Google May Blur Canadian Faces and License Plates

KingK writes "Reuters reports that Google is considering a Canadian launch of its Street View map feature, which offers street-level close-ups of city centers. But the company said it would probably blur people's faces and vehicle license plates to respect tougher Canadian privacy laws."

Draw attention.

Well, now I have to go find some other way to draw attnetion to myself. *Logs into Facebook*

Wow!

Now I'm even more glad that I'm moving to Canada -- after seeing this story I looked up a bunch of stuff and apparently Canada has some of the best privacy laws in the world.

Re:Wow!

You aren't allowed to publish photos of people who can be identified on the web without their permission in Sweden either. Why don't they just take 3 or more photos at the same place with some time inbetween and remove the parts "which has changed" between the shoots?

Re:Wow!

I was waiting for someone to say that.

Hopefully without breaking the NDA, I should mention that people at Google looked at me strangely when I suggested that they blur faces on street view. They couldn't understand why the privacy implications of such a service are a problem, as what they are doing is technically legal in the USA. However, when people are posting images of random people picking their noses or something on Digg for millions to gawk at (and such things have appeared even on the Digg front page from time to time), there's a problem - it can ruin someone's reputation for a rather stupid reason if the person is identified. To me, that's evil. To them, fixing it should be the cautious thing to do so they don't get sued (weren't they already involved in a lawsuit for this?), even if it happens to jive with their morals.

I don't know if the "don't be evil" thing is practiced as rigorously by the individual employees there as the company would like you to believe. Creating nifty things seems to win out over most moral considerations; at least, this was the impression I got while I was there. Nifty things are good, but people should think about how their technology is going to be used rather than just what they could make.

Re:Wow!

Reminds me of this passage from the Unabomber manifesto:

131. Technicians (we use this term in its broad sense to describe all those who perform a specialized task that requires training) tend to be so involved in their work (their surrogate activity) that when a conflict arises between their technical work and freedom, they almost always decide in favor of their technical work. This is obvious in the case of scientists, but it also appears elsewhere: Educators, humanitarian groups, conservation organizations do not hesitate to use propaganda or other psychological techniques to help them achieve their laudable ends. Corporations and government agencies, when they find it useful, do not hesitate to collect information about individuals without regard to their privacy. Law enforcement agencies are frequently inconvenienced by the constitutional rights of suspects and often of completely innocent persons, and they do whatever they can do legally (or sometimes illegally) to restrict or circumvent those rights. Most of these educators, government officials and law officers believe in freedom, privacy and constitutional rights, but when these conflict with their work, they usually feel that their work is more important.

FUCK YOU! YOU DAMN COMMIE! GET OUT OF USA!

You are the kind of people Joseph McCarthy hates most. You fucking grow up in America and then betray us and go to live in commie-socialist Canada! NEVER COME BACK!

VOTE GEORGE W. BUSH in 2008!

Write in the man!

That and toplessness....

Not only that, decent privacy laws, but in the province of Ontario women are allowed to go topless in public. Pitty it is soo cold that no one really does.....

Re:That and toplessness....

It's also legal in many American cities; people just tend to assume that toplessness is illegal. Take, for instance, New York city:

The Court of Appeals of New York ruled in 1992 that exposure of a bare female breast violates this law only when it takes place in a commercial context.

Okay, so no nude hookers, I get it.

Privacy Commissioner is completely wrong

Canada does indeed have pretty good privacy laws (when they are followed) but this isn't one of them.

Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart is just plain wrong on this. Laughably wrong. Obviously wrong. 100%, "no-doubt-about-it" wrong.

As a Canadian, I am *embarrassed* that a company like Google is going to be forced to blur over everyones face or possibly even not extend coverage to Canada because of the wrong opinion of one middle-aged woman.

The operative part is this:

"Canada's privacy law prohibits the commercial use of personal data without permission from the individual ... even if an individual gives consent, businesses must limit the collection, use and disclosure of personal data for uses that a reasonable person would consider appropriate under the circumstances ..."

All perfectly reasonable right? Of course, but only when it comes to "personal information." The act envisions protecting things such as your bank accounts, your school and work records, and all those other things that any normal person refers to as "personal information." That's the intention of the law as written.

and here is Jennifer's mistake:

Stoddart says her office "... considers images of individuals that are sufficiently clear to allow an individual to be identified to be personal information within the meaning of [the act]."

This is exactly the same, as the whining we heard from nervous "sensitive" people in the US when street view was introduced there. Many intelligent people pointed out that there was no reason to obscure faces, license plates etc., because they weren't "your" information or "personal information." They were merely the result of what any public person standing on that spot could see at any given time and in fact, just the same as any holiday snap taken by any citizen.

Jennifer Stoddart is one of those "nervous" types of people with a strange idea of what "personal information" is. The intent of the privacy law in Canada was never that a shot of someone standing on a street corner is their "personal information" that's just Jennifer's interpretation, and that is the flaw in the argument. She is just wrong on her opinion that this is personal information.

For instance, if such images *were* personal information, then all street surveillance cameras would be illegal or unconstitutional by the same act (they are not in fact they are all over up here). One could argue that cameras in banks are illegal by the same measure. Certainly the cameras mounted in police cars, and the (very common up here) use of hand held cameras by police to monitor crowds also illegal.

There is nothing wrong with our privacy laws, it's just one person's mistaken interpretation of what constitutes "personal information" that is at fault here. Unfortunately, a lot of people will have to go through a lot of grief because of one STUPID person's "interpretation" of the law.

Why not do the same in the U.S.?

If they have the technology, why wouldn't they do the same across the board? It's not as though there's added value in seeing someone's face or license plate. The article doesn't mention anything about this.

Re:Why not do the same in the U.S.?

A more important question is why doesn't the US have these laws?

Re:Why not do the same in the U.S.?

why doesn't the US have these laws?

Are you kidding? Why would it?

Everybody knows that the US is one of those countries where you have to vote for either wing of the governing two-wing status-quo-conserving party if you want your vote to count, and where the government has a security police that can take away your rights at the flip of a hat if they decide to consider you a threat.

Why would the US suddenly have strong privacy rights? How would that facilitate the work of the government's security police?

Of course in the US these things are sugar-coated in somewhat different ways than in other countries that have similar arrangements. In the US the terminology is emotionally charged in ways that will appeal specifically to the American temperament. So the government's security police is called Department of Homeland Security, and the suspicions that take away your right will invariably mention Terrorism.

But that's just sugar-coating over the same old ugly mess.

Using what filter?

The Japanese blur their porn, and so someone has invented a device that removes it and restores the original image. This is possible because it performs a transformation from a limited set every time and so all you need is one clean sample.

If Google does the same you would need to find a photo that is probably of someone you have an image of once (or at worst a few times - hardly a problem when you consider the collaborative effort available) and the set up a un-blurring filter that would work with all their images.

These problems have all been solved - using a cryptographic RNG as a noise source for example - but they require more computing power and so it would be very tempting to save money by taking a short cut.

What about Canadians abroad?

Maybe Google should adapt their filter software so it blurs the face of anyone with a Canadian flag patched attached to themselves ;-)

Do the CIA get a reverse filter?

Given the way that Google caved in to the Chinese demands [bbc.co.uk], will they supply the CIA with a means of undoing this blurring? You would hope they would make it a one-way process, but that probably requires cryptography, hence computing power, hence money.

The Privacy Commissioner is Wrong

At least, as it concerns Ontario, where there seems to be no right to privacy from being photographed in a public place for commercial purposes. See here [ambientlight.ca].

Why not paste other faces on ?

Looking at a scene with blurred out faces will detract from the view, humans are very sensitive to problems with faces.

Google should find people who are willing for their faces to be used this way. Using the same face would be kind of disturbing, so a selection of faces would be needed, perhaps to roughly match the face that is being replaced (hair colour, race, sex, ...).

Think of the fun that we could have: a kind of Google powered Where's Wally [thegreatpi...hunt.co.uk] .

There could even be a market for this: budding politicians, wannabe starlets who might pay to have their face become recognised or become familiar.

Canada does America better.

America is dead. Nothing to see here. Vote for either party, buy a big mac cause all is well. You need not worry, the US government is taking care of everything for you.

Re:Canada does America better.

No, vote for Ron Paul!

How?

License plates shouldn't be a problem, but how does the algorithm know Canadians from non-Canadians?

Re:How?

"Last night, I cashed my pogey and went to buy a mickey of C.C. at the beer parlour, but my skidoo got stuck in the muskeg on my way back to the duplex. I was trying to deke out a deer, you see. Damn chinook, melted everything. And then a Mountie snuck up behind me in a ghost car and gave me an impaired. I was S.O.L., sitting there dressed only in my Stanfields and a toque at the time. And the Mountie, he's all chippy and everything, calling me a shit disturber and what not. What could I say, except, 'Chimo!'"

A better method than blurring

A better method than blurring, and irreversible, is to substitute someone else's face, scaled to the same size. They could use CmdrTaco's mug shot.

Vacation pictures?

So my vacation pictures from our visit to Canada that I posted on my web site are somehow illegal? Public photos of public spaces. Everyone could see those faces and license plates when the pictures were taken - how is this a privacy issue? When you can't make sense of laws anymore, everyone is a criminal.

canadians are weird

"54%? Sure, tax me to hell and back, but I'll be damned if the volvo I once owned and its former license plate are online randomly in a picture somewhere 4 years from now!"

I just want to say

I saw a Canadian once. I can, er, understand why they don't like to be photographed...

Pictures of a Google van operating in Canada.

This is not surprising. On July 14, 2007 at 10:00, I saw this van on the Tadoussac ferry (right here [google.com]): 1 [205.205.253.95] 2 [205.205.253.95] 3 [205.205.253.95] 4 [205.205.253.95].

Give me a break....

I can see the headlines now... "Canadians No Longer Go Outside for Fear of Being Seen" And who really cares if your license plate shows up online. It's not like you can't walk outside and see hundreds at any given time.

Canada?

Google, to my knowledge, does not have any facilities in backwards socialist-collectivist Canada.

So why are they worried about the laws there?

"Do no evil", my ass.

But that's not all

In accordance with Bill 101, Google will also be changing all of the signs to read in French first, with English in smaller type beneath.

license plates

Why do they call them "License Plates" when they contain only the car's registration number and confer no actual privileges?

Two companies provided data for street view

What is not pointed out very often is that there were two companies that provided the initial data for street view. One did San Francisco (where all the funny shots of identifiable people are seen). The other company has done all the other cities so far.

That second company has dropped the resolution down so far that you can't recognise the people unless they are standing on the roof of the camera-car AND has taken their data set and scrubbed it of images that easily identify other people and vehicles where they have been close enough to recognise.

This second company is the one that is providing the data to Google in Canada and 99% of the US. Check out any city BUT San Francisco on Street View.

This is a NON-Story

Google not covering much still...

Who cares about blurring license plates when most of the world is still blurred by poor or no coverage other than the basic landsat boilerplate. People in these places would benefit the most by the basic GIS tool that Google Earth/Map is at its best, whereas big cities in the west being covered at these high resolutions is a luxury we dont really need. One would think obtaining basic sat pics of third world countries and remote regions would be a lot cheaper then covering license plates of metropolitan areas. I myself am frustrated with the poor coverage of the islands in the Western Pasific region where we have projects - there exists very few maps, no aerial photos - and Google isnt helping...

Already in Canada -- virtualcity.ca

They already have this in Canada, and people's faces aren't blurred. There hasn't been a lot of publicity about this site yet though: http://www.virtualcity.ca/ [virtualcity.ca]

South-Park-looking canadians!

That's the solution that would make everyone happy.

This is what...

...Google should have been doing from the beginning.

t-shirt iron on photo

I'm going to print a picture of my face and iron it onto a t-shirt, they'll blur my face but not my t-shirt with my face on it. You see US TV and media blur t-shirts and logos but that's not done here, maybe my face can be "unblurred" albeit a bit lower than usual.

Where's Waldo in Canada

When I learned that google was doing a street view of Canada, I rushed out and bought a red and white striped shirt, a hat, blue pants, a cane, and glasses. I was going to dress up and hide in a crowd. But now that i know google will just blur my face, whats the point? no one wants to ask "Where's blury Waldo in Canada". thanks for ruining my fun, google.

Montreal

Saw a googlecar going around last week... I wasn't driving else I would of tried to fallow it but ya it's coming soon!

one of these days...

i cant wait for the day that i see google maps being used as proof on an episode of "cheaters: caught on tape"

Cheap Solution

Just send everyone in Canada a free copy of that video from "The Ring" and then their faces will blur themselves!

No need to blur the photos

We all wear ski masks and the snow is so deep you can't see our licence plates (and dog sleds don't need to be licenced anyways).

Re:It's called CENCORSHIP

You're partially right: it doesn't matter whether it's you, a religious group, or a governmental representative. If you're in Canada, you're not allowed under normal circumstances (as a privacy matter) to record information on faces and license plates. Society has accepted a long, long time ago that some information is better kept under the hat. Call it "cencorship" or anything else you want, it's a damn good law.

Re:It's called CENCORSHIP

So if I manage to get a picture of you with a penis in your mouth, you'll fight for my right to publish it online in Canada? Good man!

Hey assface!

Give me your SSN and your credit card number, NOW!

What, you wont?

Why dare you to CENCOR that information!