Google Streets Breaking Laws?
Written by Chad on June 1st, 2007Ok, just been looking through some of the Google Street images.. and I have to wonder just how many laws Google broke to bring you this imagery..
Some quick examples:
Picture of a School Yard - Not sure about San Francisco.. but Michigan has some hefty fines if you are caught taking pictures of School Yards while school is in session.. kids present or not.
Brooklyn Battery Tunnel - No cameras allowed since 9/11
Various shots of the camera van speeding of course.. I am sure there are other examples of “Google Law Breaking”.
Question is.. in the communities where the laws were broken.. will they just let it go, or will Google legal start getting an influx of citations and court summons? Personally.. Google needs to be held accountable to the rules and regulations of where they are operating.. but it will probably slide.
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First, I doubt that Google did any of this themselves. They licensed the data from another company — in New York, this is Immersive Media, check the copyright. It’s not even clear, given Immersive’s Coverage, what came directly as a result of Google’s interest, and what imagery is just stock stuff from their collection. With that in mind, who would be in trouble is totally unclear: is it someone taking the pictures? (A machine.) Is it someone driving the van? Is it the organization which decided to drive the van? Is it someone who published the pictures? etc.
Second, a number of court cases have been filed regarding privacy issues for anything which is in plain sight. Although I may be wrong — I’m very much not a lawyer — I expect that any serious case about invasion of privacy based on driving by on a public street is going to be a very hard case to win, or even to bring to court.
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An interesting dilemma. Governments started this by putting satellites up to spy on us. Then Google comes along and we get to see it too. My feeling is that anything out in the open is fair game. If you don’t want someone seeing what you are doing, don’t do it out in public. Of course, that doesn’t include girl who want to sunbathe topless [and bottomless too please!]
Ya gotta love the internet.
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Here is a huge list of odd street view sightings:
http://streetviewgallery.corank.com