Greece Halts Google's Street View 192
Hugh Pickens writes "Greece's Data Protection Authority, which has broad powers of enforcement for Greece's strict privacy laws, has banned Google from gathering detailed, street-level images in Greece for a planned expansion of its Street View mapping service, until the company provides clarification on how it will store and process the original images and safeguard them from privacy abuses. The decision comes despite Google's assurances that it would blur faces and vehicle license plates when displaying the images online and that it would promptly respond to removal requests. In most cases, particularly in the US, Google has been able to proceed on grounds that the images it takes are no different from what someone walking down a public street can see and snap. And last month, Britain's privacy watchdog dismissed concerns that Street View was too invasive, saying it was satisfied with such safeguards as obscuring individuals' faces and car license plates. The World Privacy Forum, a US-based nonprofit research and advisory group, said the Greek decision could raise the standard for other countries and help challenge that argument. 'It only takes one country to express a dissenting opinion,' says Pam Dixon, the group's executive director. 'If Greece gets better privacy than the rest of the world then we can demand it for ourselves. That's why it's very important.'"
'Street level' a bit misleading (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So very stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
so I hope society can reach a compromise that allows these images to be available without unduly infringing on anyone's privacy.
There already IS a compromise like that, it's called what google is already doing. Google is NOT infringing on anyone's privacy because by definition anything that they are photographing is visible from a public thoroughfare. They are trampling some people's mistaken assumptions about privacy, though. Here's a hint: if you want something to be private, you don't do it in public.
The amount of data should not even be considered as a factor; if one person did what google is doing in every state of a nation, would that be too much data in one place? What if it was one person per city? Now, imagine that those people link their map sites together seamlessly. What's the difference between that and what we have now? That google did it for us?
What it is *really* for... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:lunacy (Score:3, Interesting)
I roamed around Napoli (Italy) the other day, and even get texture grade quality facades from zoomed details for our project. SV is really an amazing tool.
Re:'Street level' a bit misleading (Score:3, Interesting)
Greeks are always telling us how great they are (I didn't see the appeal, but My Big Fat Greek Wedding about killed my predominantly-Greek Lady) yet they can't figure out how to prevent someone from looking through their windows. In the USA, ground floor apartments have big windows that anyone between midget and giant height can see everything in your house through, yet we have a number of window covering products available to help us preserve our privacy and yet still permit us to use our windows when we feel like looking like we're living in a fishbowl.
Maybe someone should ask the Japanese how they feel about google street view, I'm honestly interested but I can't see it being a big problem there. Anyone acting like a freak on the street probably wants to be immortalized... but I do wonder which way the cultural reaction goes. Is it no big deal because everyone lives on top of each other and assumes that there's eyes everywhere, or is it a huge deal because everyone is expected to pretend they don't see things?
Re:lunacy (Score:5, Interesting)
You are referring to US practices when the article is about Greece, where for example the "Personal Data Protection Authority" has power over courts & the Police. So far they have disallowed cameras from being used at streets [xblog.gr], deny requests even by embassies [www.tvxs.gr] for outside cams, do not allow cameras in schools [kazam.gr] (they say have private guards if you want to thinkofthechildren). Sorry but all links are in Greek.
Personally, I'd rather there were cameras in public places, since that might allow the very ineffective Greek police to catch a bad guy or two once in a while. I mean, they ARE public areas, if you want privacy stay in your hut.
And to make it clear, in Greece as in most other countries outside the US, "terrorism" is no excuse for anything, certainly not for the police. The "you are subject to search" big-brotheresque messages I hear every day in the NYC subway are not common in other countries, which is why I hate it that such things are taken for granted here. Yeah, for our protection. Right.
Re:Britain (Score:3, Interesting)
I think most Britain's hold the view, that what you do in public is public and what you do in a shop can be recorded by the store owners for whatever means they see fit. IMO this is a good deal, however some people are unhappy and looking for more privacy in public places (less CCTV) and thats also cool, it appears that the greek have a somewhat different balance and would rather not have thier public spaces photographed by streetview and IMO that is also fine.
Protecting your own privacy (Score:3, Interesting)
The decision comes despite Google's assurances that it would blur faces and vehicle license plates when displaying the images online and that it would promptly respond to removal requests.
So while I can go to my house and request that google blur the license plate of my car in my driveway. How else do I find my license plate in the pictures that are not of my driveway? Do I have to now check out ALL of the various gas stations, supermarkets, parking lots etc... that my car could have been photographed? What about all the highways and streets that I've driven?
It seems that google is saying in the above quote, "If you can find something you don't like, then we'll blur it.
It's very possible (how ever probably) that someone could be convicted (or proven innocent) because their license plate was in various street view maps.
While I do like streetview because it allows me to see what a give store/location actually looks like before I drive there. It also enables "evil doers" to see that type of car that everyone on my street has, or parks in their driveway. And very easily compare it against the hundreds of other streets in the area. Sure criminals could do this by hand, but in this case it doesn't require the criminal to fly from NY to SanFrancisco and drive around with a camera. They just open up a web browser and put in various addresses to mine the database for neighborhoods with Porsches in the driveway.
Does google have any safeguards in place from someone recording all sorts of data/screenshots and running OCR on them? To record thousands of license plates? I wonder what privacy advocates would think if they knew that one could build a database of "License Plate & Street Address" Sure there would be some margin for error (say when your car is at another house, but I'd bet those building this database are willing to live with that.
Google should be by default blurring all license plates and faces. I haven't seen a reason yet justifying why they need to display either faces or license plates.
Photographs != Video Surveillance (Score:5, Interesting)
This is ridiculous. It's one snapshot taken at a more or less random time. How is this an invasion of privacy when the picture is taken in a public place? Total idiocy.
Fascinating for tourism ... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not going to stop tourism. If anything its going to greatly encourage tourism. I've just been driving down a road in Rome, then I jumped to Paris and crossed the Seine. All within a few minutes. My first thought was I wish I was there for real.
I can understand Greek fears of wanting to maintain privacy of buildings and routes behind buildings etc... Although that is security through obscurity, which is a very weak form of protection. If anything if crooks can find a way in via Street View its stress testing houses to become physically more secure.
Also all privacy is ultimately an attempt at protection against exploitation. So privacy isn't such a problem, its how it can be exploited. I think how someone can exploit a new technology gives a clear distinction of if its a good or a potentially bad new technology to implement. I don't think all Big Brother technology is a bad thing. (I would say that Big Brother technology that can cause greater political and/or commercial corruption to grow is bad, as that opens up ever greater exploitation of people without power to resist or stop being exploited or outright abused (e.g. Phorm and all DPI technology is a good example of an outright violation of privacy for the financial gain of just the few who run and control that technology). However I don't think Street View is such a technology. Sure it could be exploited by someone looking to break in, but security through obscurity is already a weak protection. Crooks have found it no trouble to break into houses for centuries. Better to stress test building security now and sort it out.
Also I think one of most important aspects of Google Street View is its historical importance. Imagine say in 100 years from now the historical importance of being able to view cities all over the world as they were once decades before. It'll obviously take decades to build up such a detailed history of changes, but future generations are going to love being able to see how previous generations lived. I wish I could view my city decades or even centuries ago. (Imagine for example future Google searches back through all this data to dig up views of a house you are interested in buying back throughout its entire existence, from the moment it was built right up to the present day).
Future generations are going to be able to look back like never before with Google Street View data. I think its utterly fascinating just how much potential this data has to allow future generations to look back at us and how we live now.