Angry Villagers Run Google Out of Town 1188
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.'"
Surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly, all they had to do to get him to leave was offer food.
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?
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.
Re:Surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should that surprise you in the least? Google are strangers much more than the government is.
People routinely take shit from, say, family members, that they would under no circumstance take from strangers. It's human nature.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Nor does Google have the ability to shoot people dead and only get fined for a "health and safety violation".
Re:Surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been plenty of times where the google camera-car has driven past high-schools at end of the schoolday and captured students waiting at the bus stops on the main high street. Interesting to think that if an individual were to take pictures, they would be questioned by the police, but if Google takes high-resolution pictures from a car, that is not a problem.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Funny)
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"
Re:Alternatives (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Some way to take a stand (Score:4, Insightful)
They took a stand and 'Called the police.'
That's hardly a 'stand.'
'Taking a stand' would be tarring and feathering their local district attorney equivalent and their MP's until their right to
shoot burglars dead is once again respected by English law.
Burglaries will be sorted out after a few burglars end up dead for their efforts.
Take a stand and kill a crook. Take a stand and slap around your local DA to de facto respect the notion that a man's home is his castle. Take a stand and slap around your politicians until they recognize what nature teaches: That every living thing has a right to defend themselves, their friends, their family, and their home.
Being a crook isn't a legitimate career choice. It should carry a great deal more risk than it currently does in jolly ol' Britain.
Re:Some way to take a stand (Score:4, Interesting)
Why don't you go do a comparison of types of crimes, crime rates, and methods of counting crimes?
Certain crimes are higher in the US, most crimes are significantly higher in the UK- including several categories of violent crimes.
After that, you can re-evaluate your cock-sure sarcasm.
Yes, actually. (Score:5, Insightful)
So I take it you have burglaries all sorted in the US?
Comparatively speaking, Yes.
FBI Crime Statistics [fbi.gov]
Home Office Crime Report for 2005/2006 [homeoffice.gov.uk]
Take a look at page 115 of the home office report. Chapter 7.4.
Let's use the Rural numbers, just for fun. They're lower.
Percentage victims once or more
All burglary: 2%
All Vehicle Theft: 4%
All Violence: 2%
Now compare it to the United States FBI report:
2005, violent crime rate: 469.2 per 100,000 people (equivalent to less than or equal to 0.462%, per UK standards)
Burglary: 726.7 per 100,000 (equivalent or = 0.7267 %)
Motor Vehicle Theft: 416.7 per 100,000 ( = 0.4167%)
Notice also that the FBI counts discrete events of crimes, where as the Home Office will only count you once if you get robbed, beat up, or stolen from multiple times per year. In essence, the Home Office method is a clear attempt to reduce crime statistics by any defendable method.
You are at least 4 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime in the UK.
You are at about ten times more likely to have your car stolen in the UK.
You are about three times more likely to have your home robbed in the UK.
I invite you to poke around the official numbers for both the US and the UK and make a counter argument.
My argument is this: Offering violence to criminals reduces their numbers.
No, actually. (Score:4, Informative)
I invite you to poke around the official numbers for both the US and the UK and make a counter argument.
Those statistics are measuring quite different things, and cannot be meaningfully compared.
The US figures are offences recorded by the police.
The UK figures you give are from the British Crime Survey - a survey of people, who are asked if they have been victims of crime. Such surveys always give much higher figures, for a variety of reasons.
In many ways a crime survey gives more useful numbers, as it measures victims rather than crimes, and isn't subject to recording differences. But the two really cannot be compared.
Would someone please link to this location? (Score:4, Informative)
I can't figure out where to take my camera, can you give me a link to this location on Google Maps?
Oh here it is.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Buckinghamshire&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=51.754532,114.257812&ie=UTF8&ll=51.880332,-0.873456&spn=0.019895,0.05579&t=h&z=15 [google.com]
Don't blink as you drive through.
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.
public streets (Score:4, Insightful)
In the US, you have a right to take pictures of anything you can see from a public street. I suspect it is similar in the UK or else Google wouldn't be doing Street View there.
On the other hand, surrounding other people's cars and interfering with their passage through public streets may constitute a crime.
Virtual Criminal Shopping Mall..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you do have the right to photograph from a public place, BUT what Google is doing with the photographs it takes demonstrates a problem with that right. The concept of being able to take pictures from a public place was not conceived with the knowledge that someone, let alone a company, would drive up and down every street with the intention of photographing every house an posting the images on the internet for the world to see.
The residents were absolutely correct in making Google leave. 'Street View' basically provides a virtual shopping mall for criminals looking to scout out new targets.
Crooks can gather *ALOT* of valuable information from such photographs:
1: Location.
2: Neighboring buildings.
3: Surrounding environment.
4: A rough building floorplan.
5: Points of entry.
6: Points of exit.
7: Possible escape routes away from the scene.
8: Economic status of the resident.
9: Vantage points where neighbors might detect them.
10: Pets (Number, type, and locations).
11: Observation points where the criminal can observe residents activity.
12: Hiding spots.
13: Obstacles to entry.
14: Obstacles to escape.
15: What kind of valuables might be present.
16: Likelihood of passers-by who might see them.
Any criminal can use this information to *GREATLY* increase their chances of a successful robbery.
Unfortunately, civil rights nutjobs will defend their right to photograph in public, but will crucify law abiding people if they shoot a criminal while he is trying to rob a house.
Laws like this make life easier for criminals, and harder for the rest of use who choose to defend ourselves from crime.
The irony . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
is that Britain(at least London) has become a total surveillance society with every bloody move of their citizens recorded on camera for use by Big Brother.
Perhaps they should consider gathering the neighbours and kicking the government out of town?
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.
Re:That would be nice (Score:5, Funny)
The Streisand Effect should be banned!
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.
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.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:4, Funny)
but it turns out that Brits and Yanks wipe their arses in different ways.
Looks like a new Slashdot poll will be in the works.
I pick, "Cow-bidet Neal"
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.
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.
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.
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?
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's irrelevant how much in taxes they paid. Taxes are collected for the entire region, not just a bunch of idiot yuppies living in a neighborhood. Since they have earned more due to society, do they not automatically owe something back to the society?
I can't believe I'm replying to an AC, but here goes.
I don't believe it is irrelevant how much we pay in taxes. Taxes are effectively fees for services rendered. Why should one person pay more for an identical service rendered than another person? If you think it's irrelevant then the next time you pay someone to change the oil in your car how about you pay them twice as much as the guy in front of you in line. Suddenly doesn't seem so irrelevant I bet.
They don't seem so idiotic if they can group together and keep GOOGLE out of their neighborhood. Show me another neighborhood that's been able to accomplish that.
Assuming these people are not crooks, they earned more from society by providing society with some form of goods or services. They've already given to society what society wanted. Why should society now get freebies? If what society wants is "more for less" then they should stop paying sixty fucking dollars for a video game, or over a hundred dollars for a damn concert ticket. These people are filthy stinking rich because 'society' keeps giving them money.
The way I see it you have three options. Either become one of those people, stop giving them money, or shut the hell up.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
ou can't get that kind of rich without being a crook, and every one of them are.
Care to tell us who JK Rowling stole from? How about David Beckham? George Lucas has done OK, who did he rip off?
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
George Lucas has done OK, who did he rip off?
The movie-going public?
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
JK Rowling stole from me. She wrote her first book while claiming state benefits. Then when she got rich and famous, she ran off to the USA, so none of her taxes are going back in to top up that pot that she leeched from.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
...as people who protected their neighborhood...
"Protecting their neighborhood" by restricting the use of public roads by certain private citizens who are doing nothing illegal, but - for whatever reasons - they (the neighborhood folk) decided they just don't like. Mob rule FTW!
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The local called the police according to the article, but there's no mention of them actually turning up. Presumably they just laughed at him. Disappointing, given that the villagers were engaging in behaviour that gets protesters arrested at Faslane on a semi-regular basis.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why you need guns. If you can't count on the police to help you, then you have to choice but to defend yourself. That's a basic human right and closely-tied to the ownership of your body (protect your property from criminals) and the right to life.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>Americans are generally more trusting of corporations, less trusting of government.
That's because the corporations don't have the power to (a) steal money directly from my wallet or (b) send me to jail if I refuse to pay or (c) use an involuntary military draft to make me die in some shithole in Vietnam or Iraq. Corporations also offer choice. Hate GM? Buy from one of the dozens of other car makers instead. Hate the government school because it's falling-apart and doesn't teach anything? Tough.
Yes corporations are bad, but not as bad as the Uncle Sam Monopoly that uses threats/force against the People.
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.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I do think that this is much ado about nothing. After all, the car's not seeing anything that anybody else driving down the street wouldn't be able to see. In addition, the benefits are enormous; when looking for directions, the first thing I do after finding the destination address is to check the street view. I hate not being able to find the place because I didn't realize that the bakery they were referring to is decorated like an abandoned warehouse. I'd rather find that information out while I have the resources of the internet at my disposal instead of having to rely on a cellphone to clear up the misunderstanding.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They are idiots. They got uppity about their obscure little village appearing on Google Street View (where it would be no less obscure), but were quite happy to give an interview to the Times about their 'affluent area'.
You never know. Maybe burglars will be scared off once images of the angry mob appear on Street View.
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.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
So what about tourists taking photos on vacation? Do they have the right to take photos of interesting buildings?
Suppose Google Maps solicited private photos rather than taking the photos themselves. Woudl that make a difference? It would certainly make it impossible to drive Google photographers out of town since tourists might be able to make a little extra money photographing streets for Google.....
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. photographing in a public place is NOT illegal
2. theives don't use google to find victims - they find people who don't secure their homes properly by casing the property
3. if these residents secured their properties properly, they wouldn't have been broken into.
people crying over google street view are just knuckle draggers who don't understand the technology and remind me of monkeys grunting at fire like it's the first time they've seen it.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're being a little unfair here. I've known a few people who have taken very careful measures to ensure their house was safe against burglars but still wound up having it broken into. Keep in mind, too, that not everyone can afford alarms, bars on every window, and so forth.
The problem with burglary is the burglar. This argument is the same ridiculous one used in sexual assault cases where the defense suggests that the woman was "asking for it." I won't let that fly.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is an entirely legitimate desire not to have your home's photo on Google.
It's also an entirely legitimate desire to want to be able to take photos in public.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as someone who in a previous life committed a 'burg' or two, I can safely say that Google streetview is a fucking useless tool for burglary for a very simple reason, it shows only the visible parts of the property - the parts that are visible to anyone who walks past.
The last thing a burglar wants to do is to hang around on the most visible part of the property where anyone driving past can see them. Google street view provides a really slow, probably out of date and restricted way of doing the easiest part of a burglary, driving down the street and looking for a house to go into.
Seriously, it takes about two minutes to case a whole street in a car, but it takes about 15 minutes to do the same with Google. If someone is stupid enough to leave expensive items like jewelry or their PS3 on display in a window, then they're likely to get burgled by local feevs long before their photo pops up on Google.
Having said that, I could believe that 'steal-to-order' car thieves might find street view handy (car thieves already use tools like registration plate lookups to find a target), but home burglaries aren't lucrative enough to warrant a lot of preparation, especially when it doesn't seem like it would make home burglary any safer or significantly more profitable.
And what about the wishes of the burglars? (Score:5, Funny)
Speaking as an Australian (and therefore a convict who was run out of Britain years ago), I feel there's a staggering lack of respect for such an ancient and popular profession.
Frankly, if people don't stop discriminating against thieves, robbers, pilferers, bandits, crooks, larcenists, prowlers, plunderers and pirates in general, we're going to see a general strike from the whole industry - and think what that will do during the Economic Downturn!
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think outrage is still permitted there unless someone gets shot. My understanding is that it's otherwise limited to mild indignance. Anyone who was actually capable of outrage was put on a leaky boat some time ago. Ironically a huge number of those people ended up making it to a land at least an order of magnitude richer than the land they were kicked off of. Honestly, about the worst things we have here (besides Americans, of course... and German tourists) are poison oak and lyme disease. (Seems about fifty-fifty with Malaria, but it's a lot harder to find a tick than a mosquito if you know what I mean.)
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupidity gets ridiculed.
It seems that every other day we get another Orwellian story about England and their newest ability to watch their citizens with cameras or step on their rights by database miss uses, and THIS is what they take a stand over? Google streetview?
yeah. ridicule deserved.
d
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?
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.
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.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why someone should follow your special rules because you've arbitrarily deemed it to be polite.
They're not "his special" rules; they're actually fairly common and well-understood. (Or at least, were at one time. Maybe there's a generational gap here? I don't consider myself an old fogy at 31, but...)
You give absolutely no reason except that "they don't get it." If they don't understand, please explain it. Why is it not polite to do so? and don't just say, "because I don't want it." I want real reasons.
One aspect of politeness is voluntarily refraining from an act which disturbs others, even if you don't agree that it should disturb them (or even understand why it does). Thus, "because I don't want it" is ipso facto a valid reason for stating that an act is impolite.
As to why the OP doesn't like it, I can't answer that myself, of course. But in general, social rules exist to help society function -- that is, to help people come together as a cohesive unit for the good of all. Now, the Internet may be encouraging a new set of social rules which (like Street View) give openness and visibility a higher priority; but even if you subscribe to such a "new world order", that doesn't make it any less impolite to violate others' pre-established social rules. And if you simply didn't know about them, then the polite response is to say either "I'm sorry, I didn't know and won't do that again" or "let's discuss whether those rules are appropriate", not to blithely ignore them and continue with your own ways.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:5, Funny)
There are a couple new devices for folks like you and your daughter, who are trying to keep their private lives private. Keep in mind I have no affiliation with the following sites, I'm just trying to help out ;o).
http://www.curtainfactoryoutlet.com/ [curtainfactoryoutlet.com]
http://www.thecurtainshop.com/ [thecurtainshop.com]
http://www.windowblinds.com/ [windowblinds.com]
http://www.blindsgalore.com/ [blindsgalore.com]
I've heard they'll even increase the energy efficiency of your home or apartment.
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
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess what. I can get the PLANS to your home and everything else I want by paying a small fee at the city hall or county offices.
It's amazing what I can get about your home from public records.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore, it isn't as if burglers can't drive around the neighborhood scouting it out themselves or wouldn't be likely to do so regardless of whether Google Street posts the images.
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?
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.)
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.
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.
Re:Glad to see.. (Score:4, Insightful)
They were only taking picture of light that was over the public road. Cameras don't reach out and take things.
By that logic, standing in a bucket truck filming the children changing for bed between the slats in their blinds with a telephoto lens and uploading it to the internet isn't at all an invasion of privacy either.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Re:What kind of cowards do they hire? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What kind of cowards do they hire? (Score:5, Funny)
Might scare off the burglars, too.
British hicks (Score:5, Funny)
Village of the faceless screaming hicks? Maybe not the same ring as night of the living dead but still.
The thing about British hicks, you know... the type that wears tweed clothes, wellies, flat caps and drives around in moss-green landrovers is their infuriatingly stoic nature. In the USA all you need to do to convince a bunch of hillbillies to break out ye-olde lynching rope is to take the lord's name in vain (or mention Darwin). In Britain, however, even when the hicks carry double barrelled shotguns the worst that can happen to you is being invited to tea and cucumber sandwiches and bored to death by stories about the intricacies pheasant hunting. The un-armed variety usually defaults to talking about bovine disease or complaining about the price of manure. Getting them angry is almost impossible, although if you try hard enough you may succeed in getting an emotional outburst. A stiffening upper lip followed by a slightly high voiced "I say!!!" is a good indicator you are getting somewhere. I'm not sure what Google did to enrage them this time. Just driving around taking photos is not a convincing reason. Perhaps some mean-spirited person tacked a sign to the back of the Google van reading something like "God shave the queen" ???
Re:What kind of cowards do they hire? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Breaking no laws? Maybe yes, maybe no. (Score:4, Insightful)
It has been extremely well established that if your copyrighted (sign, building, whatever) is viewable from a public place, then an image taken from that public place does not infringe. Period.
If the hollywood sign people really are doing that then they would get their asses handed to them if it went to court.
The King Kong movie is probably more questionable, since I'm guessing at some point a computer model was made of the building.
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.
Re:Breaking no laws? Maybe yes, maybe no. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, that antenna farm up there is unsightly as hell.
A bunker, on top of a hill, right smack in the center of a target area - hundreds of miles from the governor's residence? Cite please.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Re:Ah, Little Britain... (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Re:Nice with the gun control (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, Britain has roughly 8 times the "hot burglary" rate of the US [mail-archive.com], meaning that in the UK, criminals enter your home without bothering to see if you're there first. In the US, they purposely enter when you're not home so they won't get hurt.
Re:Nice with the gun control (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Life without the right to keep and bear arms (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop reading the Daily Mail. Seriously.
You do have a right of self defence. You don't have the right to kill someone. That's not defence that's murder, and you'd rightly be put away for a long time for it.
You also have the power of arrest, provided you have reasonable suspicion of an indictable offence (Trespassing isn't, btw. that's a civil offence).
Re:Life without the right to keep and bear arms (Score:5, Interesting)
You're right -- the rate of burglary in the UK is about 3 times the rate in the US. Of course, the murder rate in the US is about 3 times the rate in the UK, so gun laws aren't all bad.
Re:Google auto-casing? (Score:5, Funny)
You think that potential burglers are going to see you neighbour's front door is open and think "You beauty! Someone has left their door open! I better get my stripy t-shirt, mask and sack with loot written on the side".