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Angry Villagers Run Google Out of Town
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Apr 02, 2009 06:16 PM
from the and-stay-out dept.
from the and-stay-out dept.
Barence writes "A Google Street View car has been chased out of a British village by angry residents. The car was taking photographs of Broughton in Buckinghamshire for Google's when it was spotted by a local resident who warned the car not to enter the village then roused his neighbors, who surrounded the vehicle until the driver performed a U-turn and left. 'This is an affluent area,' protester Paul Jacobs said. 'We've already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike. I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police.'"
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To the Google Security Team (Score:5, Funny)
I was driving close to the Googleplex the other day and spotted what I thought was one of those infernal google camera cars, so I drove up next to it and stared, holding a bizarre contorted face for as long as possible. Turns out it was just Google security. Sorry security man, I thought I could be famous....
Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
So instead they got media coverage about how they are affluent and easy targets for burglars?
Re:Alternatives (Score:5, Funny)
Better idea:
Organize a huge mob of people to visit the village "because it wasn't on Google, and wanted to know what it was like"
Parent
hey, moron (Score:5, Funny)
the burglars already know where you live.
Think this through a bit more next time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule #1 is:
Security through obscurity isn't.
Rule #2 is: Making a huge stink about your private neighborhood against a well-liked company like Google will probably mean you're going to get a lot more attention than if you just let well enough alone.
Airstrip One (Score:5, Insightful)
Angry Mob Wins? (Score:5, Informative)
So the bizarre flashmob of angry residents barricades a public road and illegally blocks Google from taking photos from the public streets? This is in the UK... those people are already putting up with a billion cameras, what's one more?
Watch out, realtors! (Score:5, Informative)
They will be coming for you next for put stuff like the following online:
http://www.homes24.co.uk/property/search/?ps_type=1&loc=Aylesbury&prop_type=&min_price=0&max_price=0&min_bedrooms=0&keywords=&maxdist=0&age=- [homes24.co.uk]
I wonder how posting full price info, detailed descriptions of the home, exterior *and* interior photos is less revealing than driving down the street with a camera mounted on the car. I suppose the xenophobia response doesn't get triggered when it's members of the local community that engage in privacy-violating activities.
Double Standard? Nah. (Score:5, Interesting)
You see, unlike us savage Americans, the British know that it's not a violation of privacy if the government are the ones watching you.
Google should just cut a deal with parliament to use the 88,000,023 cameras already installed across the UK.
Your expectation of privacy is unreasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US: Photographer's Rights (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm [krages.com]
The general rule in the United States is that anyone may take photographs of whatever they want when they are in a public place or places where they have permission to take photographs. Absent a specific legal prohibition such as a statute or ordinance, you are legally entitled to take photographs. Examples of places that are traditionally considered public are streets, sidewalks, and public parks.
Re:That would be nice (Score:5, Funny)
"This is an affluent area. We've already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike."
An affluent area hey? Thanks for the info.
-Burglars.
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Re:That would be nice (Score:5, Funny)
The Streisand Effect should be banned!
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't want to have people seeing your private shit? Don't keep it out in the open, in public view.
Don't want interlopers driving through your community? Make it gated and pay for your own maintenance instead of expecting the local government to take care of it for you.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Funny)
this is england, i hear there is proposed legislation that would create a government position to wipe citizens asses, they say it's too dangerous to let people do it themselves as they may get paper cuts from the toilet paper. california legislators say this is landmark legislation and are considering introducing it here.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
And they aren't "idiots" - as somebody has tagged the story - they are just normal people. There's a staggering lack of respect for other people's wishes being shown in the comments here.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They are idiots, unless Britain has a law that things visible from the public streets aren't permissible to photograph.
Obviously, in the US this would be plainly moronic, since it is, indeed, the case, that in public there is no expectation of privacy.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering the explosion of surveillance in British cities, I'd think they've made it clear they don't expect any privacy in public. I fail to see how living in an "affluent area" allows you some extra privacy rights others do not have.
But hey, I guess rich people really feel like they're entitled to special treatment. You'd think having the money would be enough.
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See, but (Score:5, Funny)
the government always has everyone's best interest at heart! More surveillance is good, as long as the government does it, right?
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The lack of respect being shown isn't for their 'wishes' it's a lack of respect for how they choose to enact the fullfillment of those wishes.
They were idiots, they may be normal people. That's OK, normal people can be idiots too. But they were idiots. A small group of people made a decision for the entire community. They probably broke the law by impeding traffic, and all for what? Because they didn't want their homes to show up on Google? They could have just logged in and actually indicated that.
It's not as if Google doesn't pull photos all the time from Streetview due to people requesting it.
And this BS about 'being worried this would attract burglers'. Come the eff on. No one but the locals knew about your place. And the locals already had plenty of ways of casing your joint without Google. In fact, the ones that were responsible for the six burglies in the article not only managed to do it without Google Streetview, but it's likely they got away with it right under the resident's nose.
But now, everyone in a huge radius knows that this place not only is an easy mark (after all they've been knocked over six times already) but there's still stuff left for the taking since people are paraniod about who is coming through.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not as if Google doesn't pull photos all the time from Streetview due to people requesting it.
I've made repeated requests to Google to pull a couple of images of my property from streetview, and they've been ignored for a year now-- both by email and by the 'report inappropriate image' option.
So despite Google's overtures to the contrary, I don't think they yank anything unless they are sued.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
If I take pictures of the family in my yard, the neighbors can't object to the fact that their houses might be in the photo. Same if I put those photos up on the internet. I really don't see why Google should have special status here.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't want to have people seeing your private shit? Don't keep it out in the open, in public view.
Or perhaps we could develop a social contract that balances things private and public so that I don't have to hide my stuff in a bunker in order to insure you don't feel you have a right to put pictures of it on the internet in a massive geo-tagged database you make available for your private commercial gain.
Don't want interlopers driving through your community?
I'm happy to allow tourists to drive through my community. I don't even mind if they take a few pictures, I don't even mind if they pop them up on their vacation blog.
I don't see why that should mean I should be happy to allow someone to systematically photograph every single part of my community visible from a public vantage point, and then upload it to the internet though.
Why can't we reach an understanding where its perfectly ok to take a few private photographs, but completely unacceptable to systematically photograph everyone/everthing and upload it into a for profit geo-tagged database?
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
... you make available for your private commercial gain.
You are implying Google is making money at everyone's expense here, and is the only one benefitting. That's funny, because the only reason what Google is doing has commercial value at all is that *that's what massive numbers of people actually want and find useful*. Apparently the majority of people do ultimately want such information about the entire world easily and readily available, otherwise Google wouldn't make much money at all. People bitch when its their own house being photographed, but I don't hear anybody bitching when they're using it for directions and to help find their way in a foreign neighbourhood etc. What everybody basically wants is the entire world in there except their own little neck of the woods. You can see this doesn't make sense.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a few vacation photos, over a hundred tourists, equates to the same thing.
Except that it doesn't equate to the same thing at all.
100's of sets of tourist photos randomly scattered across the internet, being added and removed and reorganized by their takers at their whim is not remetely the same thing as a single permanent indexed geo-tagged database filled with photos that were carefully and systematically taken and stitched together.
Because I'd like to see where I'm going when I plan my tourist trip.
And you need a complete step-by-step photo walkthru down every residential side street? I can see the value of google street view for finding a business; and given the choice, most of them will opt in to such a system. But why do you need a photo of every residence in the city?
Besides If you are visiting someone, and their house is THAT hard to find, then they can send you a picture.
Because it really isn't harming you.
That's an argument usually put forth by those who don't understand the value of politeness and good manners.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, because things visible from public roads are private.....give me a break like seeing street view pictures of houses is going to make you more likely to be burglarized? News Flash anything visible from a public road is not private.... sorry for being redundant but this is basic shit here people
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't realize that public roads were your private shit.
Were they really taking pictures of the public road?
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
IANAL, but anything plainly viewable from public property is not considered private.
On the other hand, if Google had developed a portable camera that can see through walls, blinds, hedges and clothes, and started driving that around public property, I think the locals might have a leg to stand on. For that matter, I'd like to see how close they'd get to Langley, or Fort Meade for example.
Interestingly, if everyone has access to said technology, it's no longer exotic or invasion of privacy. There's a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, "The Light of Other Days," in which technology to remotely view any location on earth becomes widespread, convenient, and eventually, integral to modern life. When anyone can watch you anywhere, no matter what you're doing, does privacy even make sense?
Food for thought, as well as a rebuttal to you begging the question (that it is illegal to take pictures from a public road of private property.)
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, but anything plainly viewable from public property is not considered private.
Agreed. However there should be a distinction between "seeing something from public property" and "systematically capturing a complete record of everything that can be seen from public property and uploading it into a for profit geo tagged database".
Its the same polite distinction we use with the 'have a penny / take a penny jar'. Its perfectly socially acceptable to grab a penny or two to round out the change in a purchase from this spare change. Its completely socially unacceptable to systematically go to each establishment and take all their 'spare change' once a week.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
But not illegal.
Its pretty sad that 'acceptable behaviour' is defined by 'is it legal?'.
But if history teaches us anything, it teaches us people will be happy to pass a law. The books are full of stupid laws trying to regulate asshat behaviour.
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Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Informative)
Of course it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States [wikipedia.org]
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0389_0347_ZS.html [cornell.edu]
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-8508.ZO.html [cornell.edu]
The only difference being that it is not a government organization, but that's kind of besides the point.
not that the uproar over this is any less silly, but if you're going to mock the outrage, at least properly mock it. I wonder if this angry mob was caught on CCTV?
Parent
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Funny)
I hope you die (Sorry if that possibly sounded a little harsh).
Nah, it's totally cool. And an eternity in hell back atya, buddy.
BTW, did you know you can actually edit the shit you write before you post it, in case you go, say, completely over the top?
Parent
Re:What kind of cowards do they hire? (Score:5, Insightful)
really? Besides the liability you would incur by having a driver continue into an angry mob, why would you have them risk their lives?
AN angry mob can flip a car, break windows, flatten tires.
Escalation in this scenario is NOT the wise thing to do.
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Re:What kind of cowards do they hire? (Score:5, Funny)
I think the obvious solution here is to equip Google cars with sharks. I don't care how angry your mob is, lets see it mess with a shark.
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Re:What kind of cowards do they hire? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What kind of cowards do they hire? (Score:5, Funny)
Might scare off the burglars, too.
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Re:What kind of cowards do they hire? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Breaking no laws? Maybe yes, maybe no. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not at all clear that Google is breaking no laws.
Try taking a photograph of the Hollywood Sign - it's protected by trademark or copyright law and the folks in Hollywood do go after people.
The latest King Kong flick had a note in the credits that the had licensed the image of the Empire State Building.
Architects sometimes try (and succeed) in protecting their creations.
And Google is in it for the money - they use these photos to gain more click data and to sell more ads. Google is not some innocent taking a few snapshots.
So don't jump too quickly to the conclusion that Google isn't violating some of the property owners rights.
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Re:Breaking no laws? Maybe yes, maybe no. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, they go after people on the Hollywood sign for a slightly different reason. You won't find many pictures taken from the south-west that show anything above the "D" without airbrushing out the background.
Among other things, there is a cold-war era relic for the governor's fallout bunker, but this isn't the issue.
Parent
Re:Breaking no laws? Maybe yes, maybe no. (Score:5, Insightful)
> "Your freedom ends where someone else's nose begins" is an old English concept.
Whereas the new English concept would appear to be "Your freedom ends where your nose ends." Or maybe a bit before.
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Re:Google Maps (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing just wait until I finish my iBurgle application for the iPhone which automatically scans google's database and directs you the nearest rich persons house!
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Re:Google Maps (Score:5, Insightful)
What you want? Is that how you measure the regulation of public space? Ya know, there's people in this world who don't want womens' faces to be visible in public. Should we accommodate their wants too? The thing about public spaces is that they are public. This means that everyone is allowed to go there and exercise freedom. Freedoms like taking pictures, and putting them on the Internet, if that's what they want to do.
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Re:Google Maps (Score:5, Interesting)
One could look at this situation and say, "If you don't want Google taking pictures of your house, build a ten-foot wall in your front yard." Do we really want to resort to that, though? Technically, yes, Google is legally within its rights to take photographs of people's houses from the street. In a more civil world, though, if somebody is taking pictures of your house, you walk down to the road, ask them to stop, and they do. Google is exercising its legal rights but doing so in a way that many people feel erodes their dignity.
Most people don't want a wall in their front yard because they want to be open and welcoming to their neighbors, but not necessarily to strangers with cameras. Do we really want to foster a scenario in which people have to close themselves off to everybody in order to protect themselves from strangers with cameras? What Google is doing isn't wrong, but it isn't nice either. There's no law against being not nice, but I certainly don't think it properly coincides with Google's vow not to be evil.
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Re:Surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly, all they had to do to get him to leave was offer food.
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Re:Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you're expecting them to be consistent in their paranoia.
After all, their government has been spying on them considerably more than Google, and it's Google they run out of town?
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Re:Surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
When in the UK it was hilarious to read in the newspapers, about the numerous citizen complaints against the police. Turns out the police didn't want to hire the staff to check the video footage for certain reported crimes like theft (despite knowing the times AND places the thefts occurred, giving a solid starting point) to identify and catch crooks.
Well done UK, saving your draconian measures for political agendas. Your people deserve what they get.
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Re:Ah, Little Britain... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup - and, you know what? It's horrible.
I'm resigned to the fact that my face is going to turn up in the background of maybe hundreds of tourist photos and videos, being as I live in Oxford which is Tourist Central at this time of year. Regardless of what I'm doing, whether I'm hungover in my sweats and going to the corner shop for a pint of milk, or out on a date, or on my way to work. If I'm unlucky, I'm on my way to a formal dinner and wearing my academic robes. Then I'm not in the background - they're actually taking pictures directly of me. There are nine years of photos out there of me trying to look nondescript or putting on my "piss off you bastard with the camera" face. Okay, I know none of the people who see those photos is likely ever to recognise me - but it still feels like an invasion of privacy. And yes, if I don't want my "privacy" invaded in that way I should lock myself in a bunker. But can you not understand why it's annoying, even if it's not actually illegal or even immoral?
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