Japan, Greece The Latest To Join The Anti-Street View Party
from the jump-on-the-bandwagon dept
Lots of people around the world have worked themselves into a lather over the supposed privacy invasions of Google Street View, as well as the security threat they say it creates. These fears are largely unfounded, since Street View displays images of public spaces, and since it really doesn't give would-be criminals information they couldn't easily find elsewhere; and most courts and governments have agreed. Still, the Street View backlash continues to spread, with groups in Japan and Greece the latest to take exception to it. Officials in Greece have forced Google to stop the project there until it provides more details on how long it will store photos and how it will protect people's privacy. In Japan, Google is being forced to re-shoot photos in a dozen cities because its car-mounted cameras were too high. It will lower its cameras there by 16 inches so they can't see over fences around people's homes. That's a nice gesture from Google, but will Japan also ban multi-story buildings that let people see over fences? Will ladders and scaffolding be next?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.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: greece, japan, privacy, street view
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
others may of course disagree.
it certainly seems a more reasonable objection than many I've heard, and sounds more like a regulatory issue than anything.
that said, i can't help but find most privacy advocate groups laughably lunatic [well, ridiculous, really, but that didn't alliterate] with regards to which battles they chose to fight and which not to. then they take silly positions as well.
on the other hand you then get governments happily violating every limit of reasonable consideration of privacy for the most ridiculous reasons, so i suppose fair is fair. one typically gets further by being Smarter than one's opponent though...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Japan is densely populated with little protection to keep people from being a Peeping Tom. It's not something the Japanese do, so it was of little concern to the public. You grow up just not looking into people's houses. I remember using a public toilet at a park in Japan and it was like urinating on a short wall on a busy path. It wouldn't fly in the US.
It makes sense to have maps. Japanese streets are random and confusing, but I also understand the concerns of their public.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
love the adsense....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Understand other cultures
I don't claim any deep understanding of Japanese - or, for that matter, Greek - culture. But what I have read about the Japanese is consistent with, say, DaveSmith's remarks. Japan is, and has been for a very long time, a crowded country. Personal space is extremely limited. Rooms are separated from each other by paper screens. Pretty much everything you say can be overheard; much of what you do can be seen by others.
The Japanese, however, feel a need for privacy just as much as any other human beings. They provide it by social convention: Listening in and peeking is just *not done* in many circumstances. We as (predominantly, on this site) Westerners undoubtedly find this approach incomprehensible - just as Japanese no doubt find our fetish for huge homes and thick walls bizarre and hugely, unnecessarily wasteful.
A culture that is built upon a shared understanding that certain things, while physically visible, are simply not to be looked at by proper human beings, will certainly have a legitimate issue with a service that blindly publishes pictures out of their social context.
Frankly, it surprises me that the Japanese consider lowering the camera to human eye level to be enough of an adjustment. But that just shows how little I understand of the nuances of Japanese mores.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]