Google Street View Could Be Unlawful In Europe

arallsopp writes "European data protection laws restrict the commercial use of photographs where individuals are identifiable. The law sets extra requirements for so-called sensitive personal data: it demands explicit consent, not just notification: 'If Google's multi-lens camera cars come to Europe and inadvertently find themselves taking pictures of persons leaving a church or sexual health clinic, they may just need to pull over and start picking up signatures.'"

Re:Well, maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not entirely accurate; The guide [sirimo.co.uk] linked from http://www.sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php [sirimo.co.uk] gives a very good overview of what you can and can not do with a photograph.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

[G3ckoG33k]

I think it was Kaiser Wilhelm II who first forced this kind of law at the beginning of the previous century. Apparently he had had a bad hair day photo taken and created a law...

It would have been nice to be an Emperor, occassionally! I have had many a bad hair day.

Not really a problem, solutions already exists

[i-neo]

This is not really a problem.

Of course Google will have to implement some algorithm to avoid publishing recognizable pictures of someone. But a lot of technologies are already available to solve this problem. One of the most impressive I have seen is inpainting: once you have selected the area you wish to remove from the picture it rebuilds the missing part... There is a Gimp plugin that perform this kind of operation: http://www.manucornet.net/Informatique/Gimp_Textur ize.php [manucornet.net]

Ah yes I almost forgot... it turns out that the author is now working at Google.
I am pretty sure that with all those people working there they can do something about it ;)

Re:Being in public is not "sensitive personal data

[Anonymous Coward]

I walk to and from work every day through Vancouver's #1 tourist stop, that being Gastown. I must be in hundreds if not thousands of tourist photos by now, just from making that commute daily during the last two years. Imagine a future (it's not that hard given stories like TFA) where tourists are banned from taking photos on their trip because some local, or other tourist, doesn't want to be in other people's pictures.

Developments like this make me worry about the future. It won't be long now before, in the supposed interest of giving every individual complete privacy and control over use of their likeness or that of any of their owned property, we instead restrict everyone to doing nothing but getting up in the morning, going to work, and going home again. On the weekend we'll be allowed to get up, go shopping, and go home again. That's it. Produce. Consume. Leave all the freedom (and money-making, of course) to the corporations and governments (controlled by corporations.)

It's a scary thought, and a slippery slope. For those who look at the slope, notice that it has a fairly mild grade, and think it not that scary, have this food for thought: What does it matter if a slippery slope has a mild grade if its surface has a coefficient of friction approaching zero? Think about it.

Re:Well, maybe...

[Keith_Beef]

As I understand it, French law specifically prohibits the publication of any image derived from a photograph taken in a public place without the consent of the person in that image, if the person is the main or only subject in that image.

If I take a photograph of the Eiffel Tower, and you happen to be in the shot along with a few other people, I don't have to get your consent before publishing the photo, even if I gain commercially from doing so, and even if you could be recognized and identified by your face in the photograph.

There are no doubt some guidelines somewhere about the percentage surface area taken up by the person's face, compared to the main subject (the Eiffel tower, in my example), and you could dig up some jurisprudence on the subject.

Cas d'une photo prise devant la maison d'arrêt de la santé Dans l'hebdomadaire France Dimanche en illustration d'articles consacrés à Bernard TAPIE, alors incarcéré, figurait une photographie où l'on pouvait voir, à la droite de la famille TAPIE, un policier entrant dans une voiture en stationnement devant la maison d'arrêt de la santé. La Cour d'Appel de Paris (3) a considéré que la prise de vue était réalisée sur la voie publique, que rien ne venait isoler le policier du groupe de personnes représentées par la photographie, centrée sur la famille de Bernard TAPIE à l'entrée de la maison d'arrêt, et non sur la personne du policier dont l'identité n'était pas révélée. Elle a jugé que cette photographie illustrait un événement d'actualité auquel ce dernier s'est trouvé mêlé objectivement et de façon impersonnelle par l'effet d'une coïncidence due à des circonstances tenant exclusivement à sa vie professionnelle.

source: http://www.scaraye.com/article.php?rub=27&sr=36&a= 270 [scaraye.com]

Since this is so important, I'll summarize from the text.

Bernard Tapie had been held in a prison called "la Santé" and was being released. A weekly magazine "France Dimanche" published on its cover a photo of Tapie's release. The photo showed a police officer getting into a car to the right of Tapie and his family.

The court decided that

• since the officer was not picked out by the framing of the photo (centered on tapie and family)
• since the photo was taken on a public road

there was no grounds to penalise the magazine or to compensate the office.

Contrast this with article 226-1 of the French Penal Code, which concerns publication of photographs taken in a private place.

l'article 226-1 CP dispose qu'"est puni d'un an d'emprisonnement et de 45.000 euros d'amende le fait, au moyen d'un procédé quelconque," de porter atteinte volontairement à l'intimité de la vie privée d'autrui, en captant (parole) ou fixant (image), enregistrant ou transmettant, sans le consentement de la personne concernée, des paroles prononcées à titre privé ou confidentiel, ou l'image d'une personne se trouvant dans un lieu privé. Le consentement est présumé lorsque ces actes ont été accomplis au vu et au su de cette personne sans qu'elle s'y soit opposée.

source: http://www.cru.fr/droit-deonto/droit/protection-dr oits/personnalite.htm [www.cru.fr]

Yet another commentary on this article gives the contrasting situation of a person in a public place:

En d'autres termes, une image captée dans le cadre de la vie publique ne peut porter préjudice à quiconque.

and goes on to:

Le Code civil pose ensuite deux conditions : - il faut qu

Re:Wanted to get caught...

[Ngwenya]

Have you spent much time in England? Over there, with the exception of in your own home, you are pretty much in front of a camera at all times.

Bollocks. Wandering through the countryside in Devon and Somerset, I think I was caught on camera, oh, maybe not at all. I wonder if that's because there are no cameras there. Hell, in that part of the world, they've barely got electricity. But the cider is nice...

You mean in the cities. Since I live in Bristol, I did a little camera hunt around my neighbourhood a week ago. There are security cameras in front of the local shops (owned by the shop proprietors). I'm sure the buggers litter the main shops in Broadmead and so on, but it's hardly the Big Brother scenario (ie, they're not all owned by the state, spying on the citizenry). But around residential areas? Nope. None at all.

It probably is more true in London than in all other UK cities (serves you right for living in that shithole :-) ). And of course, the London media are more prone to report what happens in London as being universally true. But the meme of "UK - the securocrat's wet dream" isn't quite true yet. There are far more worrying trends - IP traffic retention; retention of DNA/fingerprint information even when exonerated of a crime; badly formed legislation on civil emergencies, ID cards and so on. Sadly, none of these trends seem unique to the UK.

--Ng

Re:Well, maybe...

[leenks]

OK, I'm going to bite on this because it is really getting out of hand...

The UK doesn't have that many more CCTV cameras than most other "developed" countries. I've just had two weeks in the Baltimore / D.C. area and I lost count of the number of CCTV cameras I saw, both in public places and on private property.

The huge figures quoted in the UK, as far as I know (and I don't have any sources to quote here, so please prove me wrong) include every kind of CCTV cameras, from those installed within banks and corner stores, to those installed in many ATM machines and traffic monitoring cameras on motorways. If you take that into account, I'm sure other countries fall closely in line too.

Or maybe I've been sucked in too ;-)