Pro-privacy initiatives are getting out of hand
At the risk of sounding like a Google apologist (which I am blatantly not), why are all these people making such a fuss over Google Street View? Can't they get a grip and realize that, contrary to their megalomania, no one really cares what their home looks like and few (if any) people are looking up their address to see inside their bathroom windows on Street View?
According to Google, the company did not invade a family's privacy by taking pictures of their home for Google Street View.
"Plaintiffs' privacy claims fail, among other reasons, because the view of a home from the driveway that can be seen by any visitor, delivery person, or telephone repairman is not private," the company said in response to the suit, according to a copy posted at The Smoking Gun.
"Today's satellite-image technology means that...complete privacy does not exist," Google said in its response to the complaint. "Plaintiffs live in the 21st century United States, where every step upon private property is not deemed by law to be an actionable trespass...Unless there is a clear expression such as a gate, fence, or 'keep out' sign indicating that the public is not permitted to enter, anyone may approach a home by a walkway, driveway, or any other route commonly used by visitors, without liability for trespass."
Of course, the family Google allegedly caused "mental suffering" to disagrees.
According to the plaintiffs, Aaron and Christine Boring, Google's Street View pictures hurt the value of their home and due to all that awful "mental suffering", they want $25,000.
Please.
Can the privacy loons please stand up? Once up, please sit down and shut up.
Enough is enough. How many times do we have to be inundated with ridiculous stories like this before someone finally says what most of us should be thinking: the pro-privacy initiative is being taken too far.
While I totally understand if a family doesn't want to have someone in their window taking pictures while they're showering, you mean to tell me that it's an invasion of privacy when Google takes a picture of your home?
As the company points out quite clearly, anyone can drive by your home and see it in all its glory without the help of Street View, so what's the problem?
Look, I'm the first to say that privacy is an important issue and I've repeatedly taken ISPs and cell phone companies to task for the way they have acted on privacy issues in the past, but this is taking it too far.
Google Street View is nothing more than a service that allows people to see what a street looks like before they go there. It aides you in finding out where to park, what a building looks like, and even helps you decide if that's a neighborhood that you would want to live in.
But does it invade your privacy and somehow make it easy to be targeted by a "bad person"? Uh, no.
Sorry to tell you this, but if someone really wants to find you, they're not going to need Google Street View to do it. And believe it or not, that's probably not even the first place they'll look.
All I ever hear from these pro-privacy dolts is that anything that involves, well, anything even close to a person's privacy, is off-limits. I have a newsflash, folks: that's not true.
Google has every right in the world to take 360-degree photos of a street if it's in the community's best interest and if you ask me, it most certainly is.
Some obviously believe that Street View will help burglars pick their next target and others are of the opinion that it gives the public a full view of our lives during the most intimate moments.
Hogwash.
Everything Google Street View captures you can see for yourself walking down the street. Girls in bikinis on Street View? See it for yourself driving down the street. Joe Q. Public walking down the street? I see it everyday doing the same thing. Front lawns that aren't trimmed? Look out the front window.
Google Street View gives us the ability to see everything we can see (and less) walking down the street. But just because it's on the Web, we're supposed to believe that it's an invasion of privacy?
What a crock.
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Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Street view were recently in Edinburgh UK, and this was the response which is hilarious.
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/latestnews/You-can39t-be-camera-shy.4297931.jp#3013867
The same crap seems to be going on worldwide. I feel sure it can only get worse, as no government will stand up and state for fact that there is NO problem with this going on. Nobody will take responsibility to tell people they have "no guaranteed privacy in public" as it will be seen as a license to snoop. Not that we need that in the UK, as it's bad enough as it is.
Google seems to think they can do whatever they want with anything and they will have to get hit hard with lawsuits left and right before it sinks in.
Google Street View has no value except for Google making money off nothing. It adds no additional value that a map provides. If you actually need photos of surrounding buildings to find something off a map, you probably are not smart enough to have a drivers license anyway.
You have taken ISP's and cell phone companies to task for privacy violations? Apparently you have not taken the biggest privacy violator on the planet to talk for the same thing. And who is that? Google. Every single piece of software Google has is designed to profit off of people's works and privacy. From search, to street view, to email, to the desktop. It is all designed to profit off your privacy. How difficult is that to understand?
Yep, you can see all this crap going down public streets right now. You're right, Don. But if Google is satellite mapping areas that are private property, then I *can't* see it for myself. Thus it should be OFF LIMITS.
I can see naked bodies if I show up at a nude beach. Doesn't mean the people sunbathing at a nude beach have implicitly given their permission to be seen by 6 billion people.
Google is a profit-seeking entity & benefits from the collective 'actions' of individuals - as others note here & elsewhere ...
Privacy and piracy (another difficult concept to define - outside of legislated statutory definitions - hey look at how anti-piracy laws differ amongst countries) are in many ways two sides of the same coin ... With "information" being easily copyable - value of said information may be interpreted broadly & differently depending on who & what the information represents -
Your social security number for my copyrighted work, that seems fair? Ask someone who has suffered ID Theft about that? And, ask a privacy expert whether certain services enable more ID Theft and what protections are even offered against it ...
So, how do we balance privacy with piracy? How do we assure attribution for information that is freely copyable and almost impossible to control?
Paul Saffo on the subject in an interview in Febrary 2006 - the whole interview is worth a read:
"Q: Does this lead us to rethink privacy and how we protect it?
A: The privacy debate is poignant given what the National Security Agency has been doing (referring to the controversy over warrantless surveillance President Bush authorized). Most people don't realize that our Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Communications Commission have all mandated that cell phones need to have position recording built in. They want to be able to pinpoint your location with a global positioning chip in your phone or some other way of identifying your location. This costs the telephone companies money, so the bargain they made with the Feds is that we'll implement it, but then we get the right to use this for commercial purposes. You will get location-based marketing. People don't realize but their cell phone will become their personal billboard. We do need to rethink privacy. I think we need to fall back on (former Supreme Court Justice) Felix Frankfurter's definition of privacy which is, "Privacy is the right to be left alone."
But respectfully I also point to the following answers.com piece on former Sup Ct Justice Brandeis (http://www.answers.com/topic/louis-brandeis):
"Although the word ?privacy? is not found in the Constitution, Brandeis had long believed privacy one of the most precious rights. He and Samuel Warren had written a pioneering law review article on the subject in 1890, and he returned to the theme in his dissent in Olmstead v. U.S. (1928). The Court had held that wiretapping did not constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment, and Brandeis objected to this invasion of privacy. ?The makers of our Constitution,? he declared, ?conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone?the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men? (p. 478). Ultimately, the Court adopted the idea of a constitutionally protected right of privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)."
This debate is ripe for a much wider debate - even Napster got plenty of coverage ...
That solves the problem.
If it was opt-in most people wouldn't do it.
So tell me why Google should be mining all this data without explicit permission.
Opt-out is nothing. It doesn't mean that those who didn't explicitly opt-out want in. It could mean they did it incorrectly or didn't even know they could.
Opt-out is arrogance.
Maybe your just a paranoid ethnic boy that thinks every white man is out to screw him, with no concept of how the real world works outside of your racist cocoon.
I wonder if this deliberate shark-jumping doesn't just play into the hands of those who want to do away with privacy (ours-not theirs) altogether?
No, they can't. You must live in, or come into, close proximity of the house in question. People have a right to expect that they will not have their lives on general public view to anyone in the world.
"Look, I'm the first to say that privacy is an important issue and I've repeatedly taken ISPs and cell phone companies to task for the way they have acted on privacy issues in the past, but this is taking it too far..."
This is your opinion. An opinion that is not commonly held by a vast majority of people. By saying this, you appoint yourself ultimate arbiter of what is "private" and what is not. It doesn't work that way. Just because you don't mind Google strolling by without warning and taking a digital image of your house doesn't mean everyone feels the same.
"But does it invade your privacy and somehow make it easy to be targeted by a "bad person"? Uh, no."
I don't want to play into the usual paranoia that comes up in situations like this, but it does make a homeowner a better, or at least, a more convenient, target. It allows digital "casing" of a building. It presents a criminal with information about neighbors, et cetera. All this without leaving the confines of their own abode. It decreases the likelihood that a criminal will be caught during the planning stages of his activities.
"Sorry to tell you this, but if someone really wants to find you, they're not going to need Google Street View to do it. And believe it or not, that's probably not even the first place they'll look."
"Believe it or not" - information is power. The more information you make available about a person's private life, the easier it is to disturb it. Will every crook log onto Google Earth's street view and case a potential victim's residence? No. Is it acceptable that Google, in order to make a pile of money off other's privacy, facilitates even one such incident? Absolutely not...
"Google has every right in the world to take 360-degree photos of a street if it's in the community's best interest"
Unfortunately for you, and fortunately for the rest of us, "...the community's best interest..." is not the standard for deciding whether one has a right to prevent Google from taking and posting images of their private property on a service that is available to anyone with Internet access. And, frankly, I find it hard to believe how posting the image of any building to "street view" helps anyone, but Google. Google doesn't do things for a "community's best interest." It does things for its own interests and the rest of us be damned.
"Everything Google Street View captures you can see for yourself walking down the street"
No, what you can see walking down a particular street could not, before Google, be seen by millions of people who look at "street view" and do not live in close physical proximity to what is shown. A person lurking around, casing a residence, has a large risk his behavior will be seen and action taken to prevent him from going forth with his crime. No chance of that when he is doing it on Google "street view."
Google arguing there is no "privacy" is a crock. If there is less privacy in this world, it is owing in no small part to Google's actions. They can't destroy privacy, then claim it no longer - or ever - existed.
The judicial definition of "privacy" is not the only one operative here. The law hasn't caught up with technology, yet. There is the moral definition of privacy. A definition that is being ignored by Google...
About 3 months ago someone working for the county was walking on my street with a digital camera taking photos of every house. I just happened to be in my front yard when he was doing this so before he snapped a photo of my house I asked him just what the heck he was doing.
He showed me his county id and another document that he had as a handout for homeowners who wanted to know what was going on. It seems that my county has started a program where they photograph every residence and put it all in their computers so if you ever call 911, the first responders will not only have your address, but a photo of what it looks like incase the numbers on your home are missing/obscured.
How is that any different other than the fact it?s the government doing it?
I don?t have a problem with street view. I wish they had it on my street because I think it?s a cool idea.
If it can be seen from the street then it?s not private. Oh-Kai, kitteh?
Your county, or this guy, is lying to you. Go to a fire station and ask to look at the maps they use.
They are set out according to lots - not house numbers. Say they get a call that the 911 computer says is at 1 Primrose Lane. They look at a map and learn that 1 Primrose Lane is the third house on the west side of the street from the NW corner of Primrose and Privacy Lanes. No need for an image and very little need for house numbers.
Even if this "image" claim was true, they wouldn't be sending out one guy with a digital camera. This would produce images of incredibly variable quality, composition and context. Once the county had obtained these images, if they could be obtained, it would be impossible to put copies off all these images in every police, fire or EMS unit. Unless you live in a town with three houses, the amount of data storage space that would be required would be prohibitive.
More likely, the county is sending someone from the tax assessor's office to take pictures of your house so they can raise your taxes the next time they stroll by and you have added a patio, awning, et cetera. That is, if the guy was actually from the county and not a burglar casing your neighborhood...
-> I assume you (and others) would argue this to be OK because of "National security" (what a crap word, it can be used to defend everything). Now I wonder, why the government has a right to protect it's buildings (from Google), but a homeowner has no such right (call it "home security" or "personal security")?
Also, to me it's a difference if people living in my area are (reasonably) capable of driving by and taking a photo of my home, or if (virtually) the whole world can do so via the internet within one mouse-click. Think about it, it's a matter of scale.
"Aide" (a person, an object) is a noun. " Aid" (to help) is a verb. You meant the verb. Lose the "e" in the middle.
An interesting point, however, is that the homeowner can find value in Google's use of their home. As the web becomes 'lifestreaming,' as one's 24/7 means of expression to the world (updated in much the same way as the homeowner may paint his house or tend his yard), the privacy invaded, instead, becomes a leverage-able marketing tool which Google is freely providing for them.
"While I totally understand if a family doesn't want to have someone in their window taking pictures while they're showering, you mean to tell me that it's an invasion of privacy when Google takes a picture of your home?"
Try not to predicate your premise with a question.
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by libove
August 3, 2008 5:36 PM PDT
- The increased accessibility that technology makes to "public" information can change the effect of that information being "public" on the people to whom the information pertains.
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See all 24 Comments >>Real estate and Drivers license information is often "public". In the past, this meant that anyone willing to either themself go physically to the town hall, or pay someone else to go physically to the town hall, could access that information. In the Internet age, whether it is a local government's e-government program, or Google's Street View, the barrier/cost to accessing that information is reduced tremendously.
The availability, to any interested party, for essentially no effort / cost, of this "public" information, changes the meaning of that information being public to the people to whom the information pertains.
Such information has been accessed by stalkers, estranged spouses, and non-custodial parents seeking information they intended to use, or in some cases used, to commit violence.
Does this happen often? What is "often"?
What is the new balance between "public" as it meant before the Internet, and as it means today, which we must now strike?
I won't try to answer those questions; I will say that the key lesson here is "it's not the same as before, and privacy - no matter how changed from its pre-Internet concept - remains important, and more than ever must be contemplated from all angles, absent such extreme/simplistic positions as that taken by Don Reisinger.
Jay Libove, CISSP, CIPP
Atlanta, GA, US and Barcelona, Spain