Google's Streetview Seen As Culturally Insensitive In Japan 524
Jim O'Connell writes "Global Voices has a translation of an excellent open letter to Google by Osamu Higuchi, explaining that Street view is too invasive for Japanese traditional values when used in residential areas.
Having lived here for ten years, most recently in an older residential area, I can attest to its accuracy — Living in such close proximity to your neighbors, it becomes necessary to 'not look' at everything that you might be able see from a place such as the street, where you may have a legal right to be. The cultural boundaries are simply different than those of the US."
I thought Taboos applied to people not things. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know that what google is doing is taboo seeing as they are a technology in this case not a person.
If it's taboo to spy on your neighbors then don't use Google's street view. Or at the very least keep the view centered on the road.
You can't claim "the photo made you look". It's like child pornography. The fact that it exists does not force you to go download it. If you find it impolite to look at people's houses... don't look at people's houses. I'm going to let those who find the images offensive in on a little secret: nothing is stopping some insensitive smeghead from just driving down your street and staring at your house.
My view on all this? The Googmobile drove past work this last week and I hung out the window and waved.
Re:Same here. (Score:4, Interesting)
And it applies to many other places in the world too.
Maybe time for Google to be a bit more careful about what they look at.
Re:No addresses? (Score:4, Interesting)
They do sort of have addresses, but it's by subdivision of block. As an example, a particular Hostel I was at was at "Shinjuku-ku, 5-2 Katamachi"
So to find it you need to go to the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, and then look for the Katamachi block, then find sub-block 5, and then it's the 2nd building in that section. Luckily for me the search space wasn't that large, but it's still definitely a two dimensional search rather than a one dimensional search...
View Map [google.com]
Re:No addresses? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's not a "sort of address" - it's an address - and a pretty logical one too, by British standards at least.
Japan names its intersections, not its roads, and generally names "what is bounded" rather than "what bounds it" (i.e. a road.)
After living there... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I thought Taboos applied to people not things. (Score:5, Interesting)
Taking a picture inside my bathroom however is physically impossible for a stranger to do. If on the other hand strangers were walking through my bathroom every day then it would be as easy for them to sneak a peek while walking through my bathroom as going online and sneeking a peek. They could be rigged with cameras which I don't know about. If a road ran through my bathroom then every single car could have a secret camera in it. People could be planting tiny cell phone video cameras in dumpsters across from my bathroom. TFA was very specific in its accusation that it was bad because people could look without being discovered. But looking without anyone 'finding you out' is possible without the assistance of google. It requires intent for the peeping tom to rotate the camera to the side and look out the side of the window. If I were there in person it requires intent for me to look to the side.
This is a human use question not a technological one. Those who have a right to look to the side of the road... should look at side of the road pictures. Those who do not have a reason to look along the side of the road--who are upstanding and considerate individuals should not look at those pictures.
Re:Same here. (Score:5, Interesting)
What this really reminds us of is that meatspace is fundamentally different from cyberspace. On the net, we've evolved the ROBOTS.TXT for just this problem, and everybody agrees that websites aren't private by default, unless the owners explicitly say so. Google is a net company, and views the world as if it was an extension of the internet.
But the real world is not like the net, and in the real world the ROBOTS.TXT convention is inverted: the onus is not on the people to inform Google which data is out of bounds, instead the onus is on Google to ask every possible person which data is public. As a result, Google's company culture is fundamentally ill suited for meatspace information gathering.
The streetview example is only one of a long line of self inflicted troubles Google has brought upon itself. Here are some other examples:
When Google started scanning books and offering them online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it went to a library, everything was available to them unless specifically prohibited, just like on a website. But the real world doesn't work like the web, and Google got sued by publishers. The correct approach was to ask the publishers for permission, for each and every book.
When Google started offering news stories written by others online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it's on somebody's website, they can use it unless the ROBOTS.TXT says otherwise. But in the real world, those websites were only licensed to display syndicated news stories from the big organizations (Reuters, AP, AFP,...), and Google got rightly sued. The correct approach was for Google to license the material from Reuters, AP, AFP etc. themselves, before showing the material to their users.
When Google stated that Gmail wouldn't necessarily delete peoples' emails even if they shut their accounts, they got in trouble. In the real world, emails are considered private by most people, and just because they use Google's service doesn't mean they want Google to keep everything.
These examples show that Google's netroots are both an advantage (when competing in net technologies) and also a disadvantage (when trying to enter markets where the internet rules don't map well to reality). The world is more complex than what Google's management thinks.
In Soviet Russia, and more (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Japan respects privacy??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does it (Score:5, Interesting)
Since when are the Japanese sensitive about photographing private residential areas!?
I live in the Weststadt residential neighborhood of Heidelberg, Germany. Heidelberg is a beautiful city, and sees many tourists. For some reason, the Japanese tour groups frequently travel down my street. Also, for some reason, many of the older Japanese tourists frequently take pictures of me doing such mundane things as bringing home groceries. I find it amusing that I am probably in several dozen Japanese photo albums, probably entitled "typical German going to the grocery store." I find it especially amusing, because I am an expatriate American, not a German.
In any case, is it typical for the Japanese to consider their own residential neighborhood private, but everyone else's to be public?
Prime directive (Score:3, Interesting)
So I wonder if the Google-can-do-no-harm crowd can recall their Star Trek franchise, and if they are prepared to consider whether the Prime Directive of any decent group (society, country, company) should be: "don't interfere".
That includes, as far as I remember, to repect the whishes of a society to be left alone, in general and in Street View.
Ah yes... the nice japs at it (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup...
Few things will irk the average japaneese more than invasion of privacy.
This is a country and culture so different from occidental ones that they tend to have no locks in their rooms because nobody would imagine entering without knocking, where people police each other in the subway so that you dont scream or make any kind of fuss that might irk the guy next to you.
I admire that part of their culture very much because its clearly a civilizatory trend: it makes people very councious about the rights of the next guy: its an insular culture ripe for pure individual freedom at its best.
Interestingly enough, their rigid social side follows very clear rules and is never very personal: the japaneese keep their inner self... erm.. to themselves.
I like that a lot.
Re:Same here. (Score:3, Interesting)
Street-view is an invaluable tool (Score:4, Interesting)
I use it all the time for work. It augments the directions they give you , and gives you an idea of what the place you're looking for looks like. The pictures are taken from the street, so I won't see anything on street view that I wont see later when I'm driving down the street. If the cultural norm is not to look in certain places, why can't you just not look there in the google pictures?
I was putting together a photo-log of monitoring wells the other day, and I needed a picture that I'd forgotten to take while I was in the field. Rather than go back out just for one stupid picture than no one is probably even going to look at, I went on street view and got the picture. It is very useful, and I don't see how it is realistically an invasion of privacy. It is obviously intended to give people a general idea of how landmarks in the street will appear, and it is really too low-resolution to be used for anything else.
Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does (Score:5, Interesting)
Try being 6'4" with blond hair and green eyes walking the crowded streets of Tokyo. People would come up to me and feel the hair on my arms. They seem to be utterly fascinated with anyone that has any kind of body hair. I guess hairy freaks aren't allowed any kind of personal space.
Large groups of people, mostly kids and teenagers, would crowd around me and want to have their picture taken. It was just as bad in the Philippines, if not worse.
I'm glad I don't travel anymore.
Meatspace ROBOTS.TXT (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how hard it would be to develop a meatspace version of ROBOTS.TXT... there are several ways this might work that I can think of right now...
1. An opt-in online system where you log in and say "google can show the picture of my house". A bit tricky to maintain though... how do you stop me logging in to google and approving a picture of your house?
2. An opt-out online system.
3. A symbol that you print out, laminate, and affix to your house. Is the resolution that appears on streetview the same as what google actually took or do they downscale it from a much higher resolution? If the latter then there should be no problem identifying the symbol. It could work as an opt-in or an opt-out system.
4. Some combination of the above that changes the resolution that your house appears in (eg from completely blurred to maximum resolution).
Something a bit unrelated that I just thought of... I wonder if google ever considered using garbage collection vehicles to take the pictures. They go basically everywhere in metro areas, and in Australia at least, an increasing number of rural areas. You could just stick a (google provided) bright yellow sticker on your garbage bin if you didn't want/did want (depending on the opt-out/in approach taken) to participate, and an optical sensor on the truck would register your want. The only disadvantage would be that the picture would be always taken on garbage collection day when you have your rubbish bins out, cluttering the view :)
Cultrual Blah Blah (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Same here. (Score:4, Interesting)
There, like here, they'd have to come on to private property to take pictures with any effect. If I see a Google truck/car/van then you can pretty much rest assured that they've violated the law so much that they are going to have issues. (It is not a simple matter of turning around, they can take pictures of anything they can see from the legal road all that they want and I won't mind a bit but they'll never actually make it here.)
Culture vs. law.... If it isn't illegal than that culture should have passed laws to protect itself or should enlist the government's aide in ensuring their values are maintained. If that means enacting laws to restrict this in the future and even retroactively have the practiced banned then they should do so.
Not all cultures are the same and, really, they don't need to be. If they were then where would be the culture?
Re:Cultrual Blah Blah (Score:5, Interesting)
That's part of the *culture*. And while there is certainly plenty to see if you pry, the cultural etiquette is to not overtly look in on your neighbors and certainly not to photograph people in their private lives. This is indeed a cultural difference, whether you like it or not. The analogy would be you suddenly photograph and blog your neighbors and the local onsen. Try that for a while and get back to us on how well it works out for you.
Not all cultures are the same (Score:4, Interesting)
Well maybe that's not the culture to do that in Japan
Seriously, in most countries there are plenty of unwritten rules.
In Japan I believe you're not supposed to eat while walking about on the street.
And in most (all?) countries, I believe it's the unwritten rule that you are supposed to face the doorway in an elevator, not put your back to the doorway and smile at everyone
If you're an alien from another world (or an observant human) you'll see plenty of interesting unwritten rules.
Nobody writes all of them down.
It should not be illegal to break those rules once in a while, but if you keep doing that, you're being an asshole.
It's not illegal to be an asshole in most countries. Do we make it illegal to be an asshole?
I don't think that's such a good idea. I'm sure most of us have been assholes a few times in our lives.
To me, a country with a high proportion of persistent and unrepentant assholes shows a failure of society/culture, to outlaw "behaving like an asshole" is not addressing the real problem - many will remain assholes and just behave "almost but not quite an asshole" in legal terms.
Re:Much more in Europe (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in Europe, this feeling of privacy is much stronger than in Japan.
Apparently, you don't know Japan very well. I not only have lived here for over 14 years but am married to a Japanese woman and have 3 kids. It may surprise you to know that the word for privacy in Japanese is...puraibashi. "Why is that" you ask? In Japan there really wasn't any real concept of privacy before Japan started becoming westernized. So to say that privacy is big here is just bullshit. All your neighbors here are always knee deep in your shit (most people can't help it because they are only centimeters away from their neighbors). Privacy has only recently become big here with big companies sharing your personal information with others. Companies can even be certified that they will keep your personal information secret. Other than that, in your personal life, here in Japan privacy doesn't exist.
Re:Same here. (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue is something that anyone, anywhere, regardless of "culture," understands: There exist places where the line between "public" and "private" are slightly blurred - in the states, this might be a row of adjoining, unfenced backyards, or maybe an apartment common area, etc. Anyhow it's not a matter of "culture", it's a matter of geography and population density. Put Americans or Europeans in high density, tiny houses with tiny streets, and see what happens (my guess, the same).
Re:Hypocrisy is only wrong when someone else does (Score:3, Interesting)
I've lived in Japan for 7+ years. I have blond hair and blue eyes.
One thing you have to understand about the Japanese is that the majority of them divide the world into two groups: Japanese and others. They CONSTANTLY bring up the fact that I'm a foreigner, even when it has no bearing whatsoever on the situation. They also frequently tell me that they can/can't do something because they are Japanese.
I've been asked by children if I'm a person or not. When I say "yes" they respond matter-of-factly that I can't be a person, because I have blue eyes. People have brown eyes.
Re:Same here. (Score:5, Interesting)
You do understand that our nation is so completely and totally fucked up right now because of people like you demanding that the government "should do something about that". Our society has given up all of its responsibility and demand that someone else (government) take care of them in all aspects of their life. So as long as you will stand there and say government should do something...you have no right to bitch when government does things you don't like. Government was supposed to have limited power and we fucked it up severely.
Re:No addresses? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that I heard from my JP teacher that buildings are numbered based on when they were built, not where they are in relative location. The first building on the block is numbered "1", regardless of where it was built.
Re:Same here. (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess, very different. Put Americans and/or Europeans in a similar situation and I can guarantee the murder rate will go way up ("Hey! Stop looking at my wife, asshole!") Whether or not the Japanese like their lifestyle, or whether they simply accept it, is nothing I can comment upon. That they have adapted to it in ways that would be utterly foreign to most Westerners and Europeans is pretty obvious.
Just a bunch of whining 2chan users (Score:3, Interesting)
Fresh off their campaign of getting the English staff of MDN fired for translating Japanese Tabloid articles, they now have their sites set on Google.
The biggest issue the Japanese sites are complaining about is consenting adults photographed going into love hotels.
If they want to be concerned about people taking photos how about putting this much effort into all the pervs taking upskirt pictures. How about dealing with the behavior on rush hour trains that creates the need for "Womens Only" rail cars.
Google street view is an actually really needed in japan because of the illogical addressing system they have for buildings.
I saw something contradicting this in Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was in Japan shooting Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift in December 2005, I had nothing to do one day, so I did some walking just to see what wonders there were to see -- and there were many.
The most impressive, though, was a large van...with a one-inch thick sheet of aluminum bolted to the top, on which were mounted four hi-def cameras, four laser scanners, a GPS, and some other gear I didn't recognize. After walking by, walking back, walking away, and walking back again I couldn't help but ask (in English, of course) what they were doing.
You see, for Fast and Furious through 4, we built various camera rigs to film streets, to use as backgrounds for greenscreen work. This was clearly a similar rig, but on steroids. Radioactive mutant steroids.
The best english-speaking person on the crew came up to me and said "Ah, are you engineer?" I wish :) No, I am a filmmaker, but I have to know what you are doing!
He gave me a tour of the whole rig. There were enough computers inside the van to put my computer animation facility to shame. The were driving up and down all the streets of Tokyo, building a 3D, textured model of every building, for use in car navigation units. The geometry information from the laser scanners was merged with the photographic information from the hi-def cameras, and registered with the GPS.
So -- I find the protestations recorded in the article a bit suspect.
Re:I LOVE Google Streetview! (Score:2, Interesting)
You'd get stopped for photographing a lot of stuff in the USA too. Scare some panicky shut-in and the cops get called. But that doesn't mean it's illegal, just that panicked shut-ins see terrorists in everything anyone does.
He isn't claiming it's illegal. That's the whole point. He's claiming that it's going against the culture of Japan. Which you (or I) can't argue is right or wrong until we've lived in Japan to experience it.
So different that all people in Japan think alike? There's no need for your racist assumptions. This isn't "The Japanese View". This is merely the neighborhood busy-body view.
No, not The japanese view but A japanese view. As opposed to your view which is neither. My point being that while he does not represent the entire population of Japan, he is japanese, therefore his view on the situation is far more relevant than yours.