copyrights, individual words and phrases cannot be copyrighted anyway. You'd have to get to at least a poem before you could copyright it - copyrights are for "creative works", trademarks are for invented phrases and names, like Ubuntu(R) and "Linux for Human Beings"(TM)
If you were suggesting that this is where things are headed, rather than the way they actually are, then I apologize and fear you might have a point. ^~
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Re: Re: The day is not far
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/3793943/Sarcasm-may-hold-key-to-diagnosing -dementia-in-the-young.html
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Re: Re: Re: The day is not far
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just throwing this out there
Im all for surveillance, I think its the only way I will feel safe if tech keeps progressing as it will.
other note, ever been somewhere where you took your credit card or wallet out in public while there was somebody nearby with using a phone? high definition cameras will be making their way into cell phones, all it takes is one person sitting at a bar to steal tens if not hundreds of credit card numbers in a single sitting.
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Re: just throwing this out there
And considering you could much more easily pose as a gardener and gain entrance through a window which nobody is there to see or hear you break...
Regarding credit cards, though, that is more genuine cause for concern. Picking up credit card numbers from photographs is one of several popular methods of identity theft. It's also the reasons they've added the small-print security number on the backs of cards, so that a picture of one side of the card will not be sufficient to use it.
The single largest source of identity theft is mail fraud, either from discarded mail which wasn't shredded or stolen directly out of mailboxes before it gets picked up.
While I wouldn't worry too much about cameras in public places, it is something to be aware of.
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Re: just throwing this out there
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Street View
However, my house and neighborhood, in a popular suburb of Veentura County, still shows nothing.
The CASS need to wait until Google photos are updated weekly before they get paranoid.
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Its illegal where I live...
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Only a strange person would do that kind of thing
Mike says:
True enough, but then again, if you saw someone going down your block taking pictures of every house, wouldn't you be a little suspicious as to their motives? Even if there was no harm intended, you would be convinced that you were being stalked by a voyeur or worse.
To those who want a slippery slope, here it is: image tags could be added to every object seen in these pictures. That is, if the image recognizer can see a plasma TV through one of the windows because the curtain was left open, it may tag the image appropriately, and then someone wanting to steal one would have an easier time finding the exact place that has one.
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Re: Only a strange person would do that kind of thing
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I know that if you were working for any kind of media outlet and wanted to take pictures of people in a mall or on the street, you actually have to go and get consent from them.. save for filming a person on the street. Well.. Google seems to be getting around this entirely.
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Re:
In Japan ?
In the us I've seen many newspaper published photos of public places where there were far too many people for the newspaper to have abtained consent from each and every one of them.
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Photography is free speech, I guess complaining about it is free speech, also.
Perhaps Google should turn it into a street-view-wiki all over the world where people attach their own photos, vetted out by others wiki-style, then let the public do their own photography!
Also, this is a two part rights issue:
"Google is taking photos of public spaces that anyone is free to look at."
SHOULD say:
"Google is taking photos of public spaces that anyone is free to look at, and publishing them on the Internet."
Taking photos, and publishing anything, are two almost entirely unrelated areas of law.
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"Unauthorized" photos
Anyone who has a fire insurance policy on a structure can assume that their insurance company will send someone out each year to document it's current condition prior to the renewal of the policy. Finance companies routinely get pictures of the collateral (house, car in driveway, boat in yard, RV out back, etc.) for their files. In a divorce case? Many pictures are taken, documenting visitors, value, condition, etc. Code officials and tax authorities will take pictures of grass length, number of vehicles and tags or permits displayed, etc. Real Estate agents and appraisers will take photos to document relative value of houses, condition of neighborhood or property in question, etc.
Businesses will have photos taken of their sign (by the city sign dept to ensure compliance with zoning laws), their inventory by the finance company with a lien on inventory, their overall premises by the insurance company loss prevention dept, etc.
Most of these photos are taken routinely and without anyone noticing, and placed on proprietary databases for sale without the knowledge of the resident or business owner. All Google is doing is making this information available for free to the general public so we can visit places virtually from the convenience of our computer screen.
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Solution to stop street view from including your house.
Make a huge sign with a foul word on it out of infra-red LEDs. Then only someone looking at your house with a camera (most are IR sensitive) will see the virtual bird they are being given, and know not to take a picture, or, if they do, they polute their archive with profanity.
Simple 'nuff?
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If you want privacy...
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Only in Japan
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I remember
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