German court calls Google aerial imagery 'spying'(www.courthousenews.com)
37 pointsby rdmuser5 hours ago7 comments
  • retrac5 hours ago
    Unless I'm mistaken about 20 years ago Germany was the first country that required that Google blur people's faces and licence plates on Gmap's Street View. There was initially much opprobrium about this limitation on free expression. And many technical objections to the scale of the task of identifying all the people and blurring were raised. These technical issues were overcome. It would seem we now accept the anonymity blurring as both not only necessary but an obviously good idea.

    Edit: It was 2009.

    https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/nearly-3-percent-of-ger...

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-11595495

    • vayun4 hours ago
      You're mistaken as the links you provided indicate. They are about blurring peoples houses on Street View as they are seen from public streets. Completely unnecessary and inconsistent with general rule of Panoramafreiheit.
      • card_zero3 hours ago
        Panoramafreiheit, freedom of panorama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama

        "in Germany the permission applies only if the image was taken from public ground, and without any further utilities such as ladders, lifting platforms, airplanes etc.". So the law grants different permissions depending how tall you are.

        Mind you, this is copyright law. Might privacy be a separate matter?

        • pfannkuchen2 hours ago
          Could one argue that the top of a car is a ladder?
    • jonas212 hours ago
      Google started blurring faces in Street View in 2008, and they had been working on it since 2007.

      https://maps.googleblog.com/2008/05/street-view-revisits-man...

    • 4 hours ago
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  • AlotOfReading4 hours ago
    I don't have any evidence, but I suspect the number of criminals that rely on aerial imagery to plan heists is negligible. On the other hand, I think most people would deeply regret if universities couldn't monitor foliage for land use/climate studies, archaeologists had to traipse through their land digging holes to do surveys, and local governments couldn't provide a whole range of basic services that depend on commercial imagery services.

    This is an awful ruling.

    • Vaushite3 hours ago
      That's probably why they're doing it. Germany is full of coal mines that people protest - imagine if you couldn't know the latest demolished small village.

      Germany's also currently ruled by paranoid control freaks, we know this because they already suspended the freedom of information act, also because it "enables spying".

    • super2562 hours ago
      You can still do aerial photography for universities while accepting that some people might want their non-public property to be blurred. It's not mutually exclusive.
      • AlotOfReadingan hour ago
        Academics and governments are buying imagery from the same sources Google is. I've actually just straight up used Google maps for high latitude archaeology when a grant for imagery fell through.
      • nradovan hour ago
        All property is public.
    • benjiro293 hours ago
      Love using Google maps with street/areal view to pre-inspect homes that are for sales, before even seeing them in person. Especially how Immo here take very liberal ways to advertise the properties and the way pictures are taken.

      O, those strategic taken pictures that hide the fact there is a large factor next door. Saves me a long drive. O, there is actually a main road / highway next to the property. Shit, a graveyard at not even 20m from the garden. Wait, is that a pig farm next door?!

      Even caught a immo that was selling a "single detached haus". But inspected the areal pictures shows its bigger vs the pictures. Its was actually a double house (attached walls) in a inheritance dispute, where they have not even divided the land.

      Immo: Come see, come see ... Told the immo to update his false advertisement, he kept refusing and very arrogantly mailing that he did nothing wrong. To this day, its still advertised as a single detached haus.

      Hate how many immo are pieces of ** that deliberately take pictures from angles to hide issues, and wast peoples time (and money)! You can discover a LOT of issues when you get good at geolocating + google streetview/arial/3d view.

      I hope they do not remove or ban it again in Germany, because its so extreme helpful tool vs the lying ** immo.

      • phyzome2 hours ago
        What does "immo" mean?
        • card_zero2 hours ago
          Real estate in German is Immobilie (immobile property), so it will be Immobilien[something]. Um, Immobilienverkäufer for real estate seller? Yes, I think that works.
        • 2 hours ago
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  • freefaleran hour ago
    I am more worried on using my Gemini (and other LLM chat providers) sessions to build my profile and sell it to data brokers.

    And I'm much more worried if the government forces these providers to share my data so they can enforce automatically and cheaply the next "save the children" law, which is mostly "no tax sheep left unharvested" law.

    (after a short research your LLM usage is currently used to build your profile)

  • kingforaday3 hours ago
    Hmm interesting. Are they saying the general accessibility of the platform is what shouldn't be allowed or the photograph itself?

    > The judges also determined Google must provide property owners with advance notice when an area is photographed.

    But Google's satellite imagery is from a blend of providers like Vantor WorldView, GeoEye, Landsat, etc so....

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  • firesteelrain2 hours ago
    Why Google? There are many mapping services
    • cowlevel2 hours ago
      Likely because Google is the one that someone sued
  • userbinatoran hour ago
    The US definitely has much more detailed aerial photographs already. Good luck suing the US government.

    I wonder if we're going to get a Streisand Effect this time. Maybe we'll end up with the amusing situation of Google blocking only Germans from seeing their own country, while everyone else still can.