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Windows Live and Privacy

Posted by kdawson on Sun Dec 03, 2006 05:53 PM
from the filming-now-in-a-city-near-you dept.
Privacy Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "Today as we were biking around our neighborhood in a small city we saw a strange vehicle slowly driving around. It appeared to be an SUV, bristling with cameras mounted on the roof, and pointing just about every possible direction. The first time we saw it, all we could see was that it had a sign on the side, something about Windows. The second time we saw it, we stared at it so hard that the driver stopped and we had a chance to ask him what it was all about. He said he was driving around, filming streets, and that there were people doing this all over the world, and getting data from the air too. It was going to be available on the Web. I asked him if this was Microsoft's answer to Google Earth, and he indicated that it was. There seems to be very little about this on the Web, and I found no mention of Microsoft's collection of this sort of detailed street level data. The Windows site appears to be http://preview.local.live.com/, although since I use a Mac it didn't work properly. I'm not sure I want my neighborhood viewable on the Web from ground level. And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could."
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  • OH SNAP!!! It's the Vista Police.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2006, @05:56PM (#17093192)
    quick....uninstall...UNINSTALL!!!

  • Why not? (Score:3, Funny)

    by xyankee (693587) on Sunday December 03 2006, @05:56PM (#17093200)
    "And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could." Why couldn't they? It's amazing the things they can do with computers these days, you know...

    • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dknj (441802) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:12PM (#17093346) Journal
      a9 maps used to do this. Interestingly enough, a9 maps no longer exists [a9.com]. Though now they appear to be in bed with Live

    • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Funny)

      by geobeck (924637) on Sunday December 03 2006, @08:52PM (#17094534) Homepage

      "And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could." Why couldn't they? It's amazing the things they can do with computers these days, you know...

      They won't edit them out completely; they'll just replace them with better-looking people. How else are they going to compete with GE?

  • This is old news... kind of (Score:4, Insightful)

    by El Lobo (994537) on Sunday December 03 2006, @05:57PM (#17093208)
    Yes, this has been going on for some months now. You don't see too much talking about this because:

    1) This is a project in MS lab that has been kind of limited

    2) People don't like to talk about MS making things better

    3) Soon yuu will see Google adding this feature as well. THEN, you will read about this and average Joe will tell you how Google innovates and MS catchs up [bg]

  • Agreement? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Realistic_Dragon (655151) on Sunday December 03 2006, @05:57PM (#17093210) Homepage
    They don't need to edit anyone out. Just check your Windows EULA - it's in there right after the section concerning rights to your immortal soul.

  • Driving directions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by baffled (1034554) on Sunday December 03 2006, @05:58PM (#17093216)
    It could be useful to see a picture of all the turns when getting directions.

  • Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jfengel (409917) on Sunday December 03 2006, @05:58PM (#17093218) Homepage Journal
    The government doesn't want you to know this, but here's the secret:

    When you're outside... people can see you.

    • Take my advice... (Score:5, Funny)

      by gooman (709147) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:10PM (#17093334) Journal
      Stay inside.

    • Re:Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:5, Informative)

      by DragonWriter (970822) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:54PM (#17093742)
      When you're outside... people can see you.


      Yes, but except for certain special cases like news reporting on events of public interest, they can't take pictures in which you are recognizable and use them for commercial purposes without your express consent. Legal rights to "privacy" don't only apply to rights to prevent people from seeing you in the first instance.

      • Re:Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by emcron (455054) on Sunday December 03 2006, @07:10PM (#17093838)
        Um, no. If you're on a public street, it's fair game. What you're thinking of only applies to using someone's likeness or celebrity without consent to imply that a specific person is endorsing a product. You don't think that every local news station in the US has to compensate people milling about in the background of their news video, do you? If you're on public property you can take whatever pictures you want and commercialize them in nearly any fashion.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Assassin bug (835070)
          Some of the legal/cultural regulations regarding photos and video of others is also interesting. In East Africa it is expected that you pay anyone included in your shot at the time of the photo. For example, I have some great video of a very young Maasai boy leading a herd of about 150 goats across the scrubland of northern Tanzania. I guess my tripod (and the tall pale guy behind it) was pretty conspicuous because he headed straight towards me, seeing me from about 300 meters out. He approached me very cur

          • Re:Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Reaperducer (871695) on Sunday December 03 2006, @08:57PM (#17094560) Homepage
            I live in a neighborhood where five or six major motion pictures are filmed each year (Batman Begins, The Weatherman, The Break Up, etc...). Whenever the movie crews are shooting on the street they put up big signs on the sidewalks telling people that if they walk through they may end up in the background of a film and if they don't want to be, they should walk the other way until filming is over. The signs seem pretty standardized, so it appears that this has passed muster with lawyers somewhere.

      • Re:Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:5, Informative)

        by mr_matticus (928346) on Sunday December 03 2006, @07:19PM (#17093902)
        The exceptions are bigger than you think. You're probably already photographed on the Internet on someone's birthday Flikr album from a restaurant, or maybe you're one of thousands of people filmed on open street scenes for motion pictures. They can use material which includes your likeness for any purpose, including commercial ones, so long as your likeness isn't part of that purpose.

        If I'm filming a tree lighting ceremony for the holidays and your face drifts into the frame, too bad for you. That video is still going in the film, because I have no idea who you are and your inclusion isn't even tangentially related to what I'm doing. Privacy laws only protect exploitation, not inclusion. In public, people and cameras can see you. If you don't like it, don't go out. Ever been on the big screen at a baseball game? Try complaining about that.
  • Cry me a river dude, what makes you think you have the right not to be photographed in public? What makes you think you have the right to tell people they can't photograph your neighbourhood? This is a non-issue, and street level photography tied to satellite appears to be very useful. I have often looked up places I'm intending to go on Google Earth to get an idea of the geography of the location, now I can use street level photography to get some landmarks too. I'm surprised it hasn't been done already and just hope that Microsoft will be collecting data outside the US too.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by grand_it (949276)
      I'm surprised it hasn't been done already

      It _has_ been done already, and dismissed. Check out this story [com.com] about an ideantical Amazon's A9 Maps [a9.com] feature.

      • Of course /everybody/ has the right /not/ to be photographed in public (or private) without consenting to it. Look it up in your country's civil law (unless you are from North Korea or so).

        And of course you are dead wrong. Otherwise no one could take a picture in public without getting releases from everyone that might be in the frame. Now, using someone's image for profit -- that's a different kettle o' fish.

        But being in public means being in PUBLIC. You have no expectation of privacy. Whoa, I can even SEE YOU in public, and TELL ANYONE about it! Including your wife that you were with another woman! If you don't like it, wear a hood.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Brandybuck (704397)
        Is this kind of thing fair?

        No, it's not fair. But then again, life isn't fair either.

        "Fair" is the enemy of "free". To make things fair you must make other things unfree. That means bigger government and more laws. The purpose of government is to protect your life, liberty and property, not to protect you from the embarassment of being photographed in your pink boxers.

        The power to prevent people from photographing your underwear, is the same power that can prevent paparazzi from photographing Britney's cooc
      • I'd say ending up on the front page of digg or Fark or whatever is pretty unpleasant, but I didn't see too much of an uproar when the Star Wars Kid was put in the same spot. He was, after all, in more of a private situation than the street. And he is of course not the only one, just the first one that popped into my head. Basically, I agree with you that it is unpleasant, but this kind of thing has been going on for ages without any comment - why is it heinous when a map is attached?

  • Woe is me ! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jfclavette (961511) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:01PM (#17093242)
    I was captured at some undisclosed moment by a camera. Someone who looks for me very hard might be able to see that I was in a public area 10 days ago even tough there's no way to search for anyone, very unlikely that they would recognize me, and I could always hide from the truck if I'm really paranoid. A stalker will stalk you. Not use this.

  • Easy to do... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jah-Wren Ryel (80510) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:03PM (#17093268)
    And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could.

    That kind of work is exactly what the 3rd-world "IT" shops excel at. It is a very simple task to describe, and very simple to determine if the work is done correctly. But it is very hard for a computer to do it completely automatically.

  • this is not nefarious (Score:5, Interesting)

    by astrashe (7452) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:05PM (#17093286) Journal
    I worked for a company that photographed many buildings on the north side of chicago. We used it so that we could pull up photos of apartment buildings when condos went up for sale -- we could put ads online and in print without having to send a photographer out for a new photo.

    It's been years since I looked at it, but I used to use a web site that would show you pictures of buildings in paris -- I think it was a yellow pages type site. I had a reservation in a hotel, and used the web site to find out what my hotel looked like, both so I could decide about whether or not to stay there, and also so I'd be able to recognize it when I was walking through the streets. You could look at any specific building in town, and move up and down the street to see what was around it.

    I'm inclined to agree with the person who pointed out that people can see things that are outside anyway. At least this takes that public information and puts it into a usable form. If they want to put trucks in the street to take these photos, and if they want to put the fruit of that labor up on the web, more power to them.

    I just hope that their web app works with firefox and linux.

  • Editing people out: trivial (Score:5, Interesting)

    by scdeimos (632778) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:06PM (#17093292)
    Long exposures (>60 seconds) will remove most moving objects (cars, trucks, people).

    Or with computers, a series of short digital exposures which only keep the content "common" between the frames (moving objects will be in different parts of subsequent frames).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Cow Jones (615566)
      There is even a commercial package called Tourist Remover [snapmania.com] which uses multiple images of the same location to compose a result without artifacts from moving objects.
        • Yes, they're stills - but the vehicle, and thus the camera, is still on the move. You can deduce this from many locations such as highways where there are up to at least 8 consecutive shots that I've found where the cars in front are still in the next shot. Even if they did somehow manage to stand still on the highways, I doubt they would have gotten all the other traffic to cooperate ;)

          That said - another posted already pointed out that it could still be done. The question is: why on Earth would they?

  • Windows live sightseeing and pr0n (Score:4, Funny)

    by thc69 (98798) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:15PM (#17093378) Homepage Journal
    So, when do sightseeing blogs start to pop up, pointing out the rare frame where somebody is caught sunbathing nude?

  • There could be a problem here... (Score:5, Funny)

    by thewils (463314) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:20PM (#17093426) Journal
    Say honey, how come Dave's truck is parked in our driveway?

  • As for the news summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jugalator (259273) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:22PM (#17093444) Journal
    The Windows site appears to be http://preview.local.live.com/ [live.com], although since I use a Mac it didn't work properly. I'm not sure I want my neighborhood viewable on the Web from ground level. And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could

    Well, it works in Firefox, so chances are it works on a Mac after all, just not on Safari, if that was the one you had problems with.
    And yes, the people captured seem to actually be left in.

  • Not exactly new (Score:4, Interesting)

    by djupedal (584558) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:24PM (#17093468)
    The State of California, for one, has been filming at street level for the last decade. Shots are used for court cases, reconstruction of roads when wiped out by mudslide, etc. What...you've never taken a photo in your neighborhood and posted it on the 'net?

    The comment about it happening around the world is most likely crap... MS is already in enough trouble without sticking their neck in yet another noose.

  • That's not all! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tim C (15259) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:37PM (#17093584)
    If you go to google maps, and choose the satellite view, and go to my road, you can totally see my car in my driveway!!!

    I mean, how dare they?! Taking a photo of something in a public place*, right out in the open, then putting it on the web! I should sue!!!

    (* Note to pedants - no, my driveway isn't public, but it's open to the street and plainly visible from the pavement)

    Privacy concerns? Don't make me laugh. If they start sending people into private buildings with cameras, get back to me. In the meantime, kdawson, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for allowing such a spin to be put on this story.
  • I used to work in the public safety industry and at trade shows at least five years ago companies started showing up, hawking exactly this. The sales pitch was that they'd drive these vans around to take street-level photos of the city so the fire or police departments could have these views when dispatching to a call. Kind of silly use of the technology back then, not sure how successful the companies were.

    It seems maybe these companies might have sold Microsoft on the idea. Perhaps there were a whole bunch of data capture vans and no customer base. In the age of Google Earth and MSN Virtual Earth maybe spending money collecting these images are worthwhile. Or maybe just a waste of Microsoft's money.

  • A bit too late to complain (Score:3, Informative)

    by DrXym (126579) on Sunday December 03 2006, @06:43PM (#17093628)
    A3 (Amazon's search engine) has had street level photographs for a couple of years now. It is possible to enter an address by zip code and then see the picture of that address as it looks from the side of moving vehicle. It's interesting and useful that MS might also do it, but it isn't new or original.

  • Motion Flow 3D Tracking (Score:4, Interesting)

    by im_thatoneguy (819432) on Sunday December 03 2006, @07:26PM (#17093954)
    It would seem that beyond the fairly primitive display and interpolation of the software currently being presented, the real gold from all these photos would be to start running them through a motion flow algorithm and 3d tracking algorithm to start generating geometry.

    I think people are right in saying that this had somewhat limited applicable use, but the more raw data you have on an area, the more references you can feed into new technologies. Sure this data might not be useful now, but let's say Microsoft then proceeds to do a lidar scan of the entire city. Combined with this data, you have one more data set to use for comparison. Increase sample size, decrease margin of error.

    It's much like a web crawler, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Amazon are all in an arms race to know more about the world than anyone else, because the more you know, the more accurate you can be. I like the new 3d photo technology microsoft was showcasing earlier of I think the bassilica, start combining that with lidar and you have an automatic mapping/3d modelling application. The more photos you take, less likely a person will be in front of it.

  • Are people really this out of touch with news? (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheNetAvenger (624455) on Sunday December 03 2006, @07:43PM (#17094070)
    Are people really this out of touch with news?

    Microsoft started taking street and air shapshots of cities over a year ago, it was part of their demonstration even over a year ago.

    And now this Mac user is surprised? WTF. This isn't an 'answer' to Google BTW, MS was working on this technology before Google was even a glimmer in the eye of the geeks that created it. Go look up terra server, and when MS first put this up as a demonstration of how MS-SQL could easily handle terrabytes of data.

    As for the street and air level snapshots, these TOO are ALREADY in use. Microsoft 3D earth uses the 'textures' of the buildings in the 3D models they have of several major cities already.

    Additionally, the 'angle' view was introduced on MS Virtual Earth over a year ago, with multi-angle views of cities from airplane shots that complimented the satelitte images.

    Is everyone this out of touch with technology and news, and if so, are the editors of Slashdot becoming out of date old timers as well? No wonder people are shocked to find out that Windows doesn't run on a DOS architecture nor crash every 5 mins if this is their idea of breaking news.

    Talk about slow news day... OMFG.

  • just another example of technology (Score:4, Insightful)

    by v1 (525388) on Sunday December 03 2006, @09:07PM (#17094620) Homepage Journal
    A variant of moore's law applies here I think, where the amount of information available goes up at a geometric rate just like processor speed and memory requirements. Ten years ago we would have laughed at someone that said we could get 15ft resultion sat pictures of most anywhere in 10 seconds, but we have had that for what, four years now. What's next? In 20 years will I be getting calls from the local contractor advising me that I need my shingles replaced because they're starting to crack?

    Probably.

  • Ok. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Perseid (660451) on Sunday December 03 2006, @11:20PM (#17095386)
    So if I see a truck driving around taking pictures I will try to look as sexy as I can. So if you see the fat computer nerd trying to look sexy in the next beta of this thing - that was me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by SeanMon (929653)
      If a structure is visible from a public way, it is legal to photograph it and publish it; it is not a copyright violation. Exceptions are made, of course, for certain government areas, most notably Area 51.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by timeOday (582209)
        Yup, at first I thought satellite imagery would be useless too. Now I use it to imagine what it will look like when I get there so I'll know that I've arrived. Photos from the ground would be all the better.

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