Save Our Souls!
Here’s something cool. It is a Google service called “Street View” which - as the name suggests - allows you to look at the view you’d get were you standing on the street, in a number of major American cities.
Here is the street view of my old High School in Minnesota. A top place. The Alma Mater of Al Franken, as it happens.
The good news it that this service is coming to the United Kingdom soon. The cars are already on the street, and the cities are being photographed.
Unfortunately a pressure group called “Privacy International“ is opposed to putting photographs of public scenes - ones that you could have viewed yourself by standing in the street in question at the time the photograph was taken - on the internet. They have complained to the Information Commissioner, and are trying to get the service blocked.
Simon Davis, the spokesman for the group told the BBC:
“We believe that a person’s soul resides in his image. If you take a photograph of a person, you have stolen their soul. They will never enter paradise, and will spend all eternity howling their hearts out, in the blackness of the void”
He added
“It ain’t natural. I’ve never held with this newfangled photograph thing. It is Satanic, I tell you. Satanic! What’s the Internet?”
Actually, he didn’t say that at all. What he did say was this:
In our view they need a person’s consent if they make use of a person’s face for commercial ends
In what sense it putting a picture, along with thousands of other pictures of people who may or may not be identifiable, who might be walking past at a particular time, “making use of a person’s face for commercial ends”? The presence of people in these photographs is incidental.
For that matter, how is this different from, you know, walking down the street and looking at people while you trundle around?
Most people would regard being in somebody else’s photograph as a trivial matter.
I very much hope that Privacy International fails. There’s quite enough facile regulation of ordinary life. Only lawyers and professional photograph retouchers would benefit from having a quango like the Information Commissioner requiring companies to scour every photograph they take for the faces of passers-by, in order to remove them.
Comments
| 4 July 2008, 5:08 pm |
Simon Davis, the spokesman for the group
No relation to Davis Davis?
| 4 July 2008, 5:14 pm |
Weeeeell - what if the surveillance cam outside you local was online?
| 4 July 2008, 5:19 pm |
There’s nothing practical to be done about people taking your picture in public areas and sticking it on the internet. Sorry. Possibly it’s people who give their homes pretentious names and don’t want anyone to know ‘gasometer view’ would be more approp.
| 4 July 2008, 5:22 pm |
I don’t like having my photo taken, and if someone is taking a picture as I’m passing I do my best to obscure my face. I don’t know why. All the same, it’s not a bid deal, really, is it?
| 4 July 2008, 5:24 pm |
“No relation to Davis Davis?”
Mwa ha ha.
| 4 July 2008, 5:27 pm |
Personally I would be honoured if my humble image, was to be, for a time part of the google beast.
| 4 July 2008, 5:39 pm |
Are they going after Flickr as well?
Don’t give them ideas.
Already there have been many cases of Plod and wannabe-Plods are confiscating cameras and films illegally.
| 4 July 2008, 5:42 pm |
Well yes, that’s one of the secrets of being a good pressure group - you fight for all the issues, even if it seems ridiculous to outsiders. I’d rather have that than a pressure group that is selective about its causes, limiting itself to things which will get it good media coverage. The ACLU is similar, surely.
| 4 July 2008, 6:41 pm |
It has a pic of a street corner in Auray, France, that i have been to many a time, this is so cool!
| 4 July 2008, 6:55 pm |
Given that picture postcards have always shown images of tourists on the beach, the golf course, and the promenade, I don’t see any way this case can succeed. nor should it.
We are only private citizens until we set foot in the public domain.
| 4 July 2008, 6:56 pm |
One publisher of photos on the net is “Redwatch”. You know they dont do that out of curiousity
| 4 July 2008, 7:02 pm |
Sounds like Privacy International is an organisation for people who are likely to be photographed coming out of a whorehouse.
| 4 July 2008, 7:17 pm |
Why did Privacy International choose to talk to the BBC about their campaign? The BBC takes and uses pictures of people on the street, in offices and shops every day. These are subsequently used for commercial ends.
I trust that should an interview with Mr Davis take place on television, it will be in a darkened room using an actor’s voice.
| 4 July 2008, 8:09 pm |
Those Taffies are always causing problems, if you ask me.
| 4 July 2008, 8:14 pm |
Sounds like Privacy International is an organisation for people who are likely to be photographed coming out of a whorehouse.
I suppose if they had a satisfied look on their face it could be used in advertising “Satisfaction Guaranteed”. I once saw an old fella being wheeled out of one of the Soho strip clubs with an oxygen mask over his face. You can’t buy that sort of positive publicity.
| 4 July 2008, 8:41 pm |
Yeah redwatch, taking pictures in public places can of course be hostile - course I’d still be more worried about them giving out my name address & where I work tbh.
| 4 July 2008, 9:00 pm |
that is what they attempt to do, Jon D
It’s a nasty bunch of thugs trying to intimidate people
| 4 July 2008, 10:16 pm |
This is an area I have some experience of and Privacy International is talking out of its hat. You don’t need consent to photograph people in public places in the UK. There is no expectation of privacy in public places.
There will be exceptions like parks like the Royal Parks, which are not public places and using telephoto lenses might be argued to be an invasion of privacy, but anyone can take photos in public places in the UK and of anyone who is in a public place. Police and Community Support Officers are often unaware of this and may need to be reminded of the law as it stands.
Read the legal position in detail here: http://www.sirimo.co.uk/media/UKPhotographersRights.pdf
| 4 July 2008, 10:33 pm |
Nigel Dungeoness-Smythe: “Hello, I’m uh we’re Privacy International, and we’ve got a stupid opinion that we’d like to publicise”
BBC: “Why certainly, have a news story on our lovely website”
Deary me.
| 4 July 2008, 11:05 pm |
Bugger “Privacy International” and its pathetic attempt to make a major issue out of a minor matter - what’s all this about “my old High School in Minnesota”? Details of your adolescent adventures among the Yanks would be a lot more interesting than yet another hyped-up story about yet another bunch of childish idiots claiming that their “human rights” are being violated, and there’s still 57 minutes left of the day on which such reminiscences would be apt.
Oh, and how about a tribute to Boris Johnson’s father-in-law?
| 5 July 2008, 5:36 am |
David T typically only scratches the surface of this issue, and would clearly love to dub Privacy International and privacy campaigners as freaks and wierdos, his standard technique.
Taking a narrow view this particular issue regarding Street View can seem absurd; however, I suspect there are deeper issues of privacy that this only touches upon and which are of genuine concern as technology develops. You can bet folding money they won’t be discussed at HP though. In the wider battle, privacy is central to the protection of liberty.
| 5 July 2008, 8:22 am |
Weeeeell - what if the surveillance cam outside you local was online?
I think this would be hilarious. I already love “violent britain” programmes that seem to be constantly on in the further reaches of the freeview cornucopia - voyeurism is fun, and drunk people are funny.
Plus - and I think this was already suggested on the surprisingly enjoyable ‘Genius’ show on Radio 4 - OAPs would watch the CCTV channel constantly and detect untold crimes that might have otherwise gone unpunished. You could even superimpose a “virtual net curtain” to the image to make it more enjoyable for them.
| 5 July 2008, 8:49 am |
Actually outstanding political sci-fi author Ken Macleod, in his ‘Fall Revolution’ series, raises the possibility of a world where everything is on camera: in one of his books, nanotechnology progresses to the point where dust-sized cameras can be spread everywhere, including in conflict zones, meaning that literally nothing can be covered up and there are no secrets. Of course this is wild speculation but we ARE going to increasingly see minaturisation of cameras putting more power in the hands of individuals, case in point being the Zimbabwean prison officer featured on Newsnight last night and in the Guardian this morning. It would be possible to argue that the Zanu PF thugs being filmed there were “photographed for commercial gain” i.e. to sell newspapers.
| 5 July 2008, 9:39 am |
Ken Macleod isn’t an “outstanding political sci-fi author” - or even SF author - he’s a Stalinist moron and conspiracy theorist whose books are almost as silly and unreadable as his blog. As for “the possibility of a world where everything is on camera”, that was raised and explored by Philip K. Dick during the 1960s, in novels and stories that show up Macleod and his kind for the derivative pseuds they are.
| 5 July 2008, 10:08 am |
To Literate SF Fan and Ken Macleod Fan -
Hadn’t George Orwell already gone over all that ground in his 1984?
| 5 July 2008, 10:12 am |
Writing someone off as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, then to posit Philip K Dick as the sensible alternative is the funniest thing I have seen all week. For that, Literate SF Fan, I thank you!
| 5 July 2008, 3:05 pm |
I find it pretty astonishing that nobody on this blog feels that this is a serious issue. The entire notion of privacy is being transformed - arguably, dissolved - which strikes me as a fairly radical development in human society. What strikes me is that mostly we’re the ones that are enacting this transformation, but within a framework provided to us by government agencies and private corporations.
Try some thought experiments. What if one of Google’s vans was filming on your street all the time? What if the vans cruising your street taking pictures belonged to the police? Do either of those scenarios change the way you feel about a product like Google Street View, and why / why not? I am interested to know whether there really are no privacy concerns involved here…
| 5 July 2008, 4:55 pm |
Well I don’t equate Google with the police, but do you object to anyone having their photo taken in a public place without their express permission? If so you need to get the law changed because it is not illegal at present. Mind you it would mean no shots of public events which included people as getting permission from everyone in the photo would be nigh on impossible.
| 5 July 2008, 6:33 pm |
This issue is deeper and more subtle than most here, including DavidT seem to be treating it.
The UK seems to have accepted near-blanket government surveillence of its citizenry. To anybody who cares about liberty, this should be a matter of extreme concern - and that the UK populace have so readily acquiesced is telling. A few, like DavidT, make arguments that the police/authorities are simply too incompetent for this to be the kind of threat to liberty that I hold it to be. While I disagree, this is at least not the mere acquisence that most of the UKs sheeple have practiced in this regard.
Thus it is evident that the UK population has accepted detailed surveillence of their lives, with technological maturity and competence being the only significant impediments to the compilation of files on each of you that would make the Stasi’s capability seem like the work of an octagenarian curtain twitcher by comparison.
It thus seems bizarre for anyone whose politics falls short of a Tankie to oppose the publication of images that are but a pale immitation of what is already comprehensively compiled by the authorities - to accept one without the other is for practical purposes to declare support for a police state.
The third position would start from the standpoint of intolerance of state surveillence outside due process. Here, technology poses a quandry for the civil libertarian. Surely, it is the right of the citizen to film anything and everything that he can legally see with his own eyes ? And surely it is then his right to publish at least such images that are of public places (perhaps limited in rare cases by IP ownership considerations). Given that, it is surely the right of any private agent, with the permission of the publisher, to compile a comprehensive database of such publications - and for a user of such a database to search it in any way that technology may permit - which will undoubtedly include sophisticated face recognition sooner or later (indeed, moderately capable recognition technology already exists and is in widespread use - for example in Las Vegas casinos as we speak). And, given a citizen’s ability to perform such searches at whim, surely the organs of the state should be permitted to do the same ?
So, the civil libertarian is left to consider what kind of judicial supervision should be required for police search of such databases (whether public or private), and the acceptable level of state regulation of the storage as a database (but not mere publication) of such images. This surely should be the score of such serious discussion for those who wish to live in a free country.
| 6 July 2008, 6:40 am |
“to posit Philip K Dick as the sensible alternative”: Who said anything about Dick being more “sensible”? Clearly you have problems with basic reading comprehension. No surprise there, given that you believe that Wanker Macleod’s crappy books are “outstanding”, and that the genre he writes in is called “sci-fi”.
| 6 July 2008, 10:41 am |
Walking down the street in a public place in the UK, I can be filmed by anyone, quite legally and yes that information can indeed be collated and stored somewhere. And at some stage (I assume the technology will have to improve from now) it may be possible to monitor when and where I was at a certain time, using facial recognition techniques. Not so easy of course if I wore a mask or wearing dark glasses and or a large hat and headscarf.
You can argue that monitoring my movements in this way is in infringement of my liberty but if I was planning an activity which might bring me to the attention of the police, then I would conceal my identity using a masque or hat or both.
CCTV cameras are not yet, so far as I am aware, all linked together across the country. The best that can be achieved is to look at the cameras in a locality after a crime has been committed to see if the aggressor can be identified. Then to look up what computer information is held about them once identified.
And while the CCTV cameras might be able to monitor what I was doing physically on the street, this does not give them access to details of my bank account or medical records.
I am concerned about the increase in the personal data the police and the government want to store about innocent citizens. This is because I am distrustful of their ability to adequately manage and protect my personal information from access by illegal or unauthorised means (plus of course government departments are exempt from the Data Protection Act).
I don’t want my medical records, or bank details or family information freely swapped around government departments, sent and lost in the post, or put onto a police database without my knowledge. I am also concerned about the way in which anti- terrorist legislation is now being used by low ranking government officials to monitor non terrorist activities.
I think we need to address controlling what authorities do with our personal data in state databases before we move on to worrying about being filmed by google in the street.
| 6 July 2008, 4:12 pm |
“Not so easy of course if I wore a mask or wearing dark glasses and or a large hat and headscarf.”
Existing recognition technology can cope with such minor disguise, and has been able to do so for some years. “Bringing Down The House” has some enlightening info on what was in use in Las Vegas several years ago. The only real limitation of reliable recognition today is that it requires shots from multiple angles both for the reference and for the target in order to make a fast accurate match.
“I think we need to address controlling what authorities do with our personal data in state databases before we move on to worrying about being filmed by google in the street.”
It’s not so easy to separate the 2; indeed, it seems likely that some oragn of the state will archive everything that Google publishes in this regard.
| 7 July 2008, 7:54 am |
Mrs Ben: actually, I do object to having my photo taken in a public place without my express permission. I think the law does need to be changed - not to reflect my personal preference, which I realise is not the mainstream, but to reflect changes in technology. The laws that we have are a product of the industrial age, not the information age, and aren’t adequate to deal with the situation that we find ourselves in.
DaveW: I don’t think it’s fair to call people “sheeple” in this context; it’s such a radically new situation that it’s not surprising that most people don’t fully understand the implications. Given the situation that we are now in - where surveillance by both state and private actors is accepted by most people on the basis that it either a) protects us in some undefined and unproven way or b) provides us with entertainment - the question is how to bring home the implications more effectively (more effectively than Privacy International, anyway…)
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