A
picture from Japan, reportedly from Google Street View: Is privacy
well
and truly dead? Google confronts a major revolt to its new service.
Die Tageszeitung, Germany
Germans Rise Up Against Google Street View
All of
Germany is being photographed by Google. ... All of Germany? By no means all: Municipalities
in Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Baden-Württemberg are preparing to
revolt.
Google may soon be fined by
the municipality of Ratingen in North Rhine-Westphalia.
But even if it wants to, the city, with its 91,000 residents, cannot prohibit
Google from photographing streets and homes for its new Street View Internet
service. It can, however, according to Data Protection Commissioner legal expert Peter Wacker, demand
compensation - almost as an act of protest.
For quite some time now,
vehicles with cameras on their roofs have been driving through Germany photographing
each and every street on behalf of the Californian search engine. The service,
already available in 19 countries, is expected to go online here [in Germany]
as early as 2010, making it possible to virtually zoom through streets with a panoramic
perspective.
Even Chancellor Angela Merkel,
during her weekly video message, called attention to the fact that residents
may request the blurring of images of their homes. But she doesn’t want
stricter laws, which were called for by Ilse Aigner, the minister
of consumer protection (CSU).
Legal expert Wacker now says that we should do whatever is within our power: According to the North
Rhine-Westphalian Roadways Law, when anyone wants to earn money by photographing
an entire street, that is called a "special use."
“After all, anyone setting up
a market stall pays a fee to the city,” he tells Die Tageszeitung. He wants to
demand €20 per km, which for North Rhine-Westphalia, adds up to €6,180 for 309 km
of city streets.
The deputy chairman of the Union
coalition [Germany's governing coalition], Johannes Singhammer, had already
expressed to Die Tageszeitung his approval of this type of fee. The municipality of
Molfsee at Kiel had also threatened Google with fees.
For the data collectors, the
pittance sought by Ratingen would be so small a sum as to be nearly virtual. At
the same time, other towns and municipalities are forever asking attorney Wacker
how they could follow Ratingen’s example. But the legal situation is totally
unclear. Google has announced that under
no circumstances does it intend to pay. “They’ll be in dispute with us. If we
win a case, our example would surely set a precedent,” Wacker says.
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According to a legal opinion prepared
for the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Justice by the Center for Applied
Legal Studies in Karlsruhe, restrictions should be imposed on Google.
The opinion
states that anything that can be seen by walking down the street may be
photographed. Otherwise, photographers would be unable to do their jobs. Therefore, permission cannot be required to photograph individuals. . They qualify
as “accessories,” and as long as they aren't sitting on a balcony, they are in a
public space. Google also intends to pixilate faces and license
plates.
However, the legal experts find
fault with the fact that any random individual can connect photos with other
data in an uncontrollable manner. In other words, there is no guarantee that
pixelization would preserve a person’s anonymity.
After all, the opinion reads,
friends and acquaintances might recognize people by their clothing. It further
warns against “stigmatization,” should someone be portrayed in an “especially
damaging position.” For example, a “hit parade” of Street View's funniest images is circulating, with one of a man entering a sex store being especially
popular.
Moreover, the opinion regards
as inadmissible, the taking photographs from a height of 2.9 meters, as Google
cameras do - which is the equivalent of photographing over the top of a hedge
into the garden of a neighbor. Furthermore, Google and its affiliates shouldn't
even be permitted to use unpixelated raw data. It should be noted, however, that
in February, the Cologne Regional Court gave Google permission to take photos.
Since there would otherwise
be no way of getting a handle on this, localities are taking action against
Google in their own ways: Kernen in the Rems Valley in Baden-Württemberg had a
letter to Google published in its municipal newsletter that individuals can cut
out and put up to force Google to blur the image of their homes.
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Other municipalities have
followed suit. This has raised attention to the issue, which in turn has led Southwest Broadcasting
to drive a fake “Google” mobile with a dummy camera around the village. Most
residents were opposed. One elderly lady, however, liked the idea: “My front yard
is so pretty. It’s fine for them to see it,” she said.
