UK Says Street View Is Fine... As Canadian Politicians Get Worried About It
from the is-it-so-hard-to-understand dept
I'm not sure what it is about Google's Street View offering that so freaks people out. It's simply taking photos of public areas, not private properties. Yet, we already saw how folks in the UK freaked out about it, insisting that it must be illegal. Well, the UK's "privacy watchdog" has now announced that Google Street View is perfectly legal, so there's nothing to worry about. The group pointed out that there were significant safeguards in place, and any violation of privacy was minimal. Of course, there are still others who haven't quite realized this yet. Colin writes to alert us that politicians in Alberta, Canada are now the latest to worry about how Street View might violate privacy, with the Privacy Commissioner getting upset that Google had started taking photos in Alberta without first concluding talks with his office to make sure that everything was on the right side of the law.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: canada, privacy, street view, uk
Companies: google
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The state takes photos of your house for tax purposes, does that freak you out as well ? It's not like they wear special uniforms or anything, could be a freakin perv or somthin
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Scared about the wrong thing
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Re: Scared about the wrong thing
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That's a joke, right?
The UK is so screwed when it comes to privacy that this doesn't surprise me at all. Granted I wasn't that concerned about StreetView before I heard about the complaints, but I'm almost surprised it isn't UK government policy to put security cameras in household bathrooms "For the children."
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Yep
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Sarcasm was detected in you posts regarding our glorious government ("All hail Gordo - Hail")
Report now for reconditioning
The state is good
The cameras are for your safety
Protester = rioter
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Someone should show the Privacy Commissioner the Flickr website.
Really, thousands of people are losing their jobs and this is what the governments in Canada are worried about?
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Its the law.
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Keep in mind that Street View blurs people's faces. Google isn't using a person's image commercially.
There's no mentionable loss of privacy to the subject.
There's no loss of commercial value to the subject.
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