
Google threatens to pull Street View from Switzerland - ssclafani
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/05/11/will.appeal.to.swiss.high.court.to.overturn.ruling/
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lpolovets
The word "threaten" in the headline is misleading. If someone said "you can't
do X unless you pay me 100 billion dollars", then replying with, "well, I
guess I won't do X" is not a threat -- it's just a matter-of-fact declaration.

The Swiss government is asking Google for an unreasonable amount of work in
order for Street View to be allowed in Switzerland, and Google is saying they
won't be able to comply because the request is, after all, unreasonable.
That's all there is to it.

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ugh
The court is, by the way, aware of that. They write in their opinion
(<http://links.weblaw.ch/BVGer-A-7040/2009>, German) that Google’s ability to
offer Street View in Switzerland is in this case immaterial to their decision.
The right to publicity is more important.

They specifically say that Google is, for example, free to charge users of
Street View for access if they are unable to offer the service for free. The
amount of work is only unreasonable in the framework of Google’s business
model.

(I personally think that the algorithmic review is good enough, at least in
this case, but I also think that this view probably doesn’t square with the
law in Switzerland as it currently stands. Lobbyists, no lawyers, are needed.)

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VengefulCynic
The article seems to imply that the Swiss authorities want Google to use a
manual blurring technique instead of automating the process (rather than in
addition to). If that's the case, I'd be hard-pressed to explain how the Swiss
privacy watchdog would think that human-operated blurring would lead to a
better than 99% success rate.

~~~
bluedanieru
You don't have to explain it, because they don't.

~~~
bluedanieru
I don't get the downvotes, but whatever. Is it really hard to believe that the
watchdog group in question really hasn't considered that there is a difference
between "blurring 100% of faces" and "blurring is performed manually?" It's
likely they think that, if you force Google to perform manual blurring, then
every face they photograph will be blurred. It's even more likely we've
already thought about this issue far more than they have.

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c1sc0
Privacy has traditionally been taken very seriously in Switzerland due to the
Swiss' love of financial privacy. As far as I know it's one of the few
countries where the right to privacy is defined in the _constitution_.

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guelo
More interesting to me was the info about Google using Street View cars to
collect wifi access point data. Makes total sense but I did not know they did
this.

~~~
cstuder
Did you really miss all the discussions and hearings last year about them
accidently recording some WLAN traffic as well?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View#Privacy_issu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View#Privacy_issues)
[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-
collection-...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-
update.html)

~~~
guelo
I really did. Looks like it was much more of a European concern which would
explain why I didn't hear about it.

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ars
Why do they want them to blur license plate number? What's the big deal about
those?

~~~
mkuhn
In Switzerland it is simple to search which license plate number is registered
to whom [1].

Which makes license plates as bad as faces when it comes to personally
identifiable information.

[1]
[http://www.stva.zh.ch/internet/sicherheitsdirektion/stva/de/...](http://www.stva.zh.ch/internet/sicherheitsdirektion/stva/de/StVAfz/FZindex/FZeindex.html)

~~~
ugh
I didn’t even know that. I think that independent of that, license plates
would be personal information even without a central database. There is no
central database of faces yet they are still clearly personal information.
License plates are similarly associated with one person (or, unlike faces, a
few people).

