

German vandals target Street View opt-out homes - earnubs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11827862

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phreeza
I didn't think very much of it at the time these requests were made, but now
that I have seen the effect, pixelating these houses seems like an act of
vandalism in itself to me.

Imagine 50 or so years from now, these recordings will be a wonderful document
of our times, but in Germany they are now heavily scarred.

~~~
Luc
How so? The source material is no doubt still available in unpixelated form.

~~~
_stephan
No, the German data protection officials insisted on Google blurring the
original source material and not preserving any unblurred copies.

IMHO, that might be appropriate in certain exceptional circumstances, e.g.
when inadvertently something very private or embarrassing has been captured,
but it is a bit over the top as a general policy.

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eru
The picture displays typical German life.

~~~
SZW
Haha, totally. I don't know - I think it's kind of sad. Rural Bavarian life is
taken for life in Germany in general... it's plain wrong. I should know,
because I live in Germany. I wonder why everyone keeps going back to
restricting Germany to that single cliche.

~~~
riffraff
The southern part of a european country is usually the stereotype of the
larger nation.

When thinking of the UK the stereotype is the english banker more than the
scottish clansmen, for spain is the mediterranean south insted of the
atlantic/mountainous north, for italy it's the more noisy&caoithic
rome/naples/sicily instead of the mitteleuropeans & industrial milan and
turin.

I have no explanation for this though except some pseudohistorical ramblings.

~~~
eru
How about the Russians? It can get pretty hot in the south in summer there,
but everyone is just depicting Russia in winter.

Another funny thing is that part of European countries that's closer to
Switzerland tends to be richer. E.g. the north of Italy, and the south of
Britain and Germany. (It doesn't work for Belgium, though.)

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Tichy
I must admit that I would find it amusing as a street art project to pixelate
some of those houses for real, with some kind of graffiti perhaps. Or like the
artist Christo who wraps things into garments (including the German
Reichstag).

I find the pixelated buildings really annoying. Luckily mine isn't pixelated
yet, but I am sure it is only a matter of time. My street already has 5
pixelated buildings.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>I would find it amusing as a street art project to pixelate some of those
houses for real,

That would be fantastic, I'm thinking, having large pixels on a fuzzy
material, varying colours matched to the surrounding buildings but at
different depths to avoid anyone getting a focussed image of the whole
building? Any ideas on materials? At first I thought frosted perspex, but I'm
more drawn to fabric that can be fuzzy round the edges too.

------
_grrr
I've opted out from street-view, asking both my flat, and my car to be
removed, Google obliged. No eggs yet.

~~~
SZW
The eggs are the exception, I think. With 250k people having opted out, and
the article speaking of 'some homes in Essen'... it probably were some youths
high on googlemania - a local thing. Though I suppose others may follow -
copycats.

~~~
JustinSeriously
"some youths high on googlemania - a local thing"

Is this really a thing in Germany? That's the weirdest part of this whole
story, that kids would care that much about an international corporation like
Google. It'd be like getting in a fight with someone because they didn't drink
Coke.

~~~
ugh
It’s a bit baffling to me, too, but there are some voices on the web which
feel very strongly about that whole Street View thing one way or another. The
sentiment that opting-out is very narrow minded definitely exists. It also
looks like this is an isolated case, so all it takes is one or two people
taking that sentiment too far.

Just to give you an idea of the discourse at the moment, there was for example
this blogger who proposed uploading geotagged photos (publishing those is,
after all, legal if maybe morally questionable) of the blurred buildings which
will then appear on Google Maps and Street View [0]. That idea found quite a
few supporters and was also controversially discussed.

[0] <http://mspr0.de/?p=1767> (German)

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wolfgke
I live in Germany and eyed the whole process of Google Street View.

The whole thing with the opt-out is more considered to be a conflict of
generations, so don't take this too seriously.

The problem is a different one: if in one apartment building only one rentee
opts out the whole apartment building becomes blurred. This is what caused a
lot of hate by rentees who want the house to be seen in Street View.

Another action that occured (only in German, sorry, but I'll try to translate
roughly):

<http://asset.soup.io/asset/1253/8519_985c.jpeg>

Someone put a note saying that because some rentee saw his private sphere
violated by Google Street View he won't accept packages for his neighbours
anymore since this is also a violation of private sphere. Additionally he
blurred his signature for security reasons (because of the often quoted
argument that showing the house in Google Street View causes safety concerns).

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thetable
The other kind of vandalism has happened too, where houses were requested to
be taken down / pixelated by someone other than the owner or tenants. There
was a news report about this happening to the Green party headquarters last
week, and according to Google, it couldn't be undone because Google had
deleted the data (imagine that).

~~~
ugh
Completely deleting the photos of houses people requested to be blurred was
one of the requirements of the government. (It’s not a law but a voluntary
agreement. The government did, however, threaten to regulate services like
Street View. That’s probably not going to happen now.)

