Own worst enemy

Privacy groups are their own worst enemy sometimes. Google have addressed legitimate concerns about people being identifiable via faces and number plates and they even allow people to have pictures removed but this is just not good enough is it? Oh no! Even though these groups have managed to get everything they wanted (baring the outright banning of all cameras and eyeballs) they just have to push it that little further so they can keep bitching. Now they just look like a whiny, interfering cretins instead of the defenders of our rights they claim to be.

If they are that concerned about the blurring used by Google find someone who can undo it and then get back to us, and Google. Otherwise shut the hell up and fight the battles that really matter.

Posted anonymously for irony purposes.

requests for removal

so we all got a bit organised, we could continually request that image after image is taken down and generate black spots within the google streetview, yes?

Burglars Delight!

I won't outline the obvious here but with 2secs thought the data watchdog (or should that be "corporation puppy"?) should have been able see the dangers especially in your typical residential street/road. Of course I wouldn't be surprised if he and his political masters don't live in a typical residence. Detached from reality? More like cruising another universe entirely. Me sincerely hopes what is likely to happen to many ordinary folk happens to this bunch of witless shites.

"they won't even show us how effective it is"

Well why don't they go and check out Streetview US where they have already used the blurring? duh...

not only that, they can go wherever they want

even bus lanes:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2475792/Google-Street-View-car-pulled-over-by-police-for-driving-in-bus-lane.html

photos

There is no law that says you can't take photos in a public place.

You can quite happily snap away at things, and if people are in the background, tough...

You can film scenes for your home made movies, and if people are in the background, tough...

Whats the big deal?

Stop complaining

Yea, we all want our privacy...

but we all want to nose into other peoples privacy also...

So we want it yet we don't want it.

man

the anti crowd on this are such a bunch of wankers.

O look it's a photo of someone with a blury face walking along a road, we must get our collective panties in a twist. Just browse most forms of media for a few hours and you'll notice oblivious normal folk wandering around and the occasional wanker bigging it up for the camera behind a journalist.

Away from the tinfoil hat briggade...

...most people I know were excited about getting themselves photographed by the googlemobile, and are looking forward to trying to spot each others faces/cars/pets when it goes live. I hope the blurring doesn't spoil such fun.

DPA?

There are no privacy laws covering public places in the UK.

The DPA covers data relating to identifiable living individuals.

So it the blurring tech works there is no legal objection that I can see.

Rather than going after a big corporation why aren't the Guardianisti concentrating on the privacy abuses carried out by the authorities every day in the name of national security? Because if there's one thing these people hate more than central government it's a multinational corporation.

Fine with Streetview

Nope, just can't get worked up about this one. Like 'Man Outraged', I'm also keen to protect our right to privacy (I've just switched ISP away from BT because of their underhanded behaviour over Phorm). But as mentioned, there is no right to privacy in public streets. Google - evil megalomaniacal corporate leviathan though it might be - isn't doing anything wrong here; and if anything, this ruling should help to protect the rights of photographers to take pictures in public without being treated like terropaedorists.

I don't like the idea of government databases storing all my phone calls and emails. I don't like that at all. I don't like the idea of government agents entering my house and examining my stuff. I don't like the idea of having to present 'papers' in order to be able to travel around my country, or being marked as a potential Suppressive Person (or whatever the New Labour version is) because I choose to use pseudonyms or noms-de-plume for certain purposes.

I don't believe that CCTV prevents or deters crime, so I believe there shouldn't be nearly the number of cameras there are. I don't think that companies should be demanding half the information they ask me for just so I can use their service or buy their product, and I certainly don't think they should be flogging that info to anyone else under any circumstances at all.

So as you can see there are lots of things I *would* get concerned about to a lesser or greater degree. But Google taking photos of my street? Nope. Not bothered in the slightest. As for those people who believe it'll be a charter for burglars, well, the truth is that most burglars are opportunists. Their planning tends to be minimal. Most are also driven by a need to feed a drug habit. Whatever the motivation, they tend to focus on easy-to-reach nearby areas: the chances are very good that anyone likely to break into your house is already quite familiar with it, and wouldn't gain anything more from Streetview.

Yay

I get my 15 minutes of fame. The snapper-car breezed by me just the other day on Bishopsgate and I am looking forward to my new found immortality.

OOO Goody____

My son and his freinds who, sadly, have multiple convictions for violence and other such things (as bored thugs do), have been looking for one of these, but nary a one can they find. Can it be that these arseholes are particular into whose busuness they poke their unwanted and soon to be broken noses. (Wonder how they would have fared in the Creggan and similar!) Gary

it's what Google is

Google's entire business is the selling of everyone's privacy to advertisers. They need to make sure they have it all, so there's none left for a competitor. The Internet recreates the world as a global village. And that includes village levels of privacy. Google just happens to be the front line of this. Read McLuhan who understood this 50 years ago.

Why bother...

going to the ICO? It just proved itself (again), to be the Corporate / Government bitch we all know it to be...

Selective concern

I couldn't give a rats bottom about Google's latest wheeze - after all they are taking the images in public, where we are all entitled to do the same, even if the overzealous thugs we call the police think otherwise.

But it's interesting that Privacy International seem to be concerned, being as they gave the rather more invasive Phorm less of a strict finger wagging, albeit while wearing their other, more profitable hat. Oh, but Phorm were transparent (if only in their desire to turn us all into cash cows), but Google aren't. Well, speaking personally, a crap invasive idea looks crap, and indeed invasive, whether it's made of multi-coated optical glass or painted an impenetrable black.

Perhaps Google should have commissioned a Privacy impact assessment from 20/20?

Which is worse?

Which would invade your privacy more Google videoing ina public place bluring out faces and numberplates.

or

BT's new idea of placing a layer7 on the internet network managed by a company called Phorm using the well known name from BBC "Webwise". This is a DPI (deep packet inspection) reads everything you can see on your monitor. Logs every click visits every website you do knows every website you go to. Just to place adverts that are meant to be relevent to you..

I don't get it??

There are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the UK, but I don't see them having to blur out faces and numberplates? (Wouldn't be much use if they did really, would they?)