Greece halts Google Street View
Beware Google bearing gifts.
Greece has decided to stop the lovely, sensitive Google Street View drivers from taking any more pictures while it considers whether those young Turks are taking too many liberties.
It has asked the somewhat large search company to provide information regarding the length of time Google intends to keep the images.
"I had one of those Street View cars outside my house last night. Trojan horses, if you ask me."
(Credit: CC Tilemahos Efthimiadis/Flickr)It has also asked about how Google informs those who might be leaving the homes of illicit lovers, emerging from pornographic establishments, or vomiting on the sidewalk (English tourists) and are suddenly caught by the righteous retina of the Google eye.
It appears that Greece has taken similar measures against a rival surveillance service operated by the Greek ISP Kapou.
As Plato himself put it: "Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous." Oh, but virtue is so difficult, is it not?
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Second, comparing a privacy agency asking for more information on the use of data and data collection practices for a service (as it is supposed to do by law) with a complete state-wide ban of a website for over 2 years because of a few videos is quite ridiculous. And use of a (not exactly life-critical) service like Google StreetView is a liberty?
"Irony" and "sarcasm" have to support a valid point you know...
-Plato
When going to someone's house or some place for the first time, it allows me to verify the building or home that I'm headed to; this way, when I get to my destination I'll have already seen it before I get there. This is especially important when driving at night.
Those folks without it have no idea how much they're missing out.
Satellites have this amazing ability to move very easily and capture a completely different angle of millions of targets.
It's not like Google to not try this and pass it through some object recognition and pattern stitching.
This is the reason privacyinternational.org rates Greece as the only country with "adequate safeguards against abuse" of personal information.
For all the Greek government's flaws (and I am not talking about only our current one), the Greek constitution trully preserves our rights to privacy of its citizens and thankfully no amendmends have been made so far so as to "increase our security" at the cost of our freedom.
GPS is good enough if a friend has trouble finding where I live, I don't want everyone in the world to know what my back yard looks like.
- by grandstreets July 13, 2009 7:36 PM PDT
- Grandstreets has a different kind of street view, where entire streets are assembled into a single panorama for easy browsing. Try it at:
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