UK 'Mob' and Google Streetview

By: Dan Keegan

Date: Thursday, 09. April 2009

Residents of the Buckinghamshire village of Broughton, not far from London caused a bit of a stir recently when they formed a human chain to block a Google Streetview camera car from going around their neighborhood.

According to an account on the TimesOnline web site, the villagers reaction was amazingly prompt and visceral.

"I was upstairs when I spotted the camera car driving down the lane," local resident Paul Jacobs told TimesOnline. " My immediate reaction was anger; how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent? I ran outside to flag the car down and told the driver he was not only invading our privacy but also facilitating crime."

Jacobs then ran round the village knocking on doors to rouse fellow residents. Police were called. While waiting for the police, villagers waited in the road, formed a human chain, and blocked progress of the Google Streetview camera car.

Eventually the Google car left, its operator protesting that what they were doing was perfectly legal. Paul Jacobs didn't see it that way.

"This is an affluent area." Jacobs told the media. "We've already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike. I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police."

This same argument is being used to impose limitations on Google Earth and its satellite-based photographic images. The modern day virtual traveler can roam the earth, zooming on in roadways, towns, backyards, parking lots, to get a sense of what a locality looks like, but there are objections, mostly based on security.

It's happened before

The reaction to this new-found level of public access has its parallel in the early days of the motor car, when rural land-owners worried that hordes of motorists would pour out of the cities for weekend trips and summer holidays and spoil their idyllic lifestyles.

They worried about criminal attacking their isolated homes and that uncultivated city-dwellers would wreak havoc on woodlands, farms and scenic areas that had previously been virtually inaccessible to the masses.

In some measure, they were right. During the 20th century the automobile spawned resort areas far from cities, exploded cities with suburban sprawl, and gobbled up huge areas of landscape with highways, including a network of "expressways" and interstate highways that made the private automobile the dominant mode of transport in North America by the 1960s.

Back then, the private automobile was "the great democratizer". It eroded the privileges of the wealthy. Today's information technologies are doing the same. The high walls and gateways that protected the estates of the wealthy from prying eyes have now given way to satellite images. Anyone can now check out Washington's White house gardens, or the courtyard at the center of the Pentagon, browse Buckingham Palace Gardens in London, or even examine the roof tops of the Kremlin.

Even the notoriously secretive Area 51 in the Nevada desert is clearly visible with sharp satellite images. You can check out airport runways and buildings, rove the property, and even pick out a spot in the middle of the dry lake where roads seem to disappear underground.

However, Google Earth satellite images are usually several years old. Areas that offer blurry images are typically areas where the satellite photos have not been good or never been added properly in the first place.

Nevertheless, the outcry over privacy, terrorism concerns, and the dangers of criminal use is increasing. The prime minister of India has expressed concerns about satellite images images following the Mumbai attack last year.

India has its own version of Google Earth called Bhuvan, which is a Web-based service developed by India's National Remote Sensing Center. The Bhuvan service will be free and is aimed at helping town planners, scientists and administrators. Resolutions will be clear enough to enable viewers to look at features such as ground water and soil type.

Needless to say, Indian authorities are worried about its potential use by groups with destructive aims. Supporters argue that the benefits far outweigh that risk.

Google's Streetview, takes privacy concerns to a new level. If you are in a Google target area, the cameras could arrive down your street at any time, gathering clear images of houses, shop fronts, cars and people, even looking in windows. Google says it uses technology that blurs sensitive information, such as faces and vehicle license plate numbers. Critics say the technology is not good enough.

Supporters of Streetview, and of openness in information distribution, will argue that public streets, being public, are fair game for the cameras. Some will even argue that "if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear." The great danger is that individuals will give up their privacy because of naivety about its value and the dangers of losing it.

Streetview's dark side

This writer is a big fan of the joys of virtual travel using Google Earth and Google Streetview. However, the antagonists have a very strong point, as some of the examples below from PrivacyInternational.org demonstrate.

These examples are from a letter sent to Mr. Richard Thomas, UK Information Commissioner, by Simon Davies, Director of Privacy International, in March 2009. They are excerpts from individual complaints about Streetview and Privacy:

A man (whose face was partially blurred) was recognized by his partner having a cigarette outside his place of work. This has caused distress and dysfunction in the relationship as the man in question had not disclosed to his partner that he enjoyed the occasional cigarette.

A fifteen year-old boy was caught on Street View carrying a skateboard, which his parents had expressly forbade him from using. The boy subsequently had a row with the parents and is now staying with friends.

A married man was captured speaking at close proximity with a female colleague. Because of nearby noisy road works he was forced to speak into her ear, but the image created the appearance of intimacy. This image created a tense argument between the married couple.

A woman who has for several years been moving house to avoid detection from a former violent partner complained to us that she felt extreme distress when Street View identified her outside her new home.

A man complained to us that when he looked up his own home on Street View every numberplate had been blurred other than that of his own car, which was parked directly outside his home. The complainant is now extremely concerned about security implications.

Two men working for a large organization were identified by work colleagues in a situation which gave the appearance that they were kissing each other. This was not the case, but the image - subsequently widely circulated throughout the organization - has caused great humiliation to them and their (female) partners.

A woman was captured leaning out of her loungeroom window in the company of a man. The woman's husband discovered the image and confronted his wife, demanding an explanation of her apparent "affair". It transpired that the man was a contractor, and the woman was discussing a quote for exterior painting work. The argument was swiftly resolved, but the couple is still extremely distressed about the situation.

Google counters these complaints with promises to improve its face-blurring and license plate-blurring technology and by promptly responding to requests to remove privacy-sensitive information from its web site service.

However, gauging by the increasing number of protests from around the world, the technology has quite a bit to go before privacy problems are resolved and it can gains full acceptance.

Further comments to this article have been disabled.

---

All Comments (5)

Showing 1 - 5 comments

NothingWrongNonsense,

Joseph Lieberman,

ringsfan,

consul,

James,

---