Google StreetView Is In Your Driveway

hermit_crab writes "Janet and George McKee are the neighbors of the Borings, who we discussed yesterday as the couple suing Google over StreetView. The McKees own a house that is featured in a much more intrusive set of Google StreetView images. 'The Google car continued past the steps leading to the McKees's front door and came to a stop outside the house's three-car garage (and next to the family's trampoline and portable basketball rim). Taking photos all the time, the Google vehicle was squarely on private property, a fact that presumably should have been apparent when the gravel path became paved.' Unlike the Borings, the McKees have not announced intentions to sue Google, nor have they requested to have the images removed."

Gravel! Turn back!

[Just Some Guy]

Taking photos all the time, the Google vehicle was squarely on private property, a fact that presumably should have been apparent when the gravel path became paved.

Why should that be apparent? There are gravel public lanes (and even a road or two) in my city, and it never would have occurred to me that such a thing would automatically mean private property.

Private means private.

[lwsimon]

They have no right to be on private property.

Intrusive???

[iamacat]

Those are low-resolution photos of someone's driveway. Fume all your want, the outside of your house is not legally private. You may get upset by me standing on a public road and gawking at it for the whole day, but there is not anything you can do about that (unless I make any threatening comments about my future intent).

Did people forget how to buy curtains?

tit for tat?

[Davak]

As much as I am not overly concerned about google's invasion of privacy (with street view)... I am unsure of the point of this article.

  Just because one person does not care if google is all up on their grill, this does not mean that other people shouldn't care.

Re:Intrusive???

[PFI_Optix]

Gawking in my window from the public street is legal. Gawking in my window from my driveway/lawn/whatever is not. The difference? I own my driveway. The problem here is that Google employed an idiot driver who blindly followed the GPS, which apparently indicated that the street terminated around the garage. They *should have* recognized a clear property line at the concrete drive.

Lawyers. One industry that hurts our country.

[zymano]

Frivolous lawsuits hurt our economy and make lawyers $$$.

You really don't understand this issue.

[argent]

More over; this still comes down to the basics of; "if you have nothing to hide, then what is the problem?"

If you don't understand why "if you have nothing to hide, then what is the problem?" is a problem, then you really don't understand this issue.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Sandbags]

Uh, all the time in my home town. Many roads were nothing more than cross cuts between fields or around farms, and short sections would be dirt, gravel, or paved. Many paved sections would have long runs where there were not lines painted on it. Some of these roads led to as few as 2 or 3 houses. Some to public parks. Some to the community running track and socker field. What was a road or a driveway was not clearly obvious.

Also, perhaps the driver was simply pulling up to see if there was part of the driveway to turn around in, without having to pitch a k-turn on a single lane gravel road in a big google van...

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Google should be reviewing the photos before putting them on their website, instead of assuming that all pictures are OK.

It's pretty obvious that they were on someone's private driveway, and that they tried to turn around on someone's private property. Whoops, mistakes happen, but that's why you verify the results afterwards.

Google Hallway Views will come first

[VampireByte]

Shower views is still several years off. Google knows all, including the need to desensitize us somewhat slowly. Google Hallway Views will be released with government support under the guise of helping rescue workers save you in case of fire. Google Kitchen Views will get the "think of the children" chant going because it will help prevent childhood kitchen accidents or CKA as the advertisements will inform us - "with Google Kitchen Views we can stamp out CKA in the next decade." In a similar manner, Google Shower Views and Google Bedroom Views will follow.

Re:"private road" signs?

[krlynch]

From the fine article:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0407081google2.html [thesmokinggun.com]

I se no evidence of "private road" signs, nor do I see "no trespassing" signs. The house is certainly not visible from the main street, and it's not really visible where the "gravel" portion of the driveway becomes "concrete", which was supposed to be some big tipoff.

I fail to be impressed ... the Streetview driver drove down a named road marked on his map, which wasn't posted as private, wasn't obviously private, and ended up having to find a place to turn around at the end ... which just happened to be in the driveway of these homeowners. So what? As a homeowner myself, I hardly find this outrageous ... people turn around in my driveway all the time. And although Streetview has missed my house by a block, I'm not going to be outraged when they finally come back.

Re:Private means private.

[Sandbags]

1: it is assumed that a driveway can be reasonably used at will to turn a vehicle around.

2: tresspassing is not automatic. In most states even when properly posted, you can still go onto private land and go up to the front door. Even salesman can ring bells at homes posted no soliciting in SC. The onyl poewr you have is to ask them to leave. It only becomes tresspassing if they refuse to or if they return later. Neither of these conditions happened.

3: the proerty itself was not marked, posted, fenced with a gate, not in any other way abvious that is was private. I can't see in any of the pictures the van took where their so called private road sign exists, let alone complies with their state's laws concerning use of proper singage (including regionally accepted or universal images to assist those who can't read).

4: all they had to do was ask for the images to be removed.

5: the engineer in the vehicle has no control over the images being taken, not can he catalog or document them. This is ON PURPOSE to prevent tampering with the image feeds, and to keep the image recorder in sync with GPS information.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[JJNess]

Follow the progression of the pictures. They weren't just on a private road. They were in the driveway, pulled all the way up parallel the garage doors, then backed out. There is no way a driver couldn't have seen it was a private drive before he could peer inside the garage windows.

Agreed with removing the pictures... the drivers should be able to turn off the camera, or at least log when they feel the pictures should be reviewed for removal (like when he says to himself "Oops, I'm in a driveway and pulled the 30 feet all the way in so much so that I can see inside this house!").

Re:Intrusive???

[Sandbags]

Well, from the way the images depict it, the "road" he was on was a single lane gravel road, that according to his GPS, the map for which is from local city assessors offices, that was in fact a road. When he realized it ended in a driveway, he likely though to turn around in the nice concrete pad where it was convenient instead of trying to mull an 95 point K-turn with a big van on gravel roads with no shoulders...

You likely would have done the same.

The driver has no control of the cameras in the vehicle. He could not turn them off to do this maneuver.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[earnest murderer]

Sure, I grew up on a gravel road, but my gravel public lanes never came complete with garage doors! [thesmokinggun.com].

They were clearly and undeniably in the couples' driveway [thesmokinggun.com].

If it were a driveway, why would the city/county have given it a name?

I think there's a lot of deniability there.

Still there

[mzs]

It's clear the driver needed to make a u-turn in the driveway. There should be an on-off button for the picture taking precisely for this. There should have been no pictures taken from the dirveway.

Compare the difference between the street view [google.com] and the picture from the road at the county assessors [allegheny.pa.us].

Frankly I am more concerned about all the info available in other ways. When I was looking into buying a distressed home from someone trying to flip it, I found the social security numbers in mortgage papers online with the county. They just scanned them and put them online. When we bought a different house, I made sure that lots of stuff was blacked-out before it was duplicated.

Re:"private road" signs?

[earnest murderer]

Which is pretty much how I suspect this will break down.

Resident: You drove on my property!
Google: This county road?
Resident: That's my driveway!!!!
Google: Hold on while I get the county commisioner in on this.
Resident: NEVERMIND, HAVE A NICE DAY!!!!

Re:Intrusive???

[R2.0]

"They *should have* recognized a clear property line at the concrete drive."

Bullshit. Roads go from paved to unpaved to paved all of the time. If they were really that concerned, they would have had a "Public Road Ends" sign put up. The driver was following a public map of a public road and went a few yards too far - $5 will get you $20 it happens to these folks all of the time, with people making wrong turns.

These people haven't even asked Google to take it down - why are everyone ELSE's panties in a twist?

Re:Intrusive???

[Anonymous Coward]

he likely though to turn around in the nice concrete pad where it was convenient

While it sounds like a good excuse, apparently it wasn't convenient until the guy had driven all the way around the house and up to the garage.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[amRadioHed]

Obvious to you maybe after just read an article about it, but how obvious would it be to someone who just spent the past 7 hours staring at a slide show of strangers houses.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[CrazedWalrus]

It's probably cheaper to wait until someone complains and then remove it. Paying someone to review thousands of miles of Sunday driving gets expensive pretty quick.

Re:Intrusive???

[old and new again]

didn't it came to your mind that the gps was right and that they decided to extend their damn driveway on public property since they were alone there?

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Intron]

Q. Why are the Borings suing Google and not the van drivers who committed the trespass?

A. The van drivers are paid $7/hour and Google is worth $25 Billion.

Re:Private means private.

[Bryansix]

Right, Google didn't break any laws taking the photos but they can't use them legally. So the question is "Was Google asked to remove the photos?" and "Did Google comply with that request?".

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Schlage]

Q: Why are the van drivers there in the first place?

A: Because Google paid them to be.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[badasscat]

You and everyone else who has posted similar things below you are arguing semantics and missing the point.

How many public roads lead directly *into* a person's garage? At some point, the road changes from public to private property. Would you think the safer assumption would be that the private property begins at the threshold of the garage or somewhere earlier? It's quite rare to buy a house without buying the lot around it. If you assume that the property line does begin somewhere before the garage, where would you naturally assume that to be? Well, luckily you have an obvious line between gravel and pavement to tell you.

I can understand these guys mistakenly driving down this family's driveway and then having nowhere to turn around until they got to the garage area. But then you've gotta delete the photos. You can't tell me these guys didn't know they were on private property at *some* point, and the obvious line is where the road changes from gravel to paved.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Jesus_666]

Google should then add a simple mechanism to the vans that allows the drivers to set a "last couple images are bad" marker. They turn into a driveway by accident or stop to refuel and as soon as they notice/are done, they press a button and the system sets a marker that tells the post-processing team that all images since the last turn are probably bad. The post-processing team can then just scan for those markers and closely examine the images preceding them; if the drivers pay a bit of attention that could cut down on images that shouldn't be in the database.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[electrictroy]

Clearly Google's vehicle was guilty of trespassing on the McKee's property. Once they realized what they had done, they should have erased the photos.

But since they didn't, I'd use the photos in a court case to sue the company for violating another person's private property.

even if it's private property...

[nguy]

Even if it's private property, so what? If a privately owned road doesn't tell you to keep out, you can enter. Furthermore, unless it's clearly and explicitly forbidden, you can take pictures on private property; you don't need to ask permission. And there are many forms of privately owned property where they owner can't forbid you to take pictures even if the want to. Finally, if a property runs up to you and tells you not to take pictures, all he can do is ask you to leave; he can't demand that you erase the pictures you have already taken.

Photography is an important part of a modern democracy and it needs to be protected; don't mislead people about where they supposedly can't take pictures.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Oh please.
Did you bother to look at the pictures? It's clear that this an invasion of privacy. Here's a clue. Read the articles again and look at the pictures again, but replace "Google" with "Microsoft", then see if you have the same opinion on the matter.

Damn, some people will defend Google no matter what they do. Just because someone claims that they're not evil, doesn't make it so. In fact, those that feel the need to constantly say "We're not evil" are *more* likely to be so. (It's like whenever you meet someone that says over and over, "I'm not a racist", nine times out of ten, they are a racist.)

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[kitgerrits]

>>>"The camera is automatic, so the surprised driver can't really do anything about it but turn around and go."

In that case, I guess no one is too blame. The driver can't erase photos, and the programmer is probably just dumping them to the central website without noticing he's taken pictures of private property.

As simple as it sounds, I have to agree.
Sometimes the simplest explanation works best.

You can sue the driver for no noticing your hints.
You can sue the map-maker for not clearly marking your road as private property.
You can even sue the map-making company for not checking all the (weeks of) footage, before sending it to Google.
You can even sue Google for not removing the footage, after you asked them to remove it.

But, NOT ASKING and then spamming for ATTENTION is a waste of everyone's time.

I'm not here to defend Google, but if someone is doing something you don't like, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Don't just whine about it to other people.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Achromatic1978]

Utterly irrelevant. This is standard practice. Even if the drivers were violating their employment agreement, that's between them and Google. Don't make this out to be a grab for cash just cause it's Google. If any other situation where an employee of a company infringes on your rights, you'd be suing the company. You could also sue the employee personally, sure, but if you won you'd generally be waiting while they in turn sued their employer. I fail to see the problem here (as in, "suing Google, not van drivers").

Re:even if it's private property...

[Achromatic1978]

I appreciate your sentiment, but please, as a person who makes a living as a photographer, ensure you're being accurate when you say these things - leaving out important caveats as I've previously mentioned, is not a good thing.

Also curious, just what private property do you think is exempt from the owner imposing a condition of entry regarding photography? Cause that ain't so. Though you are right, you can be told to leave and must do so, and confiscation of your camera/destruction of imagery without consent could subject them to civil and or criminal sanction.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Achromatic1978]

That's not my problem - that's yours to deal with as the person potentially committing the infringement. Is that going to be your defense, "Well, hell, Your Honor, after a while, it all looks the same, you can't expect me to notice this kind of stuff, really, can you?"

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is to blame for not establishing some type of protocol to guard against this (pretty much inevitable) privacy invasion.

They did establish a protocol. Ask for the pictures to be removed and they will remove them. Screw the Borings and their lawsuit - all they had to do was ask that the images be removed, just like the McKees can.

When the Borings' case is thrown out of court they will be the only ones to blame since they didn't have the decency of simply asking for the photos to be removed.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

Not only that, but Google chose to use the pictures - not the drivers. There are two issues here - the driver is tresspassing, but as pointed out, may not have been able to turn around, so this is arguable in any case (ie. no intent) - but its the publishing of the photos on the net that is the main issue - and THAT is wholely the responsibility of of Google's quality control. Google may have issues with whoever they contracted to do the driving, but thats between Google and the contractors - and has nothing to do with the owners of the property.

Re:Gravel! Turn back!

[Sparr0]

Why do so many people keep saying that this is obvious, when it isn't? I am on a paved public road. I turn onto a gravel public road. Then I continue onto another paved road, which it turns out happens to be a private driveway. How is it at all obvious which, if any, of these transitions is the private/public line?

For the record, I know plenty of people whose homes have no driveway, with garages that open directly onto the street, or across a sidewalk onto the street, and front doors that open directly onto a sidewalk adjacent to the street with no private sidewalk approach.