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"Street View" on Google maps

Redroom Studios

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not sure if anyone else has posted any info about this, but I just stumbled on this new option on Google Maps last night while looking up a friends new address in San Francisco. I knew it had been in the works for sometime... I remember there had been a mapping company driving around Toronto last summer taking 360' shots along every street. (though so far Toronto street views dont seem to be available yet)

here is their introduction video for the new feature: http://books.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

check it out if you get the chance...

RRS
 
Any updates on this story?


Google's detailed streetscapes raise privacy concerns
Carly Weeks,
CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, September 11, 2007

OTTAWA -- Canada's Privacy Commissioner has raised concerns over a new Google program that lets users view and zoom in on street-level photographs that are so clear and precise, they can pinpoint an unknowing bystander and their exact location with the click of a mouse button.

Google's new Street View application uses photographs captured at an earlier date to let computer users navigate through city streets and neighbourhoods in major cities quickly and easily.

But the program, which relies on pictures taken without the knowledge or consent of people in them, seems to violate many basic rights of citizens and poses a serious threat to personal privacy, according to Jennifer Stoddart.

Pictures available on the Street View application -- which so far only shows images of U.S. cities -- showcase the embarrassing to the mundane. From a man waiting for the bus to a person coming out of a pornography shop, all of the images can be quickly and easily accessed just by going online. Numerous Web sites have already popped up to allow users to post funny or embarrassing photographs of people and places spotted using the Street View application.

Although the program only focuses on the United States at this point, Google is eager to expand the service. "We're focused on making this service available in as many cities as possible," Google spokeswoman Wendy Rozeluk wrote an in e-mail. "We will be adding Street View imagery for new cities on an ongoing basis."

The program's potential risks have prompted the privacy commissioner to send letters this week to Google -- and the Canadian company that has been providing some of the photographs -- outlining her concerns and seeking an explanation over whether sufficient precautions and safeguards are in place to protect privacy.

"The problem is it's a slippery slope when it comes to privacy rights," said Colin McKay, spokesman for the federal privacy commissioner's office. "You can read house numbers and see street signs. You can clearly see facial characteristics."

Unlike other mapping programs, which use grainy satellite images, the new street-view program allows users to view crisp photographs of pedestrians, homes, businesses and traffic taken from the street level. Many of the photographs are believed to have been taken using high-resolution video cameras mounted on cars as they drive through cities.

Google said it places a high priority on privacy and is not doing anything wrong.

"This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street. Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world," Ms. Rozeluk said.

But the privacy commissioner is concerned that if the service is expanded into Canada, it could violate federal privacy laws designed to protect citizens from having their personal information easily accessible.

The street-view application "does not appear to meet the basic requirements of knowledge, consent, and limited collection and use" of personal information that is set out in Canada's privacy laws, the commissioner wrote in her letter to Google's chief legal officer David Drummond.

The commissioner is also taking aim at Calgary-based Immersive Media Corp., a digital video imaging company that is responsible for taking many of the photographs that appear on the Google street-view application.

Despite the fact the Google application isn't available in Canadian cities yet, the commissioner's office is particularly concerned with the fact Immersive Media's Web site boasts that it has already collected digital images of Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City.

The company also appears to have already made the images from those cities commercially available on their Web site, which raises concerns about the inability of individuals to maintain their privacy.

"Many of the images are of sufficient resolution and close enough to allow individuals to be identified, to discern what activities they are engaged in and to situate their geographic whereabouts," Ms. Stoddart wrote in a letter to Immersive Media CEO Myles McGovern.

Google has agreed to remove some photographs of people upon request of an individual, but the commissioner said that is only a "partial solution" and doesn't address the fact some people may not even be aware their images are publicly available.
 
But the program, which relies on pictures taken without the knowledge or consent of people in them, seems to violate many basic rights of citizens and poses a serious threat to personal privacy, according to Jennifer Stoddart.
Oh come on. If you're on public property you have the right to take photos of anything and anyone you want. Consent isn't required. Otherwise sites like this would have been in trouble a long time ago. It's not a personal privacy issue at all.
 
ya exactly, I think this quote sums it up precisely: "This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street. Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world," Ms. Rozeluk said.

The determining factor is that the photos are of public space, and are passively taken, that is no special attention is paid to the particular activities of any citizen.

I am a big proponent of legitimate privacy rights, especially when it comes to governments or corporations tracking activities of citizens. This clearly is a very different case.

Hope to see some Canadian content being available soon!
 
"Oh come on. If you're on public property you have the right to take photos of anything and anyone you want. Consent isn't required. Otherwise sites like this would have been in trouble a long time ago. It's not a personal privacy issue at all."

Ok, so zoom forward 10 years to a point in time when these photos are updated every 24 hours (why not? with installed cameras like in Britian) by Google or freedom of information access to security cameras. This is then linked up to facial recognition software that is also developing rapidly.

Then publish the faces and names of people coming out of the local Proctologist Office, strip club, bar, sugar baby's condo, etc.

I think this needs to be controlled, perhaps faces should be scrambled by software.
 
Man is Detroit ever depressing...

dont look that bad

plus if you scramble faces it all good or make it so that government and police cant use the images to charge people and it all good like a disclaimer that if you part of any organization like that or something you cant use them against anyone

edit-take it back detroit pretty messed up some part look war torn
 
streetview now has coverage in a bunch of cities in the UK and a few in the Netherlands... coverage in other parts of western Europe has been beefed up.

europe map (for some reason on mine the link goes to turkey, but the coverage is in western europe)

click and drag on the man above the zoom bar to see what cities have coverage.

or just get started in London

once you are in streetview there are a bunch of options for making the window large or smaller, or closing it and going back to a full map view


here's a quick sample collage I made...

UK_Streetview.jpg





edit: also, if you haven't seen the US coverage lately, it's amazing how much is now covered

see wikipedia for the list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View

still not in Canada yet... an ad went out recently for driving around quebec city.

streetview_border.jpg



But Canpages.ca has Streetview-like coverage for Vancouver (actually they call it Street View too)
 
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I've seen the Google camera cars driving around a fair bit in the past few months. If they were filming, I'm quite sure they captured me on Bayview at Lawrence on my way home a few weeks ago.
 

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