Windows Live and Privacy 372
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."
OH SNAP!!! It's the Vista Police.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OH SNAP!!! It's the Vista Police.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OH SNAP!!! It's the Vista Police.... (Score:5, Funny)
Why not? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't use your image for commercial purposes without your permission
Uh..... Won't this be used for commercial purposes? Are you saying Microsoft is some kind of charity? Or that posting images up with ads next to them isn't "commercial"?
This is old news... kind of (Score:4, Insightful)
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]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is old news... kind of (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is old news... kind of (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is old news... kind of (Score:5, Insightful)
The Amazon thing was fairly public. I read about it on slashdot, and it's what I thought the submitter was actually talking about.
Re:This is old news... kind of (Score:4, Interesting)
http://toronto.virtualcity.ca/ [virtualcity.ca]
Everyone Playing Catch Up to ... Pages Jaunes (Score:3, Informative)
The French Yellow Pages [pagesjaunes.fr] has had street level photos for at least eight years. Some people, it seems, make their tax dollars work.
As for M$ doing anything useful, I'll believe it when I can see it with free software. Until then, I'll just imagine they bought someone out and made their stuff crappier, like Hotmail. Is there anything that M$ borgification has improved rather than extinguished?
Agreement? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
> there right after the section concerning rights to your immortal soul.
I don't have a Microsoft Windows EULA, or any other sort of contractual agreement with Microsoft. Never have.
All dressed up, no place to... hey! (Score:3, Insightful)
Evidently, you've not strolled around outside naked very much?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Driving directions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you require a picture of all the available turns, then may I recommend looking through the glass area, which is carefully placed at the front of your cabin area in all our recent vehicles? This also has the value-added features of showing you where other vehicles and pedestrians are in real time, and of showing the junction layout in use today and not five years ago, both of which may assist your navigation. :-)
Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:5, Funny)
When you're outside... people can see you.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So do you suffer from Repetitive Brain Injury or what?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"People, as in the people near you, you can also see."
Note the comma after the first instance of 'you'.
Take my advice... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Take my advice... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
These rules do not apply to news, since the primar
Re:Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Shh! Don't spoil the secret! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
You're in public == you have no privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It _has_ been done already, and dismissed. Check out this story [com.com] about an ideantical Amazon's A9 Maps [a9.com] feature.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:You're in public == you have no privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
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:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I am wrong in that a person's consent is needed to photograph her. It's not.
What is needed is the person's expressed consent to do anything with that photograph that would in any way involve "the public". It's in your countries copyright law (assuming you're from somewhere in the US or Europe, or many other democratic countries), and generally called "the right
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If I took images of people riding a ferris wheel at a fair and _sold_ them to a news paper for for gain for them to include in a news article about that fair then I would not need to get consent from the people riding the ferris wheel
Re: (Score:2)
A model release, known in similar contexts as a liability waiver, is a legal document typically signed by the subject of a photograph granting the photographer permission to publish the photograph in one form or another. The legal rights of the signatories in reference to the material is thereafter subject to the allowances and restrictions stated in the release, and also possibly in exchange for compensation paid to the photographed.
Publishing an identifiabl
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Model releases are different, as the model is the main focus of the photo. In the US and the UK members of the public have a very limited scope of privacy rights when they are in public places. This is the key different, model releases come into play for studio shots. Basically, in public, anyone can be photographed without their consent except when they have secluded themselves in places where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy such as dressing rooms, restrooms, medical facilities, and inside th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Security? (Score:2)
Woe is me ! (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't want what? (Score:2, Interesting)
I would suggest then that you don't go out in public. And maybe you should buy up all the land around your neighborhood and make it private. Or maybe you could just wait for Google to show up and do the same thing, then you'd feel ok about it and think about how empowering it will be for you to be able to browse down to "virtual peeping tom" and see what's goin
Easy to do... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
How long (Score:2)
I wouldn't like it much either, but anything that's viewable from a public space is fair game to be videotaped & photographed.
They could edit out most of the people, but they really have no obligation to do so.
I just hope nobody's expensive car gets stolen because some thief is scounting local.live.com to see what's in people's drive ways.
Re: (Score:2)
Besides, expensive cars are rarely stolen, since they're easy to trace. Common cars that are a few years old are targeted and stripped down for parts, which is much
Re: (Score:2)
That may be true, but it would help to reduce suspicion of casing an area by doing it online, and driving around a town like Duxbury or Hanover and seeing a Ferrari, Lambo, or Rolls in the driveway would indicate to a professional organized network that there is a large liklihood of there being a veh
this is not nefarious (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Editing people out: trivial (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody said the vehicle is taking pictures while on the move.
If you read the The Road to Knowhere: Microsoft Virtual Earth with "Street Side Views" [live.com] you'll note that it's stills, not video, being presented.
They're still - but the vehicle still moves (Score:3, Insightful)
That said - another posted already pointed out that it could still be done. The question is: why on Earth would they?
Neat, but could use improving (Score:2)
Imagine, say, a zillow-hybrid. A homebuyer could select the
Windows live sightseeing and pr0n (Score:4, Funny)
There could be a problem here... (Score:5, Funny)
As for the news summary (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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.
At the risk of getting modded down, it's cool... (Score:2)
We've got satellite, we've got birds eye now from Live Local, and I reckon that the street level stuff is awesome - just the thing for driving directions. Imagine being able to send someone a bunch of shots showing where turnings are, landmarks etc. Neat stuff
While I can understand the privacy aspects concern some, I was under the impression that when you're in public, you can pretty much be photographed by anyone regardless. Ok, so this is Microsoft, but how many t
Oh...NOW you're all afraid? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh. You're walking in public. (Score:2)
Microsoft isn't doing anything wrong here, not by any stretch of the imagination. Besides, it's not like you can search-by-face or something ridiculous like that... what information are you afraid will get out?
That's not all! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Real question (Score:2)
The real question is, have you been able to see yourself yet in the preview web site? That would be a real trip!
:watches thinkgeek t-shirt sales fly through the roof:
This was pitched to public safety long ago (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
This is already around (Score:2, Interesting)
However, I just checked on it and it's discontinued. This is strange, considering the immense amount of effort this must have taken. I wonder if Microsoft didn't buy their data? If not, someone must have a
Outdoors = no reasonable expectation of privacy (Score:2)
That being said, I think it's a gimmicky piece of crap, and honestly I can't foresee it being useful for anything Google Earth can't already do better. Yes, yes, I know, that makes me sound like a Google fanboy. But to me, it really looks like Microsoft is trying to steal m
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Speak for yourself. If Google put their name on something like that, I'd be scratching my head even harder about how badly-implemented it is. With Microsoft, crappy products simply have less shock value.
Pic of the van (Score:2)
Yeah.. This isn't even illegal (Score:2)
This is NEWS? (Score:2)
Whaaa? I hear about this on the news over a week ago, and even saw a demo of the software navigating a few of the largest cities... Remember, this is mainstream, national, news, where it takes them 6 months to mention new computer viruses.
This nefarious activity you're so co
The people are a non-issue... The Art may not be (Score:2)
The more interesting question for me is what happens when they take a picture of ART, or something that is the proper subject matter of copyright. If I recall correctly, there was a large
Not a problem (Score:2)
Full moon (Score:2, Funny)
Driving the wrong way? (Score:2)
How the hell did they pull that one off?
Motion Flow 3D Tracking (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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)
Probably.
Ok. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Fortunately, and long may this right continue. People can also be photographed in this way without recourse too, and those photos can be published without release agreements - upskirt shots and the like are however viewed as an invasion of privacy understandably. If you are outside, you aren't in privat
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Once inside, I was able to use the detailed satellite imagery to find the items on my itinerary of highest value. I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of what I was after was outdoors, in the
Re: (Score:2)
I'm quite excited to see how this pans out.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
See where I'm going - textured buildings, proper virtual environments? Microsft's Live Local already has buildings, so you could - in theory - link the two and maybe play out a journey through a virtual city. That'd be pretty neat and one day it'll happen, it's just a case of who, when and how.
Re: (Score:2)
The photos are useful (among other things) for looking the address of a shop or house you know is in a certain block.
Then again, it may be a money sink, I don't (and wouldn't) pay for access to such site, ours is provided by the city government.
(No, you cannot have the link. The last thing I want is getting the map slashdotted. Find it yourself if you're so interested, it's easy).
Re: (Score:2)