Google finds no privacy on private roads
A barking watchdog wasn't enough to dissuade a Google Maps Street View driver from driving down a private road to photograph it.
(Credit: Google Maps)Google's Street View service apparently thinks your "no trespassing" and "private road" signs are just for decoration.
The service, which gives Web users a driver's perspective of hundreds of cities around the world, has raised the ire of residents who say the images are an invasion of their privacy. Now residents in California's Humboldt County are complaining that the drivers who are hired to collect the images are disregarding private property signs and driving up private roads.
In an episode reported recently by the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, a Street View driver cruised past two "no trespassing" signs to collect images of a residence that is 1,200 feet from the public road.
"It isn't just a privacy issue; it is a trespassing issue, with their own photos as evidence," resident Betty Webb told the newspaper. "They really went off the track to get to our address."
Webb's experience apparently is not an isolated incident: the newspaper used digital maps provided by the county of Sonoma and found Google had photographed along more than 100 private roads.
Google told the newspaper that, while it has the right to photograph from private roads, it tries to avoid it.
"Our policy is to not drive on private land," spokesman Larry Yu said, adding that the company hires local drivers who are given specific routes to follow. Yu retracted that statement when the newspaper told him of a driver who said he was simply told to just drive around the county and collect images.
Google's claims to be legally allowed to photograph on private roads stems from its assertion that privacy no longer exists in this age of satellite and aerial imagery.
"Today's satellite-image technology means that...complete privacy does not exist," Google said in its response to a complaint filed in April by a Pittsburgh couple that sued Google when photographs of their home appeared on the site.
Indeed, Google appears adamant that its right to photograph streets trumps individuals' right to privacy. Internet pioneer and Google evangelist Vint Cerf told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in May that "nothing you do ever goes away and nothing you do ever escapes notice." Then, in what the newspaper described as an "intentionally flippant moment," Cerf added, "There isn't any privacy, get over it."
Cerf may have been channeling former Sun Microsystems' CEO Scott McNealy, who said, "You have no privacy. Get over it" in 1999. Either way, Cerf explained himself on Google Blogoscoped: "It was intended to be partly in jest and partly irony...I was trying to suggest that we really have entered a period when things are a lot less private. Think of the ease with which photos and videos can be taken, digitized, shipped around on the Internet, posted on YouTube or its equivalent."
This is not the first time Google has been caught on private streets. In January, a private Minnesota community near St. Paul, unhappy that images of its streets and homes appeared on the site, demanded Google remove the images, which the company did.
Not long after the feature launched in May 2007, privacy advocates criticized Google for displaying photographs that included people's faces and car license plates. In May, the company announced that it had begun testing face-blurring technology for the service.
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven. 
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html
#6: You can make money without doing evil.
Now rationalize that with their own comments:
"nothing you do ever goes away and nothing you do ever escapes notice."
"There isn't any privacy, get over it."
"complete privacy does not exist"
Really casts a new light on Google's intentions, doesn't it?
Governments cannot hold most of your information private, except in certain conditions. If you're going to complain about the random possibility of your face showing up on Google's Street View, have you spent the time to scan all newspapers, websites and magazines to see if your photo has been used without your permission? A lot of people that complain about Google's privacy issues are hypocritical pontificates.
I have no real issue with what they are doing, only that they have set in their very goals of the company not to do evil... and their blatant disregard of personal privacy in their exploits to make money by any means possible- yeah... it's the sort of thing that equates them with Big Oil in my opinion. But you have to give them credit- they are being honest about their goals for domination and qoncquest over individual rights.
One is not hypocritical for addressing a known violation of one's privacy without searching for unknown violations.
Ah, the hypocrisy.
The former is the person willingly giving up some form of privacy, although I bet that gerrrg is not your real name.
The latter is a company breaching privacy without permission.
If you see any hypocrisy or think Google is doing good you are hopeless.
By that same argument, peeping toms are completely and perfectly justified. They are outside your home looking inside. But since they are outside, you have no right to expect privacy. If you don't close the curtains, then that is your fault.
Actually, when you think about it, there is nothing wrong with stepping right up to someone at the ATM and watching them enter their PIN, perhaps even with a vdieo camera. When they object, you can use the same argument- sorry, you're outside, you have no right to expect privacy. Doesn't matter that you are on private property. Go right ahead with that argument when the police arrive.
Part of the problem is that Google is profiting from this. They are selling advertisements while displaying the content that they obtained by trespassing on private property. Now if they want to come up to my house and take pictures, I would expect them to pay for that right. I'm willing to negotiate. Go right ahead, Google. My rates are reasonable.
They regularly walk up to a "suspects" house knock on the door, then point the camera at the house and say "Do you have any comments concerning the allegations." At which time they usually show somebody slamming the door. Or when someone gets hauled into court they take photos of that person in the courtroom or walking away from the court etc... This has all been done before. Even during the weather segments on US TV. They show various scenes around the two or city concerning the weather often times containing people's faces and so on... These "Privacy" nutcases need to grow up and get over it.
For the media to use a recognizable picture of a person, they are supposed to get a signed release from that person. I don't know whether the same is true of private property, but it should be.
I'm sure the new facebook generation thinks nothing of granting the world complete access to their lives, but I like privacy. What my family and I do is not your business unless I make it so.
http://www.ci.(your city name).(your two-letter state code).us/ "
Goto your city/town assesor's website... Look for the database. Enter your house address and in most cases your city will have a picture of your house/property. The title of the land listed and other personal info about how much your property is worth and possibly how much you paid... Get over the personal information or "Privacy" non-sense. It doesn't exist anymore....
Every town and county everywhere that I know of in the United States has trespassing laws. You are not allowed on my property unless I say you are, unless you are an agent of the town or county which has duties in assessing the value of the land/enforcing the law/etc. That does not apply to private companies or individuals.
Whatever Google can see from public roads is fair game. But private roads are quite literally (and legally) off limits to them. I can't see what possible argument they could make on this that will actually hold up in court. Why else would they be removing these images if they feel like they don't have to? They're seeing how far they can push it, but they know they don't have a legal leg to stand on.
I am saying if it doesn't exist anymore, then it is time for every citizen to speak up and make sure laws are changed in favour of citizens not corporations.
Google should comply with this standard, they can pictures all they want whenever they want but if they want to publish them, then they should have written permission from the owners of buildings or persons appearing in the photo.
Releases help prevent problems. Problems are expensive. They are not however the law.
Thanks
I'm sure that some roads built for private purposes to no public standard are private property as we normally think of it. Those won't be named via the local mapping office.
Public Road = Green Sign
Privately maintained road (but still publicly accessable) = Blue Sign
Private Road = Make your own sign that doesn't look like a green or blue one.
A lot of the folks with blue signed roads will call the road dept. and say "why won't you come fix our road?" Then they want to make their road a Green signed one but the shortcuts the developer took often get in the way. After all if the deveoper was willing to do it right, it would have been public to begin with.
That is nothing new. That is as old as the private eyes. Google is just making it available publicly. But they are doing nothing wrong or immoral.
Furthermore, by law, it is not trespassing if you are going to the front door even if there is a "no trespassing" or "private property" sign. Also, "no soliciting" means no selling. But if you are not selling anything, you have a right to be there.
We need to clear up this confusion because ignorance is far too common in this country.
You're right. There is a lot of ignorance on this subject.
- by Gromit801 August 25, 2008 10:15 AM PDT
- So, by Google's own reasoning, any of us can walk into their corporate headquarters, take all the photo's we want, in any office we want, and Google has no legal recourse.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (44 Comments)So Google, get over it, there is no privacy.