Google Begins Blurring Faces In Street View 170
mytrip notes a News.com article reporting that Google has begun blurring faces in its Street View service, which has spawned privacy concerns since its introduction last year. Google has been working for a couple of years to advance the state of the art of face recognition. Quoting News.com: 'The technology uses a computer algorithm to scour Google's image database for faces, then blurs them, said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps, in an interview at the Where 2.0 conference...' Google wrote about the program in their Lat/Long blog."
Can you focus out-of-focus pictures (Score:1, Insightful)
If you have an out of focus picture, can you manipulate the image mathematically to put it "in focus" or is there some information lost in the out-of-focusness so you can't do this.
And if so, with the appropriate app, will you be able to un-blur the people's faces in Google Street View?
Re:Kudos to Google! (Score:2, Insightful)
I only use street-view to figure out what building to look for, or what a particular intersection looks like... I don't need extreme detail for that.
Does anyone really need high-res (able to identify people and license plates) pics in streetview?
What privacy concerns? (Score:5, Insightful)
My understanding is that people in public should have no expectations of privacy. Or is that just a U.S. thing? Furthermore, as their algorithms get better, will Google skip blurring the faces of famous people? They certainly have no expectations of privacy in public.
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an overly simplified view. Are you saying that in public it should be legal to be able to take pictures of anybody from any angle/viewpoint? (eg: upskirt)
Can I take my parabolic microphone and start recording people's conversations 100 meters away and then post the conversations on the Internet?
Why can't people walk around with no clothes on in public if they aren't doing anything weird or being "sexual" (whatever that means)?
If there are no expectations of privacy, then what's the problem? (sarcasm)
I would modify your "no expectations of privacy in public" to "reduced expectations of privacy in public"
People can be recognized by their clothes etc (Score:1, Insightful)
so where are Brin and Page's houses? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not blank? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we going to start going after the newspapers and TV stations too? After all, they take plenty of videos and pictures of places where people and standing around in the background and may not realize that they're being photographed or taped.
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:4, Insightful)
What if a Google camera catches you:
Most of these things may not mean anything to you, but they may mean a lot to some people. Now, if Google announced "we will be taking pictures of this street at 4pm on Monday, don't be there if you don't want your picture taken", that would be a perfectly reasonable solution to this whole thing.
Re:Kudos to Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
Walking by a brothel or sitting in a park (half-)naked also happens to be in public.
Why wouldn't "we have a right to see these people the moment they were photographed..." in public?
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, a normal vantage point if you're standing on top of a van looking into everyone's backyard.
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a gross oversimplification to say that once in public, one should have no expectation of privacy.
People have to go into public to do normal things. This does not mean that any level whatsoever of data gathering on your public activities is acceptable. Certainly would you see the privacy implications if Google were to attach a GPS unit to your car and record where you drive -- sure, you're driving in public, but that does not mean it would be okay for Google to record detailed records of your trips. Likewise it would be inappropriate for Google to follow you with a video camera. Perhaps you don't, but a lot of folks feel that intermittent still images taken by Google's drive-by surveillance crews are also too invasive.
The advancement of photographic and image processing technology has introduced privacy concerns that existing laws could not foresee. The ease with which massive amounts of personally invasive information can be gathered, analyzed, and then distributed in bulk has changed the way we should think about privacy -- even privacy in public.
Re:Kudos to Google! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:3, Insightful)
And the upskirt stuff, yes crosses a privacy line but thats done very stealthily, taking pictures from a giant van with cameras on top of it doesn't really resemble stealth.
So it would be OK to go around taking upskirt shots as long as you told people you were doing it, even if they didn't want you to?
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly. Regardless of whether one agrees with your particular hypothetical example, there are at least five qualitative differences between what is observed by a casual passer-by going about their business in a public place and the intentional, systematic collection(1) of a permanent(2), searchable(3) database of pictures that will be made available to the public(4) by a commercial entity(5).
Natural expectations have, at least until recently, been that public behaviour is subject to the first kind of scrutiny, but not the second. If the latter is also to be considered, then privacy laws may need to change to keep up with people's expectations. That may in turn mean, for example, that photographers will have to give up some of their current legal freedom to snap away in public, in order to safeguard the principle of people having a reasonable expectation of privacy in their lives. The interesting question is where the balance lies: in a world with mass storage, fast communication, ever more invasive surveillance technology, and ever more powerful image and sound processing algorithms, what reasonable expectations of privacy should the law protect?
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or a better question... Why shouldn't the law protect it? Are people really that afraid of being in a random photograph taken on the street?
Re:Kudos to Google! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're looking at it backwards. There doesn't need to be a reason for us to have the right to do or see something. But there does have to be a good reason to take a right away.
Re:What privacy concerns? (Score:3, Insightful)
He's completely on point. The parent poster asked if we should have any expectations of privacy while in public. He shows that yes, we do have some expectations on privacy; the discussion is thus about what those expectations should be.
It doesn't need to be discussed. It's quite clear cut. You have an expectation that people won't photograph up your skirt, because there is a law saying you can't do that. You have an expectation that people won't listen in on your conversations with a mic, because there's a law against eavesdropping without knowledge. You really don't have any right to privacy in a public space aside from what the law grants you, and the law does in fact grant you certain privacies.
So we really don't need to discuss whether you can do X, Y, or Z in public. Look at the law. That's really the bottom line.
A newspaper can for instance not just take a shot of someone on the street, then use that shot for an advertisement (or sell it to an ad agency) - their relative freedom of using other persons likeness is limited to actual news.
Of course a newspaper could do that if they wanted. The reason they don't isn't because it's illegal, but because they would get their ass sued off by the person they photographed. The difference is real, and important.